Everyone knows that the Bible promotes slavery - everyone except me. I stand with the nineteenth century Abolitionists of both America and Great Britain, and they argued very persuasively that their Christian religion required them to oppose slavery. They drew their arguments from, yes, from the Bible. I will say more about that below. First, I want to make two things very clear. My Christian beliefs move me to emphasize that the Abolitionists saw what they recognized as the Holy Spirit’s message from the Canon of Scripture when considered as a whole, and they considered, in that light, the spirit of the scriptures rather than merely the letter. The other is that I am not nearly as concerned with unbelievers, who are often all too eager to use the Fundamentalist method of isolating verses as they engage in “proof text” debate, as I am with those who will want to argue against the Abolitionist interpretation of scripture because they are believers. A believer in the authority of scripture who takes the view that slavery is condoned in the Bible is far more of a problem, in my thinking, than an atheist who agrees with that believer. The atheist will have no motive to turn back the clock, that is, to return our civilization to the darkness of legally sanctioned slavery, whereas the believer (and we see examples even now) may argue to do that very thing, convinced as he is that the Word of God teaches it. Now, I do not see such a one actually progressing in the legal and moral regress of our culture. This brings me to yet another important point: Historical witness. I am very glad that the Abolitionists provide us with a historical balance because believers owe not only to their own generation a good and proper witness as the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World: They owe it also to future generations, to those for whom our present time will be the history they study. And, frankly, the best that the Church has ever managed to accomplish, when it comes to historical witness, is a balancing act. So, let us now look at the history.
The Abolitionists’ words and deeds live on as a witness to what their faith actually required, a part of history that is needed today as we look back and see all too clearly where many of their fellow Christians, both in Great Britain and in America, fell short in their moral understanding. Although many of the issues in which morality, justice, and politics overlap, are different today, they nonetheless revolve around that same basic point, which is that justice requires us to begin with “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” So, please read on as I explain why, as one who has read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested the scriptures over several decades, I still do not “know” what “everybody knows,” and why I am glad not to “know” it. Let us also ask why the Abolitionist argument, which was a religious Christian argument (do not miss that reality in the history), prevailed in Britain, but not in America; why in America it required war to accomplish what had been accomplished in Britain by legislation twenty-seven years earlier.
For a very well researched study on the substance of the arguments presented by both pro-slavery clergy and scholars and abolitionist clergy and scholars, I know of none better than The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (1 ). It centers mostly on the United States, but the essence of the arguments from the Abolitionist side reveals mostly that American Abolitionists, presenting the same basic arguments, could not prevail through legislation, whereas “the Saints” or the “Clapham Sect,” (including Thomas Fowell Buxton, William Dealtry, Edward James Eliot, Samuel Gardiner, Charles Grant, Zachary Macaulay, Hannah More, Granville Sharp, Charles Simeon, William Smith, James Stephen, Lord Teignmouth, John Thorton, Henry Thorton MP, his daughter Marianne Thorton, Henry Venn, John Venn, John Newton the author of Amazing Grace!, and, of course, William Wilberforce MP), never needed to take up arms or fire a shot. The 2006 movie Amazing Grace! tells the story very well. Ioan Gruffud, somewhat tall of stature and dark-haired, does not look like the very short and redheaded William Wilberforce; but he almost certainly portrayed the personality and character of William Wilberforce, as history records, quite accurately. The victory of the British Abolition movement was not easy and was a matter of more than mere debate. It took quite a lot of political strategy, a great deal of public social action, and was a struggle of several years.
But we can also say with some very real confidence, what was accomplished in Britain was accomplished by the strength of reason as applied to public conscience, and this was largely because the Abolitionists had the stronger argument among people who mostly belonged to the Church of England and who believed in the authority of the Bible as the very Word of God, meant to be understood as one canon full of various writings from different times.
So, one can point to passages that were written in the earliest eras, passages from Exodus and Leviticus, that were first spoken and written within a culture that accepted slavery, and also polygamy, and be forced to admit that even the Holy Books seem to grant an acceptance of what we look upon today as immoral. And it can be called ironic, because by the time of the Prophet Malachi, whose book is at the very end of the Hebrew scriptures (as arranged by Christians), slavery is no longer tolerated, and polygamy had been considered illegal and immoral for years (creating the problem clearly denounced by the prophet, of men who divorce “the wife of thy youth” in order to marry another - which Jesus would later condemn as a form of adultery). So, one can argue that the Bible is not completely consistent in its moral teaching, that even books “given by inspiration of God” trace an evolution and progression of moral enlightenment.
