[Note added December 4, 2009: I see from my logs that this page has been made an assignment from a course hosted at moodle.esourceportal.org. It’s a private site, so I cannot see the context from which the assignment was made. I would be grateful if one of you who are visiting from there could tell me more about the course, and how this web page was made part of the material for it. I am re-opening the comments, which normally close 45 days after the last activity on a blog post, so that you can leave a note here. If that doesn’t work (if it remains automatically closed in spite of my re-opening it), I would appreciate it if you would use the contact form to let me know. Thank you!]
Randy Hardaman presents a brief yet extensively footnoted outline of Christianity’s place in the American abolition movement. His central point is,
The abolitionist movement itself was essentially a movement to reinstate Christian morality in the South. If it were not for Christianity and, with that, Christian morality there would have been no abolitionist movement and slavery would not have ended when it did.
His analysis comes in three parts, One, Two, and Three. He takes scrupulous care in presenting the other side of the story: that southern Christians used Scripture to support slavery. His argument may be summarized:
A. There was an historical connection between Christianity and slavery in the South, in that there were those who believed in Christianity and also supported slavery. Those persons attempted to show that the connection was a properly theological one, but their attempts were demonstrably misguided and wrong. There is no theological basis upon which chattel slavery could be supported.
B. There was a more-than-historical connection between Christianity and abolitionism, however: Christian belief was at the core of anti-slavery activism.
B is based on two lines of evidence. First, the abolitionists themselves clearly testified that they were motivated by their Christian understanding of morality and the brotherhood of all humanity. Second, prior to and including the ending of slavery in America, there were no abolition movements in the world that were not founded on Christian convictions. (Whether that is still the case, I do not know. If it is not, one could still argue that the example set by Christian Europe and North America has led the way for all subsequent anti-slavery action.)
Hardaman does not deal comprehensively with “What about the Bible’s condoning of slavery?” Timothy Keller works out that issue in an excellent talk titled “Injustice: Hasn’t Christianity been an instrument for oppression?”
I’ll have to read what he wrote before I comment on whether I agree or disagree with his analysis.
Tom, you wrote, “First, the abolitionists themselves clearly testified that they were motivated by their Christian understanding of morality and the brotherhood of all humanity.” How is this different from “Many gay marriage proponents themselves clearly testified that they were motivated by their Christian understanding of morality and the brotherhood of all humanity”? I ask this because you are pointing to the abolitionists as the ones who were “right” about Christian teachings in the case of slavery, although both sides claimed to be following Christian teachings at the time. Without the advantage of hindsight, how do you know which side is “right”? How do you know which side is right now, in regard to gay marriage?
Here’s the thing, a simple, plain reading of the Bible clearly shows that slavery was supported in both the Old and New Testaments. The abolitionists were the liberals of their day going against the tried and true biblical interpretation.
I’m not sure how much of this is us reading modern notions of right and wrong into the past.
@ordinary seeker:
First, one must always take risks with one’s convictions. If I am wrong, then I am wrong. Second, there is a very large difference between the Bible’s approach to slavery and its approach to homosexuality. Slavery was acknowledged in the Bible, never commanded. Further, what you think of when you think “slavery” is not the same as that which was acknowledged in the Bible. (Listen to the Tim Keller talk on this.) Those who thought it was were clearly wrong, and I think culpably so. They should not have interpreted it that way, because there is no basis for that interpretation in Scripture. America in the mid-1800s should have paid attention to what Wilberforce was saying decades earlier.
Homosexual behavior, by contrast, is expressly forbidden in the Bible. There is complete clarity on that. If homosexual behavior is not sexual immorality, then there is no such thing as sexual immorality.
But my point, Tom, is that there are other Christians who disagree with your interpretation of how homosexuality is addressed in the Bible, or who understand the Bible’s position on homosexuality to be reflective of the time and culture in which it was written. Whatever position one takes as a Christian, another Christian can take a different position, and defend it–the devil can quote scriptures to his purpose, right? The trick is figuring out who is the devil.
I don’t think it’s that tricky in the text, in this case.
Naturally, the abolitionist movement could have no force in a highly religious society until churches and large numbers of religious people backed it. But many atheists, deists and freethinkers were outspoken supporters of the abolition of slavery:
http://www.secularplanet.org/2007/02/ftu-abolitionist-atheists.html
I see little indication that abolitionism was a movement against unbiblical views. Rather, it was a liberal movement adopted by some christians (with the main thrust of the underlying ideas and ideals coming from nonchristian Enlightenment thinkers). Christians who then interpreted scripture according to their more progressive, liberal values.
In that respect it is indeed much like the gay rights movement of today. And if that movement succeeds to the degree that abolitionism and, later, the civil rights movement did I suspect that Christians will be hogging the credit for it despite the fact that the vast majority of us nonbelievers were supporting gay rights long before anything more than a token percentage of Christians did.
Leading evangelical historian Mark Noll has written books and articles on exactly this topic, and doesn’t agree with the notion that Christianity and the Bible ended up primarily on the right side of the slavery issue. If anything, Noll says, it was the *southerners* that won the battle of Bible-interpretation. What they lost was the shooting war afterwards. And the real core of the problem was the Reformed, literal hermeneutic — exactly the hermeneutic defended by fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals today, in fact…and often in denominations derived from the split of the methodists, presbyterians, and baptists into southern (pro-slavery) and northern factions some time before the Civil War broke out.
