The fact that the bible has been around for thousands of years while slavery flourished and continued should be enough evidence. Asking for an academic reference is a bit off here.
that's not enough evidence. i asked for academic reference, because i don't think engaging an uninformed minority view is fruitful if the person presenting the view didn't bother to learn what views there are out there to begin with. it is better to look to a professional historian - do you expect that I can present something better than they here in the comment section?
In the US, the Bible was used by both the slavers and the abolitionists to justify their viewpoints. The abolitionist book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written in part to counter the pro-slavery argument that the Bible allowed slavery.
> Since the Middle Ages, the Christian understanding of slavery has seen significant internal conflict and endured dramatic change. One notable example where church mission activities in the Caribbean were directly supported by the proceeds of slave ownership was under the terms of a charitable bequest in 1710 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The Codrington Plantations in Barbados, were granted to the Society to fund the establishment of Codrington College. In the first decade of ownership, several hundred slaves at the plantation estates were branded on their chests, using the traditional red hot iron, with the word Society, to signify their ownership by the Christian organisation.
It also points out that "St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, although the subjection of one person to another (servitus) was not part of the primary intention of the natural law," and "Bede Jarrett, O.P. asserts that Aquinas considered slavery as a result of sin and was justifiable for that reason." "St Thomas' explanation continued to be expounded at least until the end of the 18th century."
These two Wikipedia pages give many links to academic treatments, such as "Religion and the Antebellum Debate Over Slavery", of which the Amazon review says: "This anthology of original essays by historians explores the religious dimensions of the antebellum sectional conflict over slavery. Covering such familiar topics as the proslavery argument and denominational schisms, these essays emphasize the diversity that existed within regions, states, and denominations; the importance of local factors in shaping responses to the slavery controversy; and the powerful pulls toward moderation and unity that existed within the institutional church. Drawing on the recent flowering of scholarship on religion, the essays collected here provide a variety of new approaches, including quantitative methodologies and a heightened sensitivity to issues of race, class, and gender."
I believe that for much of it 2000 years, yes, Christian religions supported slavery, based on Biblical interpretation. Enslaving Christians was prohibited well before enslaving non-Christians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_slavery covers more details about the Catholic Church and slavery, and lists some observations by Cardinal Avery Dulles: "The popes themselves held slaves, including at times hundreds of Muslim captives to man their galleys." and "Throughout Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, theologians generally followed St. Augustine in holding that although slavery was not written into the natural moral law it was not absolutely forbidden by that law."
brother that's accurate, but also misdirected. Prolonged support for slavery in the Christian community does not negate the undeniable fact that is the Christianity community under the influence of the Bible that put in the most sweat in ending slavery. I had a question directly uncovering this truth: if not the Christians under the influence of the Bible, then what caused slavery to decline?
I think you have a loaded question, intrinsically tied to cultural imperialism, and designed to support your own beliefs.
Europe, as the main world power for centuries, had its fingers everywhere on the planet. Yes, they were Christian. But, so what? These same Christians were also the ones who put the trans-Atlantic slave trade together in the first place.
You need to ask yourself how is it that the same Bible which influenced the abolitionists somehow did not prevent Christians during the previous 1,500 years from banning slavery, or from owning slaves?
You question about "what caused slavery to decline" is addressed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism and links from there. You can read that, yes, there was a religious component:
> An abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanist grounds,
Note that during this Quakers were considered heretics and many of their views blasphemous. But even Quakers, when they first came to North America, though that slavery was acceptable. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quakers#Slavery... :
> Most Quakers owned slaves when they first came to America; to most Quakers "slavery was perfectly acceptable provided that slave owners attended to the spiritual and material needs of those they enslaved."[25] 70% of Quakers owned slaves in the period from 1681 to 1705; however, from 1688 some Quakers began to speak out against slavery until by 1756 only 10% of Quakers owned slaves.
Again, you have to ask yourself why it took devout Christians in the 1700 so long to see that the Bible is actually against slavery?
> In the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized slavery for violating human rights. A member of the British Parliament, James Edward Oglethorpe, was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery. Founder of the Province of Georgia, Oglethorpe banned slavery on humanistic grounds. He argued against it in Parliament and eventually encouraged his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.
> The Enlightenment of the mid-18th century in Europe consolidated the separation of religious and secular institutions that has led to what some consider to be a false rift between Christianity and humanism. But while the Enlightenment crystallized humanism as a distinctly secular, liberal philosophy, it did have sectarian roots that reached back to early 18th-century England.[3] There rationalists known as ‘Deists’ rejected traditional theology and clericalism in favor of ‘natural religion’. Non conformists, they preferred to sidestep the churches and seek God personally by way of reason and innate moral intuition.