Well, actually, that was not the Abolitionist argument. They took the various laws scattered throughout the Torah (a.k.a. the Pentateuch) and presented them as allowing what was called in their own time Indentured Servitude, very much like slavery, but limited to seven years, or in the laws of the Bible, seven years or until the Year of Jubilee, whichever came first. If the indentured servant chose not to be set free, he had the option of remaining with his master for life (Exodus 21: 2-6). Even this was overruled, they argued, by the all-encompassing law that rules out any town or city in Israel actually regarding any person as the property of another. In other words, any such servant may quit a disagreeable situation, even if it requires one to escape or flee. “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him (Deuteronomy 23:15,16).” This they quoted also to condemn the American Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a law that intruded upon the rights of every Free State. Because the slaves in America and Britain were obtained by kidnapping, rounding up individuals without their consent, they argued that “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death (Exodus 21:16)” is enough to condemn the manner in which every slave had been obtained, even if going back generations. And, among their arguments they pointed out that even if one accepts the pro-slavery interpretation of the books of the Torah, there was no basis for enslaving anyone on the basis of race, that indeed, any black person enslaved, who believes in Christ, becomes a brother or sister, an equal child of God.
The Abolitionists made many such arguments, and their pro-slavery opponents worked tirelessly, it seems, in efforts to refute them and to defend the institution. It is easier to dismiss the New Testament passages that are twisted into a defense of enslaving people. None of those verses condone slavery. They were not written to masters, but to slaves themselves, Christians enslaved under a cruel Pagan system headed by Ceasar, dedicated to the Roman gods, an empire that had already defeated the slaves who rebelled in the time of Spartacus. The mission of the ancient Apostolic Church was not a violent social reform, which would have ended the Christian religion in its infancy, but rather to make disciples among all of the nations. So, “Slaves, obey your masters,” or as in the KJV, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ (Ephesians 6:5)” is, by no logical reasoning, an endorsement of slavery. In a very real sense, it was a commandment not to commit suicide.
The Abolitionists did more than engage in theological arguments drawn from scripture, but we can be very glad that they made the religious argument, and that they made it well. Indeed, it is not possible to prove that their arguments reflected an accurate understanding of how ancient Hebrew people, during the eras that give us the most ancient books from different generations of Israel, regarded everything that can be called slavery or indentured servitude. What we can say is that they made the true theological argument from the perspective of the Church in its earliest generations, a theological system that gives full and final authority to Jesus Christ, in this case as the Rabbi of every disciple called a Christian. The Abolitionists knew that every moral position that has to do with human relations is subject ultimately to “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus 19:18).” And between such disciples, Christ’s New Commandment is the standard: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another John 13:34).” In other words, even higher than human love at its best, we are commanded to love one another with the very love of God Himself “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Romans 5:5).” So, the person enslaved must be treated as equal and free, actually rendered
equal and free.
What must we say or do in our own time when we consider the duty of being a witness to future generations? When history students look back upon us, what will they see? Sadly, among many evil things, they will see self-proclaimed Evangelicals who have chosen party loyalty above Jesus Christ, and the temporary power of their party over the Kingdom of God. They will see or read about Christians, including prominent clergy, who engaged in slander in order to justify the crimes of I.C.E. agents who have been caught on video committing violent felonies against innocent people, separating families and traumatizing children. They will see eager apologists arguing in favor of sending mostly innocent young men to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. From another side they will see people claiming to be Christians who advocated against the lives of the most vulnerable, those who ought to have been safe as a child in its mother's womb. I say, these are only a few examples of the horrors they will learn about, that they will see from years and decades away. We need to learn from the example of many saints, including the Abolitionists of America and Britain, and from them learn how to provide balance, no doubt the only thing we can actually accomplish, for the sake of our own historical witness. It takes accepting risks and difficulties, but we must provide that balance in order to be salt that will not have lost its savor. We cannot prevent those future students from smelling the rot of evil perpetrated by our contemporaries; and that is all the more reason why providing the balance of true witnesses is all the more necessary.
(1) Noll, Mark A. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006