(quotes of Noll from wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War )
If your thesis here were true, then slavery should probably not have been denounced on biblical grounds without having been defeated on the battlefield. That would come as quite a surprise to both Wilberforce and Saint Bathilde (seventh century), Saint Anskar (851), and Aquinas (15th century).
Also,
And Pope Paul III wrote in the mid-1500s,
See also Timothy Keller’s written remarks, for those who do not listen to the talk I’ve recommended.
Thanks for that link, Tom. I recognized Stark immediately but I don’t think I’ve seen that piece.
He omits 5th century abolitionist, St. Patrick, however.
Thomas Cahill, How The Irish Saved Civilization, 148
Citing catholic opposition to slavery does not exactly help the case of the protestant, calvinist culture which was dominant in the United States and which was then often vehemently anti-Catholic. The catholics themselves appear to make the distinction:
“Catholics, not Protestants, worked for the abolition of slavery in Latin American countries like Brazil. The Catholic appreciation of natural law-as opposed to the Protestant principle of sola scriptura (when Scripture tells slaves to obey their masters)-has always made slavery less reconcilable with Catholicism than Protestantism.”
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9907fea2.asp
There appear to be historians on both sides of the catholic question too. Here’s a Jesuit scholar noting the various pro-slavery instances in the church hierarchy throughout the centuries.
http://www.catholicregister.org/content/view/1832/842/
And if we’re being fair, I suppose we should note that at least some Enlightenment personalities were pro-slavery, e.g. Thomas Jefferson. Basically, it’s a mess, like most historical questions, and doesn’t lend itself to easy generalizing and cheerleading for Christianity (much like the complexity of the “what gave rise to science?” question).
Also, Lincoln’s religion is similarly ambiguous:
The Ambiguous Religion of President Abraham Lincoln
by Mark A. Noll
http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Abraham_Lincoln.html
Tom, the point isn’t so much that your examples disprove the other Biblical evidence that Nick offered, but that there is a conflict between your examples and that Biblical evidence. That’s part of the problem, in and of itself. And it aligns with the common atheist complaint that one can use the Bible and/or religion to justify nearly anything, similar to how an unfalsifiable claim is always (superficially) right.
The better point is that while slavery could be, to whatever extent, justified by using the Bible, abolition CAME OUT of the Bible and from attempting to live a Biblically mandated Christian life.
And it didn’t happen just once but many times throughout the history of Christianity and by many different denominational readings.
Funny that neutral science guys don’t see that but instead reflexively always react to show Christianity in a negative light. Science defence always looks so … anti-Christian, for some strange reason.
If you have time give Peter Williams a listen
http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-old-testament-ethical-peter-williams.html
I love serendipity (I bought a book [which I have not yet read] titled “When God Winks”, about our attitude toward serendipitous occurences) – the point of this is I discovered an article yesterday while looking for something unrelated to the present discussion which may have some bearing upon the quite valid comment of Paul about Biblical interpretation.
http://wordalone.org/docs/wa-layman-guide-jepsen.shtml
Considered in this context the OT rules regarding slavery could well be superceded by the revelation of Christ Jesus. The fact that Christ did not specifically address slavery does not negate that His teaching of the brotherhood of all humans has implications for the practice. Jesus was not a political reformer, nor was He a social reformer, He is a personal reformer, working within each person to conform that person to the divine will. Once we are conformed in our thinking certain practices are recognized as indefensible and are abandoned.
The same holds true for Philemon. Paul doesn’t lecture about the evils of slavery, he writes to his “brother” Philemon about his other “brother” Onesimus who will return to Philemon of his own free will.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=64&chapter=1&version=31&context=chapter
From the STR blog today, “Did God Condone Slavery?”
Craig #3,
I disagree. A plain reading of the bible, isolating on this subject has, in my opinion, only two indisputable conclusions:
1) In the Old Testament, slavery was permitted for Jews. In that time, in that place, for that race. There is no blanket approval for all peoples and all times. The Jews were also permitted to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing–but again there is no universal endorsement of these activities.
2) In the New Testament the reality of slavery is acknowledged. The most you can say is that in the same sense that the falsely imprisoned (such as Paul) are to be model prisoners, Christian slaves are to be good slaves. The former does not constitute an endorsement of false imprisonment, nor the latter of slavery. And it should be noted that a very clear teaching–Jesus’ second greatest commandment, is manifestly incompatible with slavery.
I agree that you might reasonably (incorrectly in my opinion, but reasonably) argue that the lack of an explicit NT condemnation of slavery is tantamount to an endorsement. But that’s about it–and that’s quite weak. Your assertion that the bible clearly shows support of slavery in the NT is simply not supported by the facts.
Looking for a ‘Thou shalt not have slaves’ shows a lack of understanding of the doctrine of grace that dominates Jesus’ NT teaching, and misses the boat on the Jesus’ teaching on his law given in the Sermon on the Mount. We can speculate that if there had been an explicit commandment against slavery written in the tablets of stone, Jesus very well might have said something along the lines of: you have heard it said, keep no slaves–but I tell you that a man who does not love his neighbor as himself has already enslaved his neighbor. That is of course rank speculation–except for the part where Jesus does teach the indisputably anti-slavery ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. Not only does he teach it, but he elevates to the greatest law concerning how man is to treat his fellow man.
In context, read in light of Jesus’ teaching instead of isolated slavery vignettes, the NT is arguably quite anti-slavery.
Comment added to attempt to re-open discussion (see above, at the top of the original post).
On a first attempt this does not appear to have worked as I hoped. If no comment box appears, please use the contact form as requested above. Thank you again.