The Moral Failings of Christianity - Slavery

[Gustaf]

Dibble: if you compare Christian societies, throughout history, with non-Christian societies throughout history when it comes to slavery I think the evidence is pretty clearly stacked up in favour of Christianity (taking as the premise that not having slavery is good, that is).

There was slavery all over Europe before Christianity. Then most of it disappeared. And it did so well before the enlightenment. In Sweden this was one of the key areas of tension when Christianity arrived.

[Gustaf]

Dibble: if you compare Christian societies, throughout history, with non-Christian societies throughout history when it comes to slavery I think the evidence is pretty clearly stacked up in favour of Christianity (taking as the premise that not having slavery is good, that is).

There was slavery all over Europe before Christianity. Then most of it disappeared. And it did so well before the enlightenment. In Sweden this was one of the key areas of tension when Christianity arrived.

European Christian nations also created and participated in what was possibly the largest slave trade in history. That obviously doesn't favor Christianity.

I'm not one to take things at face value. Since you mentioned this, I looked into it a bit. It seems to me that this type of decline of slavery had two primary reasons - Christians were discouraged from becoming slaves and taking other Christians as slaves (in fact the Swedish case you're talking about the abolition appears to have applied only to Christians - 'every man and women which is born by a christian man and women is to be free in the county of...' cite), and that it was becoming far less economically practical. Slavery of non-Christians was still allowed to some degree or another by canon law, but as Christianity came to be the dominant belief in the areas there really wasn't a ready supply of people to be made into slaves. In instances where there were, such as the Crusades, slavery was indeed practiced to some degree.

I like the insinuations.

It depends on how you define the largest slave trade in history. Maybe in intensity, but certainly not in overall volume. Sure, you have the American South. They had slaves. That's a pretty small part of overall Christianity. The fact that Christianity ended slavery through the fact that Christians were not allowed to keep other Christians as slaves doesn't really affect the key point. It still means that slavery was not allowed within Christianity and that slavery could not be sustained in a Christian society.

In Sweden a slave need only convert to Christianity to put pressure on his owner to release him. In that way Christianity did end slavery here, like it did in most Christian countries. Ignoring the fact that Christianity directly ended slavery in Europe and then indirectly ended slavery in the world (since the Enlightenment sprung out of Christianity) honestly serves to make your position seem just a tad ridiculous.

I guess you might be able to do a gotcha on someone like Jmfcst who is fundamentalist, but you're not really managing to indict the rest of Christianity with this, imo.

After all, you're essentially arguing that slavery is a moral failing of a religion that actually ended slavery in Europe and eventually in most of the world. I can't say that I find it particularly convincing even if certain Bible texts can be interpreted as pro-slavery.

[Gustaf]

I don't get what the impact you're talking about. There was clearly less slavery under Christianity than there had been before. Arguing that the influence of Christianity was to promote slavery seems to fly in the face of the historical record here.

And the Enlightenment being critical of Christianity doesn't really contradict the fact that it was largely dependent on it. That's pretty much standard fare within the realm of history.

And my point on the South was more about slavery than the actual trade. It's true that the trading was done by a multitude of agents. Still, slavery and slave trade was prohibited first by Christian countries. How you derive from that that Christianity had a pro-slavery influence is still unclear to me.

And what you're saying about coercion, I don't really get. I doubt any owners coerced their slaves to convert to Christianity so as to allow the owner to release them. I didn't even mean that the owner was necessarily Christian (I don't think they usually were).

I'm not denying that there were many forces at play in ending slavery but I still find that blaming Christianity for slavery is, I'm sorry, quite absurd. I guess you can attack the OT for not condemning slavery and all that. It was a common part of civilization back in those days. I'm guessing that my be trouble for someone like Jmfcst, but for most Christians, who don't necessarily think that every word in the Bible is the literal word of God, it isn't really. And therefore I still don't really see how slavery existing all over the world before Christianity and then disappearing as Christianity spread makes slavery a moral failing of Christianity!

[Gustaf]

I don't get what the impact you're talking about. There was clearly less slavery under Christianity than there had been before. Arguing that the influence of Christianity was to promote slavery seems to fly in the face of the historical record here.

How many thousands of years did it take to get every major Christian community to stop practicing it altogether? More importantly how many thousands of years did it take to get them to stop practicing it for the right reasons? The historical record seems to indicate Christian self-favoritism and the change to feudalism as the reason for the initial decline of slavery in Europe. Once the crusades happened slavery once again went into play in the newly conquered areas once they had a fresh source of heathens. Then once the colonization of the New World began in earnest the Atlantic slave trade came into play. I'm not seeing how the historical record is flying in the face of my arguments.

EDIT - what afleitch says above articulates the crux my argument quite well I think. Scripture has had a significant influence on it's followers. Had there been an explicit condemnation of slavery in the NT (making it less flexible to allow slavery) or a even simply a lack of it being practiced in the OT then I think we'd see a radically different history in regards to slavery in Christian societies.

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If it didn't then why did those Christian countries get involved in the first place? It took quite some time for the opposition to get any significant traction, and frankly I'd say they were influenced in no small degree by secular ethics.

