Christians on Black Sunday

The 50th anniversary of the Selma is all over the news these days, even here in Europe. So I came across a photo showing white nuns praying and marching with the black protestors:





And I wondered whether this photo would make some opponents of Christianity on this board wonder, if their constant insistence that Christianity condones slavery might just be a little bit – erm – oversimplified.

 

I wouldn't necessarily say that Christianity condones slavery any more than I would say that Islam condones terrorism. The Bible emphatically and explicitly supports slavery in places, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Other places in the Bible can be used to formulate arguments against slavery, although the silence of Christendom on the subject for centuries does raise some eyebrows. It was the secular Enlightenment that began casting slavery as immoral, and Christians picked up the banner later, while their pro-slavery opponents were able to quote even more scripture of their own. Christian and economic motives were the main defense of the institution.

On another note, I always thought it was ironic that Harriet Tubman and MLK were so often compared to Moses -- Moses only cared about emancipating the Israelites. He was fine with slavery when it was the Israelites were enslaving Canaanites . . . on God's commands. "Let my people go, but let those people be our slaves."

 

Well, as they say: “the mills of God grind slowly”. So call me impious, but while I believe that faith has transforming powers and heureka-moments, I don’t expect it to miraculously advance a person’s world of thoughts centuries ahead of this person’s time and culture.
Which means that I certainly look more kindly on ancient Israelites who thought it was fine to enslave the Canaanites than on people who still promote eugenics after WWII, such as ‘super-enlightened’ James Randi did. (I should hope the guy’s blatant social-darwinism is as unrepresentative for modern day sceptics as the Phineas Priesthood’s Bible-picking racism is unrepresentative for modern day Christians.) God knows where we'll go and what future generations will think of our societies.

When it comes to the history of ideas, secular enlightenment, especially the idea that all men are created equal, is directly footed on Christian humanism/the reformation. (In case you need to hear this from a non-Christian before you can believe it, ask John Gray for example, I must warn you though that he doesn’t like humanism very much.) The Catholic Church started to officially condemn slavery in the 15th century long before secularism was in sight. And in the 17th century it was the Quakers who started the abolitionist movement. So I dare say that you got the question of who jumped on whose bandwagon wrong.

“Slow moving” you may rightly say, with so many Christians accepting the social status quo of their days for so long. But as the saying goes: “The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind small.” So there's yet hope concerning humankind's future moral conduct.

 

Some of the slave owners used to preach to the slaves, telling them about the passages in the Bible that said that they should be good slaves.

 

When large numbers of people are taken from their Continent and brutally treated and brought to another continent to be bought and sold as slaves and had any of their old religious practices or cultural traditions BEATEN OUT OF THEM....sure...they are going to EASILY grab onto the Love and Forgiveness concepts of Christianity.

What is really sad if I have been to many areas of Africa with my Team...and with the exceptions of a few Nations...the rest of Africa is a HELL HOLE!!

AboveAlpha

 

One of the strangest pieces of evidence that I have ran into over and over again as I researched the paranormal is evidence from many directions that all of us planned much of our lives…………. before we were born………. and people born into slavery or near slavery conditions volunteered to go through this horrible situation previous to their birth.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research01.html
Pre-Existence and the Near-Death Experience

 

My problem with biblical mentions of slavery is not that Christianity condones slavery, at the moment, it clearly doesn't. My problem with it is that people are being inconsistent when reading the Bible. Christians do ignore those parts of the Bible, and I think that's good and laudable, but I think they can disregard other parts of the Bible too, and yet they don't. I want to figure out why they think that they can disregard the slavery ones so that I can consider whether this should apply to other parts of the Bible. Note how this line of reasoning does not claim that Christianity condones slavery but still brings it up.

However, people tend not to answer for whatever reason, thus cutting short the logic no matter how benign or respectful.

 

As they also say -- and said during the Civil Rights movement -- "Justice delayed is justice denied."

I don't either . . . because I don't believe in miracles. If I did believe in miracles and divine intervention, God would have a lot of explaining to do. If the laws of the Bible could be set forth to completely change the entire religious paradigm of the Israelites and the Christians, then they should have been able to change the human paradigm as well. Monotheism was a pretty big goal, so the difficulty of eradicating slavery isn't really the issue. Prince Ashoka and a couple of Chinese dynasties were able to outlaw the slave trade centuries before Jesus was ever born, and other cultures never had slaves to begin with.

Besides, if God and his followers couldn't do anything about slavery until people were ready for it, then neither deserve any credit. That would mean that they were unable to act until independent, secular abolitionist thought was already underway.

Besides, the Bible says clearly that God not only approved of slavery, but invented it (see the Curse of Ham).

I don't follow James Randi much, but from what I understand, those accusations are unfounded. And comparing the actions of centuries worth of Israelites -- and don't forget that the New Testament supports slavery as well -- isn't exactly apples to apples with the (assumed) nasty words of a stage magician. And the myth of Canaan's enslavement provided justification for the African slave trade centuries later.

