if one were to go by the NT, then none of the Pauline corpus speaks against slavery.
Hi Midget-Sasquatch,
There are actually 4 interesting scriptures in the NT were Paul mention's slavery:
Philemon:
Paul regarding his slave friend Onesimous:
14 But I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. 15 Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good? 16 no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord.
Paul's request was to free this slave and to no longer treat him as a slave but as a dear brother. He also told the Galatians that from a Christian perspective there was neither slave nor free... for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In Corithians he lumped everybody together in "one body" .... slave or free - 12:13.
In colossians 3: 11 -
11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
To put how radical these statements might have seemed at the time. Greece ended up with about a 75% slave population and Rome had a more than 50% slave population. So, it was probably in the minds of citizens an absolute pre-requisite for civilization.
As a poor analogy, it might be like trying to tell someone today that we should abolish all trucks. We'll just need to get along with cars only. Think of the commercial losses that would cause. One could easily imagine the financial collapse of a system.
Aristotle called the institution of slavery , "natural" and "expedient" and "just". He said, "a slave is a living tool, just as a tool is a living slave, therefore there can be no friendship with a slave as slave".- Nichomachean Ethics 8:11 So, the practice was deeply engrained culturally, ethically, and financially and had been so for a very, very long time.
How many early Christians took Paul's seeds of abolition that he planted and grew them? We'll probably never know exactly. There were many though that understood Paul's words as being that slavery was incompatible with Christianity. Historian W. E. H Lecky says,
"St Melania was said to have emancipated 8000 slaves; St Ovidius a rich martyr of Gaul, 5000; Cromatius a Roman Prefect under Diocletian, 1400; Hermes a Prefect under Trajan 1200, [And] many of the Christian clergy at Hippo under the rule of St. Augistine, as well as great numbers of private individuals, freed their slaves as an act of piety". I'm sure they thought they were just being obedient.
I think it took courage for early Christians to free slaves because as Alvin Schmidt notes, "Roman edicts did not favor freeing slaves". This is understandable because there were some pretty big slave revolts at times in Roman history, Spartacus being my favorite. Nice movie renter for the holidays btw.
In 315 Constantine imposed the death penalty on those that stole children to bring them up as slaves. Justinian, 527 - 565 AD abolished all laws that prevented the freeing of slaves to officialize what his fellow Christians had already been doing for a long time. Lactantius (the Christian Cicero) in his Divine Institutes said that in God's eyes there were no slaves. St. Augustine saw slavery as the product of sin and as contrary to God's divine plan - The City of God 19:15. St. Chrysostom in the 300's preached that when Christ came he annulled slavery. "Buy them, and after you have taught them some skill by which they can maintain themselves, set them free" . For five centuries the Trinitarian monks redeemed Christian slaves from servitude in Muslim occupied Spain. Lecky says that "in the thirteenth century there were no slaves to emancipate in France" and that in previous times there were "multitudes of them [slaves] embracing Christianity.
Church Historian Herbert Workman has shown that early Christians truly saw slaves as their brothers noting that no grave of a dead slave in the Christian catacombs was ever inscribed with the name "slave" . Callixtus, who was once a slave in the third century, became a priest, and the bishop of Rome and is later listed by the Roman Catholic Church as an early Pope.
In spite of Paul's words in the four instances in his writings. Many "Christians" all throughout this time owned slaves though... even prominent Church fathers. At times they even spoke approvingly of it. Popes even issued edits making it legal to own slaves for even the clergy. These erring Christians were sinning plain and simple. Either knowingly or not they were imitating the "world" around them and not growing into the type of people set forth in the scriptures. The point is that Paul started people to feeling guilty about slavery, got them thinking about it, taught that they were equals to freedmen in God's eyes, and never said one word in support of the ancient institution. An honest reading shows that he was against it in my opinion.
