THE BIBLE ON SLAVERY

Anonymous

(Investigator 76, 2001 January)

RESPONSE ON SLAVERY

Slavery was established, regulated, supported and sanctioned by the Bible.  www.relgioustolerance.org/slavery.htm

Slavery…and genocide are…values promoted by the Bible.
www.gis.net/~ttread/crs/biblmorl.html

www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/q1109/intro.html

South Australian academics Rodney Allen and Ian Hunt, of the Centre of Applied Philosophy at Flinders University, argue for the reinstitution of slavery – but slavery with safeguards.  The idea is to: "solve…problems of long-term unemployment and socially excluded underclasses.

Critics often argue that an Almighty God could easily stop evil. God could, if God exists, make the world pain-free, happy and without slavery instantly.

A simplified answer appears in the "Four Skeptics" debate. (Investigator 63 to 72)

The answer is that the original humans wanted to rule themselves without God.  How well humans would do at governing and in choosing values independently of God is an experiment.  Most subsequent humans showed by their choices and actions that they approved of the experiment.

Several examples:

According to the Bible God ordained monogamous marriage of one man to one woman. (Genesis 3)  Jesus pointed to Genesis 3 to argue for such 1:1 marriages.  Humans, however, thought up polygamy. (Genesis 4:19)

Genesis 3 shows humans initially having two-way communication with God. Humans, however, invented ritualistic worship including animal and grain sacrifices. (Genesis 4:1-5)

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Therefore, if anyone has a right to regard humans as property it would be God – because he created them. But Genesis does not portray God as insisting on such a right. He instead permits humans to be autonomous and even rebel against him and go their own way. Furthermore "God", by definition, is not owned but free – and this should therefore be true of anyone "in God's image".

All this we infer from statements in Genesis 1 to 3.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son… (John 3:16)

If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity…
You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. (1 Corinthians 7:21, 23)

LAW OF MOSES

Slavery was an integral part of ancient society. It allowed debtors to pay off debt with work, thieves to pay for things they stole, the poor to escape poverty, and prisoners of war to be kept alive.

The Law of Moses is in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. This Law was, the Bible says, a covenant (=legal contract) between God and Israel. (Psalm 147:19-20)

The Law did not oppose social institutions that humans had already previously set up except for devastating ones such as idolatry, sacrifices of children to idols, maiming of slaves, torture, religious prostitution, dangerous sexual practices, working people or animals to death, and punishing parents for children's crimes.

Other social/cultural institutions – ones that could be made benign – the Law regulated to minimize the harm.

As indicated above, slavery is not necessarily harmful. If slavery is regulated and made benign it would resemble a work contract.

Slavery by the Law of Moses was benign. Exploitation of widows and orphans whether slaves or not was forbidden. (Exodus 20:17; 21:2, 11, 26-32)  Female betrothed slaves could not be sexually violated. (Leviticus 19:20)  Hebrew slaves were set free after six years – unless they chose to remain slaves. (Exodus 21:2-7; Deuteronomy 15:12)  Every 50th year was a "Jubilee".  Israelite slaves were freed; farms that had been sold and sold houses in unwalled villages were returned to former owners. (Leviticus 25:35-42)

Thus the Law guarded against permanent slavery and permanent impoverishment that could lead to slavery. (Crossan 1998 pp. 188-197)

As a servant hired year by year shall he be with him; he shall not rule with harshness over him in your sight. (Deuteronomy 25:53, 39-55)

The sabbath reduced all people – masters and slaves – to equality one day per week and one year out of seven. (Deuteronomy 15:1-2, 7-11)  Slaves could also participate in annual national festivals.

You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you; he shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he shall choose within one of your towns, where it pleases him best; you shall not oppress him. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16)

Love the sojourner therefore; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)

…you shall love your neighbour as yourself… The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Leviticus 19:18, 34)

And what great nation is there, that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day? (Deuteronomy 4:8)

Straughen uses Exodus 21:20-21 to put the Bible in as bad a light as possible:

When a male strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.

