Slavery
Notes
Transcript
The way the early Church understood slavery was different to our conceptions of African cotton fields or butlers of the aristocracy.
Slaves were literally everywhere in the Greco-Roman context - 1 in 3 people in the empire were slaves.
Status as a free or freedman was pretty special then.
And yet, in the early Church there are reports of individuals selling themselves into slavery (usually for at least 7 years - when they might have earnt their freedom from their masters), to take the money they recieved and give it to the poor.