Slavery

" A history of the church's opposition to slavery: The first person to write that slavery is wrong was a church father, Gregory of Nyssa. The first person we know of anywhere in the world to outlaw slavery was in the seventh century—a French king, Clovis II—who was inspired by his wife Bathilde, a former slave. In 851 Saint Anskar began his efforts to halt the cruelties of the Viking slave trade. That the Church baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops—including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)—forbade the enslavement of Christians (and later also Jews). Since everyone was at least nominally a Christian, that effectively abolished slavery in medieval Europe. In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas deduced that slavery was a sin, and a series of popes upheld his position, beginning in 1435 and culminating in three major pronouncements against slavery by Pope Paul III in 1537. So, why did slavery make a comeback in America? As historian Rodney Stark writes in For the Glory of God, people allowed their economic interests to take priority over what Christians had known for centuries to be wrong. American slavery shows the impact of economics over morality. Yet the abolition movement to outlaw slavery was led largely by Christians. “In fact, all known societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies—even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus’s voyage. Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected human bondage: Christendom.” "The excesses of political correctness have all but erased awareness that slavery was once nearly universal to all societies that could afford it, and that only in the West did significant moral opposition ever arise and lead to the abolition of slavery.”" --Rodney Stark

" The Bible regulates slavery--but that does not mean it approves of slavery: "Since God regulated slavery in the Old Testament, does this automatically mean that He approves of slavery? No. A parallel is when the Pharisees in Matthew 19 also wrongly assumed that regulation equals approval when it comes to marriage: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” And [Jesus] answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?... What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.” Notice what happens here. The Pharisees come with a legal question about which regulations ought to govern divorce, and Jesus responds in a very unexpected way, saying there shouldn’t be any divorce. The Pharisees are immediately confused. “But how could it be that there shouldn’t be any divorce if God regulated it? Doesn’t that mean He thinks it’s hunky-dory as long as it’s done right?” Jesus makes it clear that this is not the case. The Pharisees had missed something very important about law: there’s a difference between what’s legal and what’s moral—between the practical need to deal with reality and the existence of an ideal. The Law was not meant to be a list of everything moral and immoral. It functioned as every national set of laws functions—as reasonably enforceable rules to govern their society. And the Pharisees had made the mistake of focusing on merely staying within the regulations instead of going beyond them to seek the goodness of God’s ideal. As with divorce, the same was true for slavery. The rules regulating slavery were added “because the hardness of the hearts” of humanity had created a situation where slavery existed and served certain functions in their societies, “but it was not that way from the beginning.” In the beginning, there was human dignity and equal value resulting from the fact that every single individual—young or old, rich or poor, royal or commoner—was made in the image of God. But after the Fall, the ideal society was out the window, and God had to deal with what was actually there. In the ancient world, indentured servitude was the only feasible welfare policy for the destitute. The trade was clear and straightforward. You swapped your personal liberty for security in a household. You said, "Please house and feed me and mine, and we will work for you loyally, obeying your directions, and staying for good." Otherwise, what was there? No centralized center for distributing goods, and for nomadic peoples, no centralized anything for anything. Deeply ingrained cultural patterns don’t change overnight, but must be redeemed over time. Slavery was intricately woven into the cultures of the day, so, as with divorce (neither being the situation God desired), Yet God also made rules to keep the evil of the practice to a minimum. For example, if you kidnapped someone and made him a slave, you were put to death. If a slave escaped from his master for whatever reason, you were not allowed to return him. If you harmed so much as a tooth of your slave, you had to let him go free—in other words, no person was allowed to keep a slave if he mistreated him or her. Slavery in Western countries would never even have gotten off the ground had these rules been followed; the first rule alone would have prevented it. God regulated divorce, and yet He explicitly said He hates it, so the regulation of the practice did not mean He condoned it. Therefore, one cannot assume that God’s regulation of slavery meant God condoned slavery."

 

Nancy Pearcey