Is it acceptable to beat another human being within an inch of their life, and go unpunished because the slave owner profits from their bondage? … Once again the Bible sanctions the use of violence against helpless individuals. (Investigator No. 69 p.42)

However, by reading further – verses 12 to 27 – it seems the clauses deal with single acts of "striking" someone as in a quarrel or accidentally. These verses are not about discipline.  Verse 18 uses the example of a "stone or fist".  Verses 20-21 use the example of a "rod". To see this as permission to beat without restraint or as permitting unregulated discipline is, then, a misunderstanding. A seriously injured slave had to be released from slavery (vs. 26-27). And released slaves received assets to make a new start. (Deuteronomy 15:12-18) This would be a serious financial blow to the slave-owner and therefore strong motivation not to injure – deliberately in a quarrel, or accidentally – any slave.

Another clause in Moses' Law misused by skeptics is:

If a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave, betrothed to another man and not yet ransomed or given her freedom, an inquiry shall be held. They shall not be put to death because she was not free; but he shall bring a guilt offering for himself to the Lord… (Leviticus 19:20-22)

If a man commits adultery with the wife [which to ancient Israelites include a betrothed] of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)

This does not imply breakup of families. The slave could choose to remain a slave, or live nearby, or when able he could purchase their freedom.

Being property, female slaves could be required to engage in sexual intercourse and become pregnant against their will.

Job 31:13-15 heralds the concept of equality of all before God:

If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant, when they brought a complaint against me;
What then shall I do when God rises up?
When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him?
Did not he who make me in the womb make him?
And did not one fashion us in the womb?
(Job 31:13-15)

All the nations that thou hast made shall come and bow down before thee, O LORD, and glorify thy name. (Psalm 86:9)

The institution of slavery permeated the Roman Empire. Italy alone had 3 million slaves in a population of 7 ½ million. (Christ 1984 p. 44)

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ. (Galatians 3:28)

The most oppressed social strata of the Roman Empire were the fairly poor and impoverished sections of the rural population. Among those sectors those who suffered worst were not the slaves on the latifundia [plantations], who were of value to their masters and were at least regularly fed, but the mass of nominally "free" peasants, who were without means of support and who, in the provinces,  often also lacked the privileged status of a Roman citizen. For example, the life of the "free" country-dwellers of Judea or Egypt was far worse than that of the slaves on [an Italian] estate.
(Alfoldy 1985 pp. 145-146)

Normal salary for a day-laborer        1-3 sesterces
Cost of maintaining an urban slave  350-500 sesterces yearly
Price for an unskilled slave                At least 600 sesterces
Salary of a Roman soldier                 900 sesterces yearly
Salary of provincial governors           1 million sesterces yearly

Obviously a "free" laborer might live in poverty or even starve!

Secondly, slaves who gave outstanding service could gain privileged status:

Individual qualified slaves might be entrusted with supervisory functions, like the villicus, the slave administrator… Still more favourable conditions were enjoyed by the artisan and house slaves,  who often held positions of trust… (Christ 1984 p. 44)

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.
(Colossians 3:22-24; Ephesians 6:5-8; Titus 2:9-10; 1 Timothy 6:1-2)

Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly.
(Colossians 4:1; Ephesians 6:9; Philemon 15-17)

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors… (1 Peter 2:13)

Strive for peace with all men… (Hebrews 12:14)

Where did the deficit come from?

You [the Pagans] in more cruel fashion stifle your children's breath in water, or expose them to cold and hunger and dogs….

The European slave trade from the 16th to early 19th centuries involved taking kidnapped Africans to America. Some defended this by citing the Law of Moses but they cited it only partially. Kidnapping someone and selling him was, by that Law, a death-penalty offence (Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 7) but this penalty the European nations and America did not enforce on slave traders.

Bourne (1845) stated that all slave traders, legislators who condoned slavery, buyers, enforcers and owners deserved to be executed!

