Are Christianity and Judaism pro-slavery? Are abolitionists rebelling

[Jack]

against our judeo-christian values? In Exodus, one the Israelites/sons of Israel escape, they start passing legislation. Included is the regulation/legitimatizing of slavery. Adding a racial tone, it seems as though Hebrew slaves are to be treated better than some freaking foreign slave. It seems as though Exodus doesn't decry the Israelites being slaves, but that their slave masters weren't Israelites.
@4HIM-CHRISTIANS
"You do realize that the books from Exodus to Esther are the history of the nation of Israel and not laws for us today?"
Are you admitting that God was OK with slavery during that time?
@ Ami

The halacha's retroactive explanation is BS. The word slave (eved/avadim) was used both for what the israelites were in Egypt and what was later legitimatized.
@ Greg

As usual, when a verse is called into question, the apologists will point to other sources that conflict with it. They think this solves the dilemma, but it merely proves that all these scripts were written by multiple human entities. The laws passed in exodus after escaping egypt use the word "eved" (slave) which is the same word used to describe what the israelites were in Egypt. Not. Indentured. Servitude. But. Rather. Slaves.

 

[DrDeanCrosby]

The Christian Position On Slavery

Most of those who oppose the Christian faith do so in their doubts about the
divinity of Jesus.Seldom are His teachings criticized but occasionally
questions are raised about His apparent acceptance of slavery.Actually the
Bible does not record Jesus commenting on the morality of slavery.Here is
one of His few comments on the subject,using it as a parable: " No servant
can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve
God and mammon."(Luke 16:13) Hardly an endorsement of slavery! But the fact
remains that Jesus never condemned slavery.Why not? Since literally tens of
thousands have been killed and literally hundreds of thousands have had
their bodies permanently maimed because the military convinced them to
devote their lives to "fighting for freedom" don't you think it's finally
time to question Jesus' position on what has literally become a life and
death issue?

The lack of concern about slavery that Jesus showed is extremely important
for Christians to understand because it can prevent then from obtaining
salvation should they fail to do so.While trying to survive in this the Age
of Church Apostasy when it is common to see ministers preaching hate and
support for the violence and even the crimes against humanity of warfare
while standing next to the American flag in their pulpits,it is absolutely
essential to understand that Christianity as opposed to political
Churchanity, teaches and demands a separation from the world and its
problems;an essential truth to internalize as we enter the political
pre-election season. In God's mind the problems of the world are not only
irrelevant within His eternal time perspective, but even more important,by
focusing on them ( ie.the "war on terrorism") we fill our minds with
hate,the desire to retaliate and the deep anxiety the false god NATION
creates for us.In fact "fighting for freedom" which we are taught is a
honorable way to devote ones life invariably leads to " hatred,
contentions, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, murders,
drunkenness and revelries", the very activities that Galatians 5:19-21 tells
us " those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Rather we need to become mentally preoccupied with the love,forgiveness and
peace that the real God will give us if we keep our minds focused on Him
rather than on one of the false gods that abound in our country or the
problems of the world which tragically are about to become exponentially
more severe as we travel still further into the Tribulation period.

 

[EdwardtheLess]

The civil war ended well over a century ago. Time to move on. No, you can't own another human being - deal with it.

 

[imacatholic2]

No.

One might say that Protestant "Sola Scriptura" Christians are pro-slavery but they are a minority of Christians. The Bible does not explicitly condemn slavery. Colossians 3:22 even states, "Slaves, obey your human masters in everything."

This was much debated before and during the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), four hundred years after the Catholic Church became one of the first groups to condemn slavery.

The condemnation of slavery is one of those non-biblical doctrines that Catholics have developed through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit over the centuries (and that Sola Scriptura Christians criticize us about).

+ Sixty years before Columbus “discovered” the New World, Pope Eugene IV condemned the enslavement of peoples in the newly colonized Canary Islands. His bull Sicut Dudum (1435) rebuked European slavers and commanded that “all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of [the] Canary Islands . . . who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money.”

+ In 1462, Pius II declared slavery to be "a great crime" (magnum scelus). Note that this was 30 years before Columbus "discovered" America.

+ In 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians

+ Urban VIII forbade it in 1639

+ Benedict XIV forbade it in 1741

+ Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the suppression of the slave trade

+ Gregory XVI condemned it in 1839

+ In the Bull of Canonization of the Jesuit Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX branded the "supreme villainy" (summum nefas) of the slave traders.

+ Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed a letter to the Brazilian bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery -- a letter to which the bishops responded with their most energetic efforts, and some generous slave-owners by freeing their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church.

For more information: see:
+ The Popes and Slavery (1996) by Joel S. Panzer
+ Catholic Encyclopedia: Slavery and Christianity
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14036a.htm

With love in Christ.

 

[Greg]

No, the Bible is anti-slavery. Being in bondage is always spoken of negatively, whether it be by men or sin.

The Hebrews were freed by God from slavery, and Egypt was cursed with plague's for not "letting my people go."

Jacob was tricked by his uncle into another 7 years of slavery.

Joseph was sold by his jealous brothers into slavery.

None of these portraits cast any positive light on slavery, slavery is cast as unjust.

The laws on indentured servitude require forgiveness of debt and freedom at the 7th year. Only if the slave wishes to stay may he stay. God later rebukes the Israelites for creating loopholes to get around this requirement.

The ideas that justified slavery throughout the world (now and then) had intrinsically with it a fatalistic belief that the gods destined certain people to be slaves, for if the gods wanted them to be free men, then the gods would have had them be of noble birth. This is the idea behind the caste systems, which are very fatalistic, and which was a philosophy that permeated the Israelite nation at the time of Jesus. This is why people were so obsessed with geneaology, because in many minds that may be what determines your importance, or whether you are a free man or a slave.

Jesus, and Paul especially, condemned these ideas. Christianity, in case you haven't noticed, is strongly opposed to any fatalistic thinking, particularly any racial ideas that your importance is determined by who your father is. Jesus and John the Baptist and Paul all condemned the idea that you're important just because you're the seed of Abraham, and even called those who claimed such "slaves" and in "bondage" (to sin), which they denied while not realizing that you can be a slave no matter who your father was if you're a sinner.

Regardless, slavery may seem like a thing of the past in the western world, but it still exists today in other parts of the world. So Paul's instruction to slaves is still relevant to those who have found themselves in bondage to men, as well as his rebukes and instruction to their masters.
Paul is dealing with the reality of the world, which includes the reality of slaves and slave-masters. He's not dealing in the fairy-tale world which many western atheists ignorantly suppose is the real world.