As I noted earlier, sinful people will always try to justify their evil by whatever means necessary, and usually by whatever prevailing "authority" there is at the time to lend legitimacy to their evil . It's a deceptive tactic and keeps people from thinking for themselves. But, the NT principles were always there for people to check themselves and their societies by as an anchor. Islam has no such anchor in many, many modern civilised aspects.
Slavery, for the large part pretty much died out in Europe for several centuries and was really revived by the British in the 17th century and other European countries and their colonies followed suit. This was a different situation than the early Church ridding itself of African-Greco-Roman slavery and then at times reversing itself and imitating the pagan cultures it sprang from. This was pure evil from countries whose proponents commonly identified themselves as "Christians". Quite different and much more culpable in my opinion. Serious minded Christians did not see it as consistent with NT teachings though.
William Wilborforce who was a powerful Christian orator against slavery in the British House of Commons declared once, "Help me O Jesus, and by thy Spirit cleanse me from my pollutions; give me a deeper abhorrence of sin". It was said that his speeches were more powerful when they "appealed to the Christian consciences of Englishmen". He presented a petetition in 1823 to the House to abolish slavery, a petition that his associate Thomas Fowell Buxton moved "as a resolution declaring slavery repugnant to Christianity and the Constitution". A few days before he died he received word that Parliment had passed the Abolition Act in 1833. This Act resulted in freeing 700,000 slaves in the West Indies Colonies.
Even some early American Presidents owned slaves after echoing Pauls words about how everybody was equal before God; "all men are created equal". Things later got quite nasty in the USA among "Christians" The South was deeply entrenched in it. It was a part of the way of life and culture. Virtually every church denomination had advocates for slavery. They engaged in faulty exegesis by quoting OT passeges that cited its presence, man's sinfulness, blacks perceived inferiority, historical precedent, absolute economic necessity.... just about whatever appeal to authority they could find to justify their evil.
Eventually Christians wouldn't stand for the inconsistency with NT principles. Two thirds of the Abolitionists in the 1830's were Christian clergymen. This was a powerful moral fighting unit. Elijah Lovejoy the "first Abolitionist Martyr" was a Presbyterian Clergyman. " I shall come out, open, fearlessly and as I hope in a manner as becomes a servant of Jesus Christ when defending his cause". He was killed by pro-slavery radicals in Illinois in 1837. Clergyman Charles T. Torrey helped 100,000 slaves escape northward to freedom. He died in prison serving time for aiding and abbetting slaves. Christiantity must be credited with moving other clergy to abolition causes like, Lovejoy, Finney, Weld, Edward Beecher, Henry Beecher. Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Snow thought that abolitism grew out of the Great Revival that preceeded it in the eastern US.
Lots of lay people exercised their own Christian consciences and practiced civil disobedience for matters of conscience. Many echoed the feeling of one outspoken lay person concerning the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, - "We cannot be Christians and obey it"! Let's not forget Abraham Lincoln either, another outspoken Christian Lay person.
The book, Uncle Tom's Cabins deserves mention here. As one profesor wrote:
The book abounds with allusions to biblical references and throughout its emotionally moving pages the author reveals the deep spiritual tensions and conflicts, induced by Christian values, that existed among slave owners. In noting these tensions and conflicts, Stowe shows how slavery violated the teachings of Christ....A sea captain who met her said that he was glad to shake the hand of the one who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. She responded, God wrote it... I merely did his dictation.
When Brazil outlawed slavery in 1888 all of the West was finally free. Christian abolitionists were active there too. Lecky (who is many times sharply critical of Christianity) says it was the influence of Christianity that ended slavery in the western world. Stark states in a recent book, "the abolition of the New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists".
I have found abolition proclamations by Menonites and many others too nurmerous to mention that based their thoughts on scripture whether it was Paul's call to equality for slaves and freedmen, the do unto others rule, Christ dying for all men and many other scriptural references. The point is that slavery for the Christian is totally incompatible with the NT. This laid a foundation for the West to confront its evil.