I don't think either is representative. However, it was representative of the Christians I grew up with, who still believe to this day that the African slave trade was justified.

It isn't rooted in the Bible, and I'd challenge the idea that it was in any way based on the Reformation. I'm sure it shares several things in common with Christian humanism -- humanism being the operative word here. Those Christian humanists were quite fond of the secular ethics proposed by Greek and Roman pagan philosophers.

From what little I've read of him, he tries to link humanism with Marxist communist dictatorships and fascism. If that's his train of thought, I have no desire to read more.

The first Catholic condemnation of slavery that I know of was the Sublimus Dei, which was written in 1537 -- the 16th century. I don't quite give the Catholic church enough credit here. Though you are wrong to say that this was "long before secularism was in sight." Secular thought and ethics predates Christianity itself by centuries.

The Quakers were founded in the mid 1700s -- the 18th century -- which makes them contemporaries with the Enlightenment. And they always represented a wide range of beliefs, not just Christianity.

 

Correction: the Quakers were founded in the mid 1600s -- the 17th century -- which makes them contemporaries with the Enlightenment.

 

A simple search would show anyone that the abolitionist movement was largely inspired and run by Christian churches. I had this very debate last year with someone who kept insisting that Christians supported slavery and they kept saying "But the Southern Baptist church............" as if apparently they were the only denomination around and were even as large as the other denominations.

Even going back further in history one will find that the Vatican was one of the major forces pushing to end slavery around the world in the middle ages.

 

They had to largely appeal to non-scriptural sources, humanist ideals and Enlightenment philosophy. A simple search would just as easily show that Christendom, throughout most of its history, has supported slavery.

You say that as if they were the only denomination supporting slavery. Christendom, starting at least with the Apostle Paul, supported slavery for over 1,000 years before the Southern Baptist church came into being. And they did so based on the words of the Bible.

I'm unaware of any evidence of the Vatican being a "major force" against slavery until the 1500s. That was after the Middle Ages, and only happened after centuries of support for the institution. Unless you are talking about Louis X, who wasn't acting under the orders of the Vatican.

 

Your completely missing the point. People like you keep quoting scripture versus which are entirely irrelevant. Stop making judgments on text and start making them on ACTIONS. You know the phrase "Actions speak louder than words" The undeniable fact is that many Christians were opposed to slavery starting back in the middle ages. Slavery existed in Islamic and non-Christian nations as recently as the 20th century.

Opposition to slavery started back in the 300 AD times. St. Thomas Aquinas is famous even to non Catholics.

http://medicolegal.tripod.com/catholicsvslavery.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/religion/history2.html

Catholics being Catholics were hypocrites and were selective on which slavery they opposed at various times but the fact is that they started back in the Middle Ages. Protestants were late to the game but then they did fully become anti-slavery they did it with furvor. The abolistionist movement was driven in large part by churches.

 

You completely missed my post, then. I mentioned actions several times.

”Many”? How “many”? Obviously not most.

Slavery still exists in Islamic and Christian nations today.

It started before then. It started hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. Prince Ashoka outlawed the slave trade in the 2nd century BC.

Which is great, though obviously a minority view among Christians at the time.

I’m sure a small handful did, just as a small handful of Christians still support slavery now.

Sure, after the influence of the secular Enlightenment, a lot of churches started supporting things like democracy and abolition. It shouldn’t be a surprise that, in predominantly Christian countries, it was predominantly Christians on both sides of the slavery debate.

 

Maybe it's somewhere in between and lost in translation. Maybe there is a time and place for slavery/ serfdom, that place wasn't the trans Atlantic so called trade. Taking invaders as serfs can be seen as moral where as taking other continents into slavery is not

 

True indeed, it has always been Catholics that were the engine behind slavery, maybe because they were on the frontlines but still, it's deplorable

 

There is definitely at least a little bit of truth to that, but the Bible doesn't just talk about taking invaders as serfs/slaves. It talks about being the invader, and taking slaves, selling your daughter into slavery, treating the children of slaves as slaves, buying slaves from foreigners, and treating the the people of Canaan as hereditary slaves because of the actions of Ham (this would later be used to justify the Atlantic slave trade). It also clarifies that these slaves are to be treated as the personal property of their owner, and can be beaten as long as they survive for a couple of days.

 

Maybe that is the case of taking invaders as slaves again. Maybe the Canaanites were seen as a weak ppl easily manipulated by foreigners that destabilised the region and they had to be subdued / made serfs to the regional power

 

Interesting. I know Asoka was a great reformer after fighting the Kalinger War, which changed his attitiude to violence. He founded the policy of 'Dharma' - natural order in which everything had its place. Emphasis was to remove the influence of the priests and make family life and society a loving experience. As far as I was aware slavery was still part of society.
Perhaps you can give me your reference to bring me up to date. Thanks.