You can see the ties to Quaker thought in that description. The page also says:
> Perhaps the most valuable contribution of this liberal Christianity is that it gave rise to the first British movement for the abolition of slavery, which was founded by the Quakers in the late 18th century. However, it was the Evangelical Christian humanism of William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) that led to the successful abolition of the slave trade.
Yes, it wasn't until the humanism of the secular Enlightenment, coupled with the non-conformist beliefs of the Quakers, that the Evangelical Christians started to think that maybe, just maybe, even non-Christians shouldn't be slaves.
It wasn't the Bible that kicked this off this change in how to understand Christianity, it was the Enlightenment.
Sure I can concede your point here, but, my man, you are quoting an article on "Christian Humanism" - you are proving my point. The Enlightenment is also a direct outcome of the European Reformation - a Christian movement.
Again, you are using poor logic. You cannot say that since Y is after X then Y is directly and solely caused by X.
Certainly nearly all of Europe was Christian. Does that make everything in Europe a direct outcome of Christianity? No. Or, if "yes" then that would mean the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade was as Christian as the Reformation.
The Enlightenment included Deists. Deist believe in an abstract, distant God, but not the Biblical God. Some were anti-Christian, and argued the Bible was pure superstition. Even Christian Deists rejected the miracles of the Bible, and only considered Jesus to be a moral teacher. They considered themselves 'true' Christians, and thought that the miracles, the prophecies, the concept of the Trinity, etc. were superstitious nonsense added after the fact to corrupt the real story.
The Enlightenment also built upon the European scientific revolution, which itself was built upon the science in the medieval Islamic world, which in turn built upon other even older systems, including 'falsafa' - Ancient Greek philosophy.
Thus, I can argue that the Enlightenment is a direct outcome of Greek philosophy, injected into a time weary of the religious conflict (like the Thirty Years war) that had dominated the previous century.
The key question is, why did mainstream Christian thought change after 1500+ years? If a correct understand is possible through a close reading of the Bible, then why is there change, and why does the change seem to reflect the influence of non-Christian/external influences on the culture?
It's almost as if people pick and choose which parts of the Bible to emphasize and which to ignore.
P.S. You have used "brother" and "my man". Why do you think I am a male? Very few others on HN use direct gender references as you do, so it rather sticks out as an unusual practice.
I submit to you, that you are right, if your assertions are right. However, I find your summations in need of further research. I do not think they fit reality to satisfy your explanation. For example, even if you found secularist Deists mouthing sentiment against slavery, it is still not they who had much to do with ending it. There are two major steps, historically, that had to occur before slavery was put into a major decline: bending the British parliament's neck to issue ban on slave trade and mobilization of British navy to hunt slavers. Secularists simply endorsed, for few exceptions, the actions of Christians who ensured those two changes by arguing in public arena from the Bible. In that endorsement, the secularists simply closed ranks with Christian intelligentsia in their opposition - they did not do something "new" or on "their own," nor were they able to motivate enough people with their rhetoric apart from the biblical case, which is what really made the big difference.
The question about the lack of opposition to slavery is fair. I think a good starting point for research is first the history of slavery. Corruption had its place, economics, caste-systems. If people benefit from an immoral system, they are unlikely to oppose it. There was always a Christian minority opposing it in every century, however. From the first century churches had organized campaigns to purchase people out of slavery (they prioritized other Christians). The Bible clear states "it is not good to became slaves of men" - the passage was preached and commented on by the Church Fathers and subsequent theologians. Further, most of the earth's Christians themselves were slaves. It took time for them to acquire enough education and social weight to demand rights - this did not go down without bloodshed. It is a moral failure of the Church to allow the system to exist so long with such meager opposition, but it is also the triumph of the Church to repent of its sin, and nobody can rob us of that. I hope we repent of many more sins in the future.
Hey sorry if I confuse gender or use too much gender-specific language - I live very far from the West and in general just weird. :-) Is it better to call you sister?
Of course my summations need further research. There is a huge amount of existing literature on the topic, and I am no expert. By the same token, your summations need further research. And the books by experts need further research.
Frankly, when I see people use that phrase, I interpret it as a deliberate undercutting of the opposing viewpoint. For example, those against vaccines rarely say "get rid of all vaccines." They say, "we need more research to access the safety before we can make a decision." Even though the research is already there.
You say "I think a good starting point for research is ..." Assuredly so. That's why I gave links to Wikipedia pages about such topics. Earlier I pointed to a more academic approach, since that's what you asked for.
You mention now only the British movement to abolition. What of the French? In Wikipedia link to Abolitionism I gave earlier, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism points out that:
> During the Age of Enlightenment, many philosophers wrote pamphlets against slavery and its moral and economical justifications, including Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) or in the Encyclopédie. In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Société des Amis des Noirs) to work for abolition of slavery.
Revolutionary France, based on Enlightenment principles, abolished slavery in all French territories. Napoleon restore it.