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Seriously? Let me emphasize that - SERIOUSLY!? You don't see how a law that says "convert or stay a slave" is coercive? You don't see the degree of pressure that puts on someone to convert?

Several of you put forth the Enlightenment as the chief reason for the abolition of slavery and I would really like to see some evidence presented.  In the Anglo American sphere, the vast majority of those advocating the end of the slave trade and manumission were Quakers and evangelical Christians. While it is true that Enlightenment thinkers wrote tracts against slavery, I see little action.  Jefferson is the embodiment of this.  

Enlightenment thought had more impact in the abolition of slavery in revolutionary France but this only lasted a short period before Napoleon restored.

The Enlightenment helped significantly by making people start to question. They started thinking outside their normal frameworks, questioning whether the laws of the churches and kings were just. It introduced "new" ways of thinking about moral behavior. Since many scripture can be interpreted rather flexibly, it's no surprise that many Christians assimilated these things into their religious beliefs by coming up with alternative interpretations. (as a note, the Protestant Reformation also has a significant effect here - without it the Roman Catholic Church's grip on society and free thought would not have been so loosened as to allow these alternative interpretations) At least that's my interpretation on the issue.

So...you think the owners told their slaves "I so badly want to not have you as slaves that I want you to convert to Christianity so that I can release you. Please do." ?

I mean, I guess that might have happened but I don't really think it was all that common a procedure. From what I've read of Swedish history most owners did not want their slaves to become Christians, since that would put pressure on them to release them. Which means the prime coercive force was largely on the other side there.

When you ask why Christian countries got involved in slavery I again don't really get your point. You act as if slavery is a Christian thing, when it very, very clearly is the other way around. The question isn't "why did they practice slavery" since pretty much everyone did! The interesting question seems to be "why did certain countries quit slavery" And then it is hard to avoid the fact that all of them were Christian. Your argument that Christians, to an extent, did what most countries did and then quit makes Christianity somehow responsible for slavery or a pro-slavery force doesn't really make much sense to me.

Oh, and your question about thousands of years...Christianity has been around for 2000 years. So we're not talking like a lot of thousands here. Rooting out slavery in Sweden certainly didn't take thousands of years for instance. From what I recall (was a long time ago, granted) it's rather a couple of generations or so.

To me your argument is basically like saying that the UK is responsible for the Holocaust and was a pro-Nazi force since they didn't stop Hitler earlier. Actually, that would strike me as a somewhat more credible argument than the one you're advancing here.

[Gustaf]

I still don't follow your argument. The church didn't own the slaves. How is the church telling the slaves that if they become Christians the church will think the slave-owners should release them "coercing" them? Is the US telling people in North Korea that they will have freedom of expression if they were to become American citizens coercing them to be Americans?

I'm not sure if you read much about the lives of slaves in those times. I have and your conception of it seems a bit odd. It isn't as if the priests who came to Sweden to convert people had the power to coerce anyone. Slave owners typically killed them if they told slaves to convert and ask for freedom. But I guess the vikings who slayed priests were fighting the pro-slavery influence of Christianity.

You seem to ignore the fact since Christianity wanted to convert everyone the distinction between Christians and non-Christians isn't that important. You make it sound as if the Church wanted to hypocritically retain a class of non-converted slaves - yet that was obviously not true, since they didn't choose that path. Instead they eradicated slavery. I'm not saying that it was all for the most wonderful reasons (few great developments in human history are). Again, we could amusingly have the exact same debate about the UK intervening in WWII. It doesn't really affect my point that it is strange to blame Christianity for slavery when they actually ended it.

I'll admit though that I don't know what rate of slavery-ending would be sufficient to prove Christianity as anti-slavery. A more apt analogy for me is that what you're doing is essentially like blaming the Democrats for the fact that the US doesn't have public healthcare.

Anyway, if you want to argue that the Bible has pro-slavery messages, sure. I don't really equate that with Christianity though, just as I stated earlier. I'm only arguing that Christianity in practice has not contributed very much to the existence of slavery. If you want to prove that it has you have to argue that slavery would have ended quicker without Christianity ever existing and given the historical record that seems like a tall order to me. I would personally view the existence of slavery in the OT as a reflection of the existence of slavery in society at the time and not as an intrinsic part of Christian belief.

This explanation seems to fit better with the historical evolution of Christian countries leading the way for abolition than your theory.  

[Gustaf]

I feel as if you sort of ignored my point. When Christians came to Sweden, trying to spread Christianity they weren't in a position of power. You seem to think that they first converted all the owners and then coerced the slaves into converting by dangling the possibility of freedom in front of them.

I don't think that was the case. What I've read about the era doesn't back it up and it doesn't really make logical sense to me. Why would the owners join before the slaves, for instance?

That's exactly why I used my analogy about the US and North Korea. It isn't as if the Church, when it came to a society like the Swedish, had any power over it. The existence of slaves persevering in being non-Christians and then being coerced into the religion is not really something I recognize at all. I think it's a highly theoretical construct on your part.