The love of money is the root of all evils. (1 Timothy 6:10)

1 The "golden rule" of Jesus–"So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12)
2 "You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13:9-10)

A bill for slavery's abolition was passed in Britain in 1807.  Britain and the US signed a treaty in 1808 banning the slave trade. Spain signed in 1817.  Hundreds of  Abolitionist groups operated in the United States.

The American Civil War (1861-1865), with 600,000 killed and a nation devastated, was fought partly over the issue of slavery.

Liberated American slaves often suffered economically. But in time they benefited from new labour laws–which, incidentally, have their roots in the British Evangelical Revival.

Captives are treated brutally. They are branded, beaten and sexually abused. Slaves who try to escape are beaten, mutilated or murdered.

The Law Report on Radio National (Australia), November 14, reported that 2 million women and children are trafficked into sexual slavery each year including to all western countries.  Illegal trade on such a scale has to include large numbers of recruiters, kidnappers, guards, transporters, agents, buyers and brothel owners.

For thousands of years the Bible undermined slavery by teaching that:

1 Humans were created in God's image;
2 Harmful institutions are of human origin – part of their rebellion against God;
3 Humanity was ransomed or purchased by God for a price;
4 All humans have one origin;
5 You shall love your neighbour as yourself;
6 Where slavery exists we should work by peaceful means to make it benign;
7 Abandonment of children and kidnapping – major sources of slaves – are wrong;
8 God will rule the world in "righteousness" and all evil will be abandoned.

"The cases of runaway slaves in Israel bear testimony to their sufferings even at the hands of their fellow countrymen; cf. the experiences of the churl Nabal (1 S. 25-10), of the passionate Shimei (1 K. 2:39), and Sarah (Gn. 16:6), the implications as to the frequency of such cases in the law of Dt. 23:15ff and in later times (Sir. 33-.24-31)." (Dictionary of the Bible, page 864.)

Concerning Ex. 21:20-21: My opinion that this passage of Scripture relates to the punishment of slaves is supported by Biblical scholars:

"If the slave survived a day or two, the master would escape punishment for "the slave is his money" (Ex 21:21) – a phrase more appropriate to the concepts of other Near Eastern laws. The beating was assumed to be disciplinary. Corporal punishment of slaves and children was commonly accepted." (Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia, page 664)

"Since the supply of such slaves was large and their price cheap, their owners paid very little attention to the health and well-being of their human tools. When the slaves were worn out, replacement was easy."
(C. Roebuck: The World of Ancient Times, page 488)

"You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness." (Lev. 25:45-46).

"Leviticus makes a very clear distinction between the "ebed ibri", the Hebrew slave, and the non-Israelite "ebed", for whom there was no freedom in the seventh, or Jubilee year and who lacked the legal protection given to enslaved Israelites. The Israelites, therefore, could not become slaves permanently." (Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia, page 664.)

"The opposition [to slavery] which began to mount in the 18th century reflected the growth of humanitarian feeling, the increase in democratic sentiment, and the doctrines of Jean Jacques Rousseau and other philosophers." (Encyclopedia International, Vol. 16, page 535).

Corwell, F.R. Everyday Life in Ancient Rome, B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1972.
Ofosu-Appiah, L.H. People in Bondage, Lerner Publications Co., Minneapolis, 1971.
Roebuck, C. The World of Ancient Times, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, no date given.
Unwin, K. A Century of Freedom. C.A. Wans & Co. Ltd., London. 1946.
Dictionary of the Bible. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1914.
Encyclopedia International. Grolier Inc. New York, 1972.
Holy Bible (Revised Standard Version).
Pictorial Biblical Encyclopedia, Macmillian Company, New York. 1964.

Mr Straughen sees "no real protection for the slave" in the Law of Moses as there were no slave inspectors. (No. 79 p. 40)

Straughen still thinks this clause in Moses' Law permitted a slave-owner to discipline a slave by beating him to death.

So taken in this context, verses 20-21 are about a slave owner who "strikes" his slave with a rod – which may be accidentally or in a quarrel.

If a free person injured another free person the penalty in Moses' Law was "eye for eye, tooth for tooth". If, however, a master injured a slave the penalty was different – the slave was offered his freedom.