Again, you refer to the Bible, as with "The Bible clearly states ..." and point out "There was always a Christian minority opposing it in every century". Which means the majority of devout Christians thought slavery was acceptable under the Bible, does it not? When you pick out only the small number of Christians who agree with you, it sounds very much like a post hoc argument. The question is, why was there slavery in Christian, European countries (eg, hereditary slavery in Scotland)? How could so many devout Christian theologians, like Aquinas, interpret the Bible as allowing slavery, when you think the Bible is so clearly against it?
You say "it is also the triumph of the Church". That sounds like you think there's single Church. Are the Quakers part of "the Church"? What of the Jehovah's Witnesses? The Mormons? Unitarians?
Is this the same Church which hides child molester priests from civil prosecution? If you mean the collective body of Christians, is this the same Church which kicked the Jews out of Spain and the Huguenots out of France?
You call it a "triumph"? It's an embarrassment that it took so long. Most churches had to be dragged into their current views. Your argument is sort of like how a death-bed confessional is supposed to absolve someone of all their earthly sins, no matter how malign they were.
I believe your view is that no matter what the Church does, so long as they eventually apologize for it and change their ways to conform with secular liberal beliefs, it will be a triumph?
> "Is it better to call you sister?"
The real question is not what I prefer to be called, but why you think someone's gender is so important in a conversation.
Based on your reading of the Bible, should women be allowed to be the head of a church?
@dalke, you are asking good questions. Regarding France, Louis X had already abolished slavery much much earlier in the 14th century, motivated by the Bible. Yes, later there was another independent push, but it failed, and it was uncharacteristic of the whole. You can't build an argument on counter-examples. You also need to show that your examples are characteristic of the movement - they are not. I will emphasize that the Bible played a key role, especially in transferring the initiative from thinkers to enforcers. There were other players, but they were a sideshow and they were weak in impact.
hey, this discussion is like way off-topic. I indulged because I can see that we are having a decent enough dialog, but it is also burdensome in this format. You have good questions, they deserve responses. I would like to suggest to switch to another channel of communication, like skypechat or discord or even email. My article was flagged, I will stop checking this page soon. You can initiate contact here with your media of choice: https://truthonly.com/user/profile/1/dima-kotik.html What do you say?
I am quite familiar with the material, and I am convinced you got the entirety of it wrong, like somebody gave you a carefully picked and edited selection of it. Here is the wiki chronology on abolition efforts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline Just a cursory reading of it leaves no room for Englightment as [the main, ed.] explanation - it is clearly a faulty one.
By "the entirety of it wrong" do you mean how you said earlier "Louis X had already abolished slavery much much earlier in the 14th century", only the timeline you point to says "However some cases of slavery continued till the 17th century in some France's Mediterranean harbours, in the Provence"?
As you know from that very timeline, abolition is not a fundamentally Christian idea. The Qin Dynasty and the Xin Dynasty both abolished slavery in China before Jesus was an adult.
As you also know from that same timeline, while the Pope banned enslaving the indigenous peoples of the Americas, he did not ban the enslavement of black Africans. Why is that, do you think, if his decision was based on the Bible?
What I think is missing from your analysis is the step from the "no Christians should be enslaved" to "no one should be enslaved."
The Bible does not prohibit the enslavement of non-Christians. That's why the Pope could have Muslim captives operate galley ships. That's why the Europeans could operate a slave trade of black Africans. That's why the Spanish could enslave the non-Christian indigenous Guanches. (Also from that timeline link you just sent.) That's why Christian theologians for centuries could justify slavery.
What Enlightenment thought added to the mix was the idea of universal rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed".
The hypocrisy of slaveholders talking about universal rights of all men was obvious even when it was first written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal#Slav... . (And no, "their Creator" here refers to the distant creator of Deism, not the Christian God.)
That philosophy changed the moral calculus. People should not be enslaved for the simple reason that they are people.
> An abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanist grounds, arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause.
The "humanist grounds" is the influence of the Enlightenment.
Lady, I have some Russian friends who are convinced electricity was invented in the Soviet Union. This conversation is shaping up in the same line of rhetoric. You need a mental jolt - you are showing twitches of brainwashing. Let'say say I concede your point in the last quote. But, (a) Quakers are Christians, and (b) even if you prove that the movement began apart from the Bible, it does not prove that the movement was not empowered by the Bible and was brought to completion because of the Bible. The person who started the project does not get all the credit for completing it - the majority weighs.
Yes, Louis X abolished slavery in mainland France. That did not apply to the French colonies. If the Bible lead him to believe that slavery was wrong for French Christians, why didn't he also conclude it was wrong for non-French heathens?
There is a huge amount of material on this subject. The things I have mentioned are not an extreme revisionist interpretation of what happened.
I am not interested in transferring this discussion to another location.
