The Ten Commandments

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There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we conclude, immoral....I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches was to the Bible.

-Robert Blatchford,1919

 

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The evilness of bible followers

Churchmen owned slaves and were not particularly notable as good masters. Indeed some of the worst masters were clergymen. In the court of St Ann's in Jamaica in 1829, the Rev. G. W. Bridges was charged with maltreating a female slave. For a trivial mistake he had stripped her, tied her by the hands to the ceiling so that her toes hardly touched the ground, then flogged her with a bamboo rod until she was a "mass of lacerated flesh and gore" from her shoulders to her calves. As usual in such cases he was acquitted. Important questions for the Church were the extent of slave owners" rights to flog or burn their human property, to split up their families, and to demand sexual gratification from them. This last must have been a particular problem, since owners could point to several biblical passages that take it for granted that a slave girl is available for her master's sexual desires.

This was clearly difficult to square with the knowledge that sex was sinful. The harm that was done to the slaves themselves was not considered, although its effects were so severe that they live on today. In the Americas it has left a legacy of bitterness, hatred and social disruption that is likely to endure well into the third millennium.

 

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The evilness of bible believers...

In the late eighteenth century popes still held slaves, as did Anglican clergymen. It was still beyond question that slavery was ordained by God and therefore unimpeachable.

 

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The evilness of bible heroes...

In the book of Numbers Moses had given instructions as to how to treat Midianite captives. Essentially, everyone was to be executed except virgins, whom the victors were allowed to keep alive for themselves. God then gave instructions as to how the booty, including 32,000 virgins, should be divided up between the victors. Summarised the relevant biblical passage: "Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters".

The virgins had been spared for any immoral purpose or they were spared so that they could be taken into slavery. Obviously, there could be no ethical objection to this, since slavery was divinely sanctioned. The latter reason was perfectly acceptable to mainstream Christians, who found sex objectionable but slavery not at all objectionable. According to the Churches, slavery was not merely permitted, it was obligatory. Slavery was a God-given institution. To oppose what God had sanctioned was positively sinful.

 

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How bible believers treat other human beings who are non-believers

1. Since slaves were merely property, there could be no objection to branding slaves just like any other animal. Neither was there any obligation to treat
them more humanely than animals in other ways.

2. Their prices depended on supply and demand like any other commodity. Female breeders would be sold at premium prices after the importation of African slaves to North America and the Caribbean ceased.

3. Sometimes slaves were hamstrung to stop them escaping. If they had escaped before, they could have a leg amputated to stop them doing so again.

4. Once their working lives were over, they were put down. Black slaves in the Caribbean and Americas received little education, but what they were allowed was mainly religious.

5. Preachers tended to concentrate on biblical passages, such as those already quoted that endorsed slavery and counselled passive acceptance of it.

6. Surviving texts show that among missionaries, the problem of preventing slaves from enjoying themselves on the Sabbath was more important than the question of slavery itself.

 

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Despite the over whelming evidences presented against their belief, fundamentalist christians would still argue that slaves (water-downed as servants or maids) were being treated favorably by their master :( :(

 

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How morale driven the bible is?

There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we conclude, immoral....I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches was to the Bible."

 

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The Church had enjoyed 1,500 years during which it had had the power to ban slavery but had failed to do so, or even to have expressed any desire to do so.

 

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Amazing Grace was responsible for ending of slavery?

It is another lie, yet again?

Opponents to Slavery in America:
In America opposition to slavery was first voiced by freethinkers such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Initially a Quaker, later a deist, Paine was widely condemned as an unbeliever. He wrote an influential article against slavery in 1775 , and when he drafted the American Declaration of Independence the following year, he included a clause against slavery that was later struck out. Under Quaker influence, slavery was made illegal in the state of Pennsylvania in 1780. Other campaigners included the rationalist James Russell Lowell, the sceptical ex-preacher Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the freethinker Wendell Phillips. Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown had shifted away from traditional Christianity after reading Thomas Paine.

 

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Opponents to Slavery in America (contd..):

While Thomas Paine opposed slavery in America, his fellow freethinkers opposed it in his native country. Granville Sharp, a British humanitarian lawyer, sought to bring cases before the courts, arguing that throwing slaves overboard to drown was murder. (The prevailing Christian view was that a ship's captain was free to jettison them, just like any other property.)

Within a few years, by 1787, a campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade was started by a group of Quakers. It was supported by non-believers. As the movement grew, various nonconformist groups and some evangelical Christians joined it, but all traditional Churches and mainstream Christian sects consistently opposed it. Tellingly, the pro-slavery Confederacy adopted the motto “Deo Vindice”, (“God On Our Side”).

 

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Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire

William Wilberforce is usually accredited with abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, although he came many years after the first abolitionist campaigners. He too was an unbeliever when he espoused abolition. Later as an evangelical he was able to sit in Parliament (which unbelievers were not). There he stood out amongst his fellow Christians as an exception. He noted that those who opposed slavery were nonconformists and godless reformers, and that Church people were indifferent to the cause of abolition, or else actively obstructed it. His support came from Quakers, Utilitarians and assorted freethinkers. Like the freethinkers who had started the movement, he was condemned by the mainstream Churches as presuming to know better than the Bible. His successor, Sir Thomas Buxton, was another maverick, an evangelical with Quaker sympathies.