Under the Law of Moses, Israelite slaves were set free every seventh year. Slaves in Israel from other lands – foreigners – lacked this particular benefit.

The Law of Moses had 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands many being case law starting with "If" or "When" and describing specific situations.

The Sabbath rest and festivals included all slaves – Israelite and foreigners. (Exodus 20:10; 23:12) The entire law – if obeyed – had much that benefited foreign slaves. Such would be "strangers" – ie foreigners – and could also be "neighbours". The Law stipulated:  

The New Testament taught principles that promoted freedom from slavery but without actually ordering anyone to free his slaves. Anything more would have increased Roman efforts to exterminate Christians for sedition.

Paul sent a runaway slave – who converted to Christianity while on the run – to his master also a Christian. Paul wrote:   

This is close to saying "free him" without directly demanding it.

Freeing of slaves had economic and legal repercussions for both slave and master – therefore there had to be allowance for individual circumstances. The Christian principle was:

"If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity…" (1 Corinthians 7:21)

Straughen denies that Bible principles influenced the demise of slavery in the 19^th century. He cites the Encyclopedia Britannica:

It's said that:

John Wesley (1703-1791), English religious leader and founder of Methodism, wrote an 8,000-word tract–Thoughts Upon Slavery–published in 1774. It received wide distribution.

Wesley answered arguments that slavery is necessary. For example to the argument that slaves were needed to cultivate land in British colonies where it was too hot for Whites to work Wesley wrote:   

Seventy years later George Bourne published Condensed Anti-Slavery Bible Argument By a Citizen of Virginia (1845). Again numerous Bible principles were cited.

That same day William L Garrison – America's best-known abolitionist – gave a speech in Brown's honour advocating that the Northern states end slavery by seceding from the South. In part he said:

Straughen disagrees with my explanation of why God allows evil including slavery (No. 76 p. 35) because he sees no evidence God exists or that humans rebelled against God. (No. 79 p. 41)

My main evidence on the Bible's position on slavery is in Investigator 76 where the conclusion remains valid:

The Bible & Slavery– A Final Reply

Kirk Straughen

(Investigator 81, 2001 November)

Christians, Ethics and Slavery

Bob Potter

(Investigator 81, 2001 November)

At the time of writing, former Yugoslav chieftain, Slobodan Milosevic stands before an international court to answer for colossal 'crimes against humanity' – mass murders, mass rapings, all in the name of 'ethnic cleansing'. However, the crimes of Milosevic pale into insignificance when compared to the deeds of the Israelites described in Holy Scripture ... and allegedly carried out in obedience to their God.

For starters, let's look at how the victorious Israelites behaved as they swept across the Middle East, conquering the villages – on this occasion, of the Midianites:

Some more 'godly instructions': Leviticus (25: 44-46) tells us–

Principles such as these are frighteningly similar to those vigorously adopted by the conquering Nazis as they set about the enslavement of Eastern Europe in the early 1940s.

Anonymous reminds us that Paul sent a runaway slave, converted to Christianity while on the run, back to his master. He makes much of this, as do Christian apologists, always, that Paul urged kindly treatment of those enslaved, apparently unaware that this was the common attitude of the pagan moralists at that time – Aristotle urged humane treatment; Zeno included slaves in his principle that all men were born equal, Epicurus was conspicuous for his kindness to slaves; he publicly welcomed them to his table. This enlightened view was generally accepted by the Stoic-Epicureans. The Greek moralist, Dio Chrysostom (about AD 50-117), who taught in Rome, made two of his most famous orations condemning slavery root and branch. We seek in vain for similar orations from the Christian Paul!

Roman Law did much to mitigate the condition of the slave. As early as 82 BC, the Cornelian Law abrogated the right of a master to kill an offending slave... Claudius (AD 41-54) ruled a master was guilty of murder if he neglected with fatal effect, the treatment of a sick slave... Seneca induced Nero in his earlier years (AD 54) to grant slaves the right to appeal to the courts against cruelty.

