Confronting Christianity (Chapter 10: Doesn't the Bible Condone Slavery?)

Introduction:

Frederick Douglass’s autobiography in 1881

Slave; Saved after hearing a preacher

Two tensions:

“First, how did so many white people who identified as Christians embrace slavery?”

“Second, how did so many black people, oppressed and abused in a supposedly Christian country, come to embrace Jesus?”

The God Who Sees

Hagar; the first slave

“Description is not prescription”

Failure to trust God

Sleeping with slave = common

But lack of faith

Hagar looks down on Sarah > Sarah deals harshly with Hagar > Hagar runs away

The angel appears to Hagar, promise of blessing

“You are the God of seeing”

Read Gen 16:13.

Gen 21: Isaac born, Hagar driven away again

God takes care of the, reiterates promises

Slavery in the Old Testament

Joseph sold into slavery

Three differences between OT slavery and modern slavery

Not yoked to racial hierarchy

Hagar: Egyptian slave to Hebrews

Joseph: Hebrew slave to Egyptians

People sold themselves into slavery in OT times

Advancement was possible

But the Bible does talk a lot about the oppressive nature of enforced slavery

Israelites in Egypt

A story of emancipated slaves

Reminders in the law: “you were once slaves”

To inform how they treated slaves, widows, orphans, etc.

Slave catching was a sin (Ex. 21:16)

Slaves included in day of rest (Ex 20:10)

If master’s performed bodily harm, they had to be released (Ex. 21:26)

Had to be released after 6 years and given gifts, unless they chose to remain (Ex. 21:2; Deut 15:12-16)

Refuge for escaped slaves (Deut 23:15)

Protection of those captured in warfare

Must wait a month before making captive women wives

Forbidden from saying “I’m done with you now” (Deut 21:10-14)

“In summary, the Old Testament bans slave catching, provides protections for slaves, and invites us to see the world through enslaved eyes: from Hagar, to Joseph, to the whole people of Israel at their exodus from Egypt. But it does not ban slavery itself.”

Paul’s Letter to Philemon

Onesimus, an escaped slave

“Onesimus, whose father I have become in my imprisonment” (10)

On verse 12: “Paul’s words of affection for Onesimus surpass any other expression of love for an individual Christian in his writings.”

Verse 15: “… more than a bondservant”

“… this runaway slave is worth as much as an apostle, and Philemon had better treat him as such.”

Jesus, the Slave

Read Matt 20:26-28.

“Status in His kingdom lies at the bottom of the pile.”

Washing feet (John 13:13-14)

The cross (2:5-8)

The death of a slave

Christians as Slaves

Paul introducing himself and others as slaves (Rom 1:1, Phil 1:1, Titus 1:1, Col. 4:7, 12.

Yet the one person who actually is a slave (Onesimus) isn’t listed as one (Col. 4:9)

Reasons that slave language was favored among early church leaders:

To communicate their utter belonging to Christ (1 Cor 6:19-20)

Communicates the cost of following Jesus

The reality that many early Christians were slaves

Slaves as Christians

Read 1 Cor 12:13, Col 3:11, Gal 3:28.

Slaves probably held leadership status in the early church

Paul on the conduct of slaves (Col. 3:22-24)

“enslaving” as a sin (1 Tim. 1:10)

“These verses blow a hole in the side of any attempt to justify the transatlantic slave trade on biblical grounds.”

A Pound of Flesh

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

“With no room for superiority, exploitation, or coercion, but rather brotherhood and shared identity, the New Testament created a tectonic tension that would ultimately erupt in the abolition of slavery.”

Has the Church Endorsed Slavery

Gregory of Nyssa on slavery

But many still embraced it

Basil of Caesarea

Ban of sexual abuse among slaves

“… the Christianization of Europe effectively eliminated slavery

Thomas Aquinas and many of the popes

But it “crept back between 1562 and 1807”

European colonial expansion

Wilberforce

But Christianity didn’t cause this; churches were actually rather dead at the time

“Turning our gaze to America, it is a tragic irony that a country founded on the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” so radically failed to deliver on these ethics.”

The debate between Richard Fuller and Francis Wayland

The case of John Edwards (he owned slaves)

“We all have blind spots in our beliefs, often created by the cultures that surround us. Edwards was no exception.”

“Given that Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan answers the question “Who is my neighbor” with a story of love across racial difference, the failure of white Christians to recognize black people as their neighbors is without excuse.”

Key Christian Abolitionists

Charles Spurgeon denounces slavery: :the foulest blot that ever stained a national escutcheon.”

His response to folks that tried to defend slavery as a “peculiar institution: “It is, indeed, a peculiar institution, just as the devil is a peculiar angel, and hell is a peculiarly hot place.”

John Wesley: slavery is a”that execrable villainy in which is the scandal of religion… and of human nature.”

Women in the movement

Hannah More

Harriet Beecher Stoe, Unle Tom’s Cabin

Black abolitionist David Walker

Frederick Douglass

Henry Highland Garnet

Harriet Tubeman

Sojourner Truth

“The stories of Christian slaves expose the lies that enabled many a white Christian to participate in the slave system, and their advocacy awakened the hearts and minds of many white Americans to its evils.”

The Miracle of the Black Church

MLK