Editor's Note: The following is a transcript of the Core episode: Was Slavery in the Bible the Same as American Slavery? Listen to the full episode here. This transcript has been edited for length and ease of reading.
Think of Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, or 1 Corinthians 7. Not only does Christianity have something to say about slavery, it also has something to say directly to slaves in the ancient world. Throughout history, people have appealed to the Bible's teaching on slavery to justify their own practices. So is the Bible pro slavery? And what's the difference between biblical slavery and the American slavery of the not so distant past?
Accommodation, Not Approval
To say that the Bible is pro slavery is simply inaccurate. God in Scripture created accommodations around the widespread institution of slavery that existed there in the ancient Near East and the ancient world. But it's clear that the Christian faith has always provided the theological rationale for its abolition as well. When John in the Book of Revelation had a vision of the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18:13, he noted that among Babylon's abominations was her participation in the slave trade. Human souls are put at the end of a list of merchandise behind cattle and sheep, silver and gold. God judged Babylon for treating human souls like cattle, and he called his people not to take part in her evil actions.
So despite the fact that God allowed for slavery, embedded in the Scripture is a sobering rebuke of the institution, as well as an anthropology that teaches that all people are made in God's image. The objectification of an image bearer, seeing them as nothing more than an object or property that you can abuse, is something the Bible prohibits. And this is where we start to see a clear difference between the allowance for slavery in the Old Testament together with the biblical safeguards against abusing slaves and more recent kinds of slavery throughout the world. Whereas the transatlantic slave trade of the 17th through 19th centuries was fueled by greed and racial animus, slavery in the Old Testament was primarily tied to the satisfaction of debts. One of the ways you could pay off your debts in Israel was to enter into a kind of indentured servitude. Individuals who were trying to escape abject poverty, hunger, they might become slaves voluntarily as a way of making a living for themselves. There's an example of this in Leviticus 25:47–48 and Deuteronomy 15. This is very different from the systematic abduction and forced transportation of human beings for the sake of profit.
And actually, kidnapping someone and selling them into slavery against their will was a capital offense under the Old Testament Law. Exodus 21:16 says: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death.” In the New Testament, Paul lists enslavers alongside homosexuals, liars, and other ungodly people who stand condemned by God's law.
The Sin of American Slavery
This makes the slavery of the Americas impossible to justify on biblical grounds. Old Testament law also prohibited slave masters from the kind of cruelty American plantations became notorious for. If you struck your slave and knocked out their tooth, they could be granted freedom on the basis of your harshness (Exodus 21:26–27). Now, if someone objects that American slavery wasn't that bad, I direct them to the words of Frederick Douglass, a former slave.
In his first autobiography, he wrote about the haunting songs he heard slaves singing. “They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension. They were tones loud, long, and deep. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”
New Identities
On a spiritual level, Jesus has freed all those who trust in him from slavery to sin and the fear of death. But the teaching of Jesus also paved the way for the actual abolition of slavery as an institution. Paul said in Galatians 3:27–28, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Think for a moment about how those words must have landed in Galatia. Assuming that, say, 20% of the congregation were in fact slaves. Paul is saying to