Slaves could not marry, they could (unlike free men) be tortured to get evidence and could be burned alive for false charges against their masters. Legislation introduced by Constantine was of mixed value and his patronage of Christianity and rewards for baptism led to still more debilitating and truculent persecution. He abolished many earlier reforms – parents were now allowed to sell their children into slavery and finders of exposed children were permitted to enslave them (or sell them as slaves). He also passed the law that if a Christian woman had intercourse with a slave, both should be put to death.

When this subject is discussed today, most people probably have 'black' slavery and the 'slave trade' in mind. The capture and transportation of black Africans is the fertile area for most of the modem myths propagated by today's Christian apologists.

The main activists in the 'slave trade' were Protestant England, Catholic Spain and Portugal. Between them, in the century beginning 1680 (at that time there were 80,000 black slaves in London–but several years later, the civil authority, NOT the Church, forbad slavery in England!), nearly three million slaves were transported to the Americas–ultra-pious Spain drafted treaties of this traffic "in the name of the Most Holy Trinity". The English Captain John Hawkins gave such names as "Jesus" to the ships he used to transport the captives. The British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands, which sent out missionaries to tell the bewildered blacks how superior Protestantism was to Catholicism, had slaves on its own plantations in Barbados. In the southern American states, Baptists owned 225,000 slaves, the Methodists 250,000 slaves.

Whitfield, joint founder of the Methodists, believed in slavery and advocated the slave trade. It was of Whitfield that hymn writer Whittier composed the two lines:

It is true that for every million Christians who supported slavery there was one who opposed it. William Wilberforce is most often cited although it is rarely appreciated he learned his zeal against slavery from the French Rationalists, while a sceptic and still at school. He remained a sceptic until he reached the age of thirty. His important backer in parliament on the abolitionist position was William Pitt who was an atheist.

Wilberforce's Christianity must have been strongly diluted with unbelief. As an abolitionist he did not believe Lev xxv 44-6; he must have rejected Ex xxi 2-6; he obviously did not approve of the many injunctions and permissions by Jehovah to his chosen people to capture and hold slaves to which he referred earlier. In the House of Commons on 18 Feb 1796, Wilberforce reminded that Christian assembly that infidel and anarchic France had given liberty to the Africans, whilst Christian England was "obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice". Wilberforce found the whole influence of the English Court and the great weight of the Episcopal Bench against him. George III, a most Christian king, regarded abolitionist theories with abhorrence and the Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to the granting of freedom to the slaves.

Not surprisingly, in the light of what has already been considered, the abolition of slavery has taken place in spite of Christianity, not because of it. Do not misunderstand me.

It is not my intention to discredit Wilberforce and his colleagues. Students of the Third Reich will know that a few individual members of Hitler's SS secretly helped Jews escape the ovens of Treblinka. They were brave and admirable people–but to argue, therefore, that the Nazi Party campaigned for the rights of Semites is no more ridiculous than to cite the odd Wilberforce as evidence that Christianity opposed slavery.

A little over two hundred years ago, there began a slave rebellion which in the next ten years defeated the three greatest empires on earth and banished slavery from the place where it was most secure and profitable. Haiti is now one of the poorest places in the world, in the 1780s it was possibly the richest. The island which Columbus had 'discovered' (and named Hispaniola) was colonised and brutalized for 300 years by French and Spanish empires. Whole cities such as Nantes and Bordeaux were built on trade from San Domingo–almost all the coffee, sugar, indigo, cotton and tobacco consumed in France came from there. In the decade before the French Revolution (1789) production in San Domingo doubled. Slavery was the key to this prosperity. In 1789 the population was 570,000 – 20,000 were whites (slave owners, adminstrators; and their families), 40,000 mulattos (half-castes, mostly the products of white rape!) and the remainder black slaves.