Textbooks and essays typically focus on the ways in which "Christians" participated in the sin of slavery and portray it as largely a Western phenomonon practiced by white Europeans and Americans with a Christian background; even though it was indigenous to Africa and Arabian countries before making its way to Europe and beyond. Why? Sociologist Stark says writers do not wish to risk being accused of minimizing "white guilt" . He is not a Christian to my knowledge.
By contrast, nowhere in the Koran is slavery cast in a negative light and it is assumed in many texts in the Koran and the Hadith, according to Schmidt. Irshad Manji writes, "read it closely and you'll find that the Koran doesn't direct us to release all slaves, just those who their owners decide have the potential to acheive better standing".
Benard Lewis an American expert on Islam says that to Muslims, "to forbid what God permits is almost as great an offense as to permit what God forbids. Specifically the Koran says, ' O you who believe, do not forbid (yourselves) the good things which Allah has made lawful for you.' (Sura 5: 87) This Koranic principle helps one to understand why it is virtually impossible to see an unequivocal condemnation of slavery, oral or written, by any leading country or authority".
Muslim slave trading started with Muhammed himself. After he had massacared the Banu Qurayza, he took 1/5 of the take. The women were sold as slaves to the highest bidders. The most attractive ones ended up in harems and his followers have practiced it ever since.
This may explain why as recently as 1999 a promenient Muslim cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik told Palestinians: "Their [Jewish] women are yours to take legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave them"? Thomas Patrick noted in the Dictionary of Islam: Slavery is in complete harmony with the spirit of Islam, while it is abhorrent to Christianity"
Muslim countries that have outlawed slavery did so much later than the West. "Muslim countries proved extremely resistant to abolition. Many of them had to be dragged into it by the European colonial powers". It is widely know that the British exerted a lot of pressure to abolish it there.
Slavery is still common and flourishes in the Sudan and Mauritania and is hardly reported on in the mainstream media. Canada' sMaclean's magazine stated in 2001: "Thousands of people, mostly women and children...have been kidnapped by mauraders backed by the [Islamic] government in the north and sold into slavery. Those who do not accept their fate are often butchered, raped, or killed."
Tens of thousands of slaves suffer in Sudan right now as I write this and who are they enslaving mostly? Christians. Many are exported to "free" Islamic countries.
Also, Muslim forces have killed an estimated 2.5 million Christians there. Between 1995 and 2000 more than 30,000 slaves have been purchased by an organization known as Christian Solidarity International to free them . On one eight day trip they purchased 5500 slaves! The U.S. State Dept. statistics on Human Rights in 1996 note that "some 90,000 Mauritanians live under involuntary servitude" - slavery.
Mohammed Athie of the International Coalition against Chattel Slavery asked for time to speak on behalf of the slaves in Sudan at Louis Farrakhan's million Man March back in 1995. Request denied. This group of American Muslims deny the existance of slavery as does Sudan and Mauritania.
Reporter Marcus Mabry notes that when Muslims leaders get together from different countries in a forum, slavery is never discussed. "They feel no remorse for the past and no responsibility for the future. This is unfortunate since they have enslaved countless individuals since the time of Mohammed. Where's the moral guilt?
Benard Lewis notes that " it can be professionally hazardous for a young scholar to turn his attention in this direction". This raises the question of whether or not it would be equally professionally hazardous if studying and writing about slavery in countries that identified with Christianity? This silence will cost the West in my opinion.
Where is their Muslim guilt I ask? What guilt...their holy book and Prophet is consistent with slavery. To think that simply providing an economic, ethical, or moral elevation to Islam will change them is credulity at best and just plain stubbornness at worst. They need a new prophet that will provide a better example so that their consciences will deal with them internally. They need their own "messiah" who preaches peace. We in the West need to work with their religious leaders, the "spiritual" ones to help change their worldview.
It may be chic to heap Western guilt and denigrate Christianity to some, but we are digging our own hole if that's all we do. If the USA was a "has been" and Christianity were gone, the world would still be vulnerable to an expansionist religious/political mechine that does not have a foundation of peace like the NT gave the West.