 

Sure thing. I'll post a better source than Wikipedia as soon as I dig one up, but I also remember it from my college history courses. I do want to stress that he only outlawed the slave trade, and not slavery itself, which is an important distinction. The U.S. also outlawed the slave trade decades before it outlawed slavery itself. Similarly, the New Testament criticizes slave traders, but not slavery.

 

As I am sure you know in the Bible there are passages that tell the SLAVES to be good to their owners and follow the Teachings of Jesus Christ.

Obviously this is not the message of Christianity of today.

What I find funny is many Christian's especially those who think the King James Bible should be always read WORD FOR WORD and that any change is like BLASPHEMY....are so ignorant that they don't realize that if they were to Google and read the First KJB Edition and then read and compare it to the latest printed KJB Edition....THEY WOULD FIND AND ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF CHANGES!!!

Ahhhh......IGNORANCE.

When I see it in action I can't decide whether to Laugh or Cry.

AboveAlpha

 

Here's a link to a different opinion.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101126140643AAcTYF0

 

Well, I have the fullest sympathy with you here. There’s indeed a lot of picking and choosing around that doesn’t seem to follow any logical reasoning and that obviously just serves to confirm a pre-existent bias and prejudice. But to an extent that’s utterly normal: each generation of Christians has read the Bible from the point of view of its respective historical and cultural background. It’s what keeps scripture alive. I have good hope that one day the kind of Christians you probably have in mind will see its homophobic and misogynistic bits in the same way as they view the bits which depict slavery as ok.

 

I dunno, but it probably bothers some of them their the moral codes of the west came to us by the conduit of Christianity. So, if these guys have a moral code they live by, they can thank Christianity for it. Not that you could ever get em to admit it. And if the West had been under the influence of Islam, you would not have seen the revolution in science either. The philosophical context of Christianity which was influenced heavily by greek thought, gave us the modern high tech world of today, with its science. It also gave us the experiment of a democratic republic. The role of Christianity in the modern western world is irrefutable. And only a crazy dog bites the hand that feeds him.

 

Sure: as soon as you’ve marked something out as unjust, you should get it right. Thing is: Humankind often doesn’t realize what’s unjust and it may take us a while to recognize it as such. Our justice is temporal and relative, only God’s justice is eternal and absolute. And IMHO without believing in absolute values one can’t really hope for temporal and relative values to get better. You may want to be cross with God for not serving us these absolute values on a plate. But as somebody who once was trained as an educator I quite like it that He apparently let’s us work out stuff for ourselves.

The Church is certainly of this world. It may of course get higher inspiration here and there. And however much you like to deny it: in the Western World it was Christians who started the abolition movement.

And you believe He did, only because the Bible says so?

Was it unfounded? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...andi-debunking-the-king-of-the-debunkers.html

Point being that said Magician – and I’m afraid he’s not alone - shows a mindset that ought to have been eradicated after the world saw the Nazi-eugenics programm. (btw.: the main voice against eugenics during Nazi Germany was that of a Catholic Bishop - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_August_Graf_von_Galen) Randi’s direction in this point is backward but very much a logical consequence of materialism. The early Church was certainly engulfed in Roman society. But even though it did not question the Status Quo, its direction was forward: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:2 But I grant you that it took them a long time to turn this spiritual mindset into a political one.

You must have grown up in a very weird place.

Read up on “Imago Dei” – the Biblical statement that God created men in His image and what has been made of that statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_God#Imago_Dei_and_human_rights

I’m afraid if one doesn’t believe humans to be special you don’t even need to dehumanize people before enslaving them.

Challenge the notion all you like, but the reformation brought about an awareness for the primate of conscience (drawing back on Aquinas), it was an unprecedented questioning of authority, appealed to individual freedom of thought and – under pains – brought about the values of religious freedom and freedom of speech.

The pagan philosophers that had the biggest influence on Christian thought were first Plotinus and Seneca and later Aristotle (via abovementioned Aquinas). Those pagan philosophers had great interest in metaphysics and certainly weren’t secular in your sense.

Well, John Gray isn’t my cup of tea either (I happen to be quite fond of Marx). However: my intellectual blinkers aren’t big enough to make me just read stuff written by people with whom I agree in every point. And it frequently happens that I agree with somebody in some points but not in others (for example – as you may have gathered already - my view of religion is much more positive than Marx’s view of religion.)
Grays special interest is history of ideas, so you may want to check him out.

Any example of such secular thought and ethics?

Well, as you already noted you got the time wrong. You'll also find that back in the day the Quakers were an entirely Christian movement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers

 

I agree with a lot of what you say here. But you may want to check out the Islamic Golden age. They excelled in science, medicine, mathematics and philosophy when we in Europe still dwelled in mud huts. The first copies of Aristotle's works European Christians got to see were written in Arabic.