In February 1794 three delegates arrived from revolutionary France (one of the delegates was an ex-slave)–the delegates declared "the aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of religion have been destroyed". The new government in Paris abolished all slavery unconditionally (note–not because of but in spite of the religious elements who still supported slavery). A large British army arrived to overthrow the slaves. Toussaint declared his allegiance for revolutionary France; he promptly threw the Spaniards from all the port (in ten days of forced marches and surprise attacks) and then campaigned against the larger British forces. In four years of war the British lost 100,000 men killed in action before they were expelled from the island. (The British government of the time was that of William Pitt and William Wilberforce!!)

The superior morality of the black slave leader to that of Christian England is reflected in a letter Toussaint sent to the British commander, General White, where he wrote:

In less than ten years the slave army under Toussaint had beaten off the counter attacks of the planters and their mulatto army and the French, had beaten the full might of the British Empire; had beaten the Spanish and had abolished slavery throughout the island. (The slave leader had changed his name to L'Ouverture–"the opening" to liberty and is usually known as Toussaint L'Ouverture in historical texts...)

'Back home', in France, the Revolution had been replaced by the man who would soon restore a ‘imperial power'. Deals were to be done with the Church and the Pope, and Napoleon, who aspired soon to be 'crowned' in Paris by the Pope needed to become a 'true defender' of Christian doctrines including a return of slavery in the colony. The French offered Toussaint negotiations to discuss a treaty with their General Brunet–Toussaint agreed, but when he arrived in good faith for those discussions was arrested, bound and shipped back to France in chains. He died in a wet unheated cell soon after.

Here is the true story of the end of slavery on Haiti. Slavery never returned there. Haiti became an independent country and has been so ever since. These events took place in spite of Christianity, not because of it. Christian England and Christian France were the true supporters of slavery at those critical moments when Toussaint's life was sacrificed.

In The Bible on Slavery (Investigator No. 76) I listed eight Bible principles that undermined the institution of slavery. Dr Bob Potter and Kirk Straughen (No. 81) ignored these points and instead raised others that I'll now address.

Dr Potter also compared the Israelite extermination of the Canaanites with "crimes against humanity" by the Nazis. I'll leave this point as a separate topic and show another time that there is no resemblance.

By citing 18^th & 19^th century Christians who opposed slavery I did not suggest that: "slavery was abolished as a result of the valiant efforts of a small band of dedicated Christians." (p. 37) I cited them to show that the Bible's opposition to slavery is not something dreamed up by me but was obvious centuries ago. To what extent those writers influenced the modern demise of slavery is a question of historical analysis about which historians disagree:

Potter attributes the demise of European slavery to French rationalists. However, nations could not have banned slavery without the approval of most of their subjects. And what message did most subjects regularly hear? In millions of churches people heard principles like:

Add to this that Christianity is for "every nation…and people" (Revelation 14:6-7) and that all humans originated from one couple (Acts 17:26), and the anti-slavery implications are obvious.

Even "rationalists" – French and otherwise – must have been influenced by the Bible since, as Protestants and Catholics, it was the book they grew up with.

The Bible teaches that many Christians superficially appear to follow Jesus but deny him by their conduct:

Dr Potter cites several ancient Greeks who condemned slavery and says, "We seek in vain for similar orations from the Christian Paul."

The New Testament is not about how to manage nations and societies but about living a godly life in them. Paul, as previously explained, urged slaves to "avail yourself of the opportunity" if freedom became possible. (1 Corinthians 7:21) Anything more might have gotten the tiny, already beleaguered, Christian communities exterminated for sedition. In addition I showed that the Roman Empire practiced infanticide. They left hundreds of thousands of infants yearly exposed to die but many were rescued by becoming slaves. Outright opposition to slavery without addressing infanticide was tantamount to condoning the murder of infants by opposing the motive for saving them. Furthermore, freeworkers in Rome lived at subsistence level – often worse than slaves. (Investigator No. 76) Paul advised slaves to excel in good service. This was consistent with opposition to slavery since Roman slaves often earned freedom by good service–and then had skills to live above subsistence level.

The Christian Scriptures therefore had the best anti-slavery advice under prevailing circumstances:

By focusing on one principle – slavery – and forgetting others, Dr Potter ignored infanticide, living standards, the best way to secure freedom, and Christians having the right to avoid self-destruction.

Slavery conditions in Medieval Europe and the Americas varied:

Remember, 19^th century opposition to slavery grew in countries that often added Bible principles into their laws. Where governments opposed the Bible and Christianity, slavery often returned. Millions became slaves in Communist Russia and Nazi Germany:

The Japanese Empire forced 200,000 women into "sexual slavery" and tried to work 500,000 prisoners of war to death. Slavery – enforced by beating and mutilation – is currently rife in Eastern Africa. There, a Christian charity – Christian Solidarity Worldwide – buys slaves their freedom. (Green, 2001)

In Investigator 76 I gave eight Bible principles against slavery. John Wesley's tract that I also referred to gave additional Bible arguments.

Principles derived from the Genesis creation story suggest that the institution of slavery was invented by rebellious humans in opposition to God. The Law of Moses retained human institutions that could be made benign – including slavery – and regulated them to make them benign.

Green, C. $60 for a Human Life, Focus, No. 106, September 2001, pp. 14-20
Roberts, J.M. The Pelican History of the World, Reprinted 1981, Penguin
Thomas, H. An Unfinished History of the World (Revised 1981), Pan Books.

the term slave had a formal bureaucratic meaning for the Roman audience. The Roman bureaucracy that was rapidly developing at the time Paul wrote this letter was made up of highly trained and highly paid slaves of Caesar. These persons were preferred in the imperial offices because they were loyal to the emperor alone, hoping for their freedom after some years of loyal service. Many of the slaves serving in the imperial bureaucracy became fabulously rich because of their handling of imperial finances.  Also, during the time Paul wrote, the expression "slave of Caesar" was often used for imperial ambassadors or representatives of various kinds. Such persons carried the majesty and power of the emperor with them as they represented him in foreign courts (1997, p. 11-12).

And Walvin notes:

religious belief and public commitment was common at all levels of the antislavery campaign. Robert William Fogel observes that even "the principal architects of the secular appeal – including John Quincy Adams, Joshua R. Giddings, and Salmon P. Chase – were deeply religious men" who also realized that "the evangelical movement was a major political constituency that could not be won for the antislavery banner by purely secular appeals" (p. 47).

In Ireland, Christianity eventually helped to revolutionize the world, replacing the old values of a warrior society with the new values of Christianity.  Within St. Patrick's lifetime, warriors cast aside their swords of battle, intertribal warfare decreased markedly, and the slave trade ended.  A culture of battle and brute power was transformed by an ethic that sanctified manual labor, poverty, and service. A culture of illiteracy and ignorance became a culture of learning (Colson and Pearcey, 1999, p. 301).

Today, a form of slavery exists that is in many ways worse than most systems that have existed in history. These modern day slaves must work in poor conditions, often for over 12 hours per day, and are paid as little as 50 cents American a day. If they complain, they can be released without just cause because 10 people are often in line for their job, each one anxious to take their place. In the old American slavery system the slave owners had a considerable investment in their slaves and therefore, for selfish reasons, slave owners were usually very concerned about the slaves health and welfare. This contrasts to modern slavery, which has little regard for the future of its easily replaceable workers.

This modern form of slavery encompasses close to one billion human beings, and has made a tiny minority of owners so wealthy that the wealthiest 358 persons in the world are worth more then the combined annual incomes of the poorer countries that are home to 45% of the entire worlds population (Kawachi and Kennedy, 1997, p. 1037).

Colson, Charles and Pearcey, Nancy 1999 How Now Shall We Live? Wheaton, IL: Tyndale
Carroll, Vincent and David Shiflett 2002 Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry, San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, Chapter 2: "Christianity and Slavery," pp 24-53
Jewett, Robert 1997 Romans to Revelation, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press
Kawachi, Ichiro and Bruce Kennedy "Health and Social Cohesion: Why Care About Income Inequality?" British Medical Journal, 5 April, 1997:1037-1039
New Internationalist June 1989. "Outgrowing Slavery," p. 31
Piper, John. 2002 "Coronary Christians", World 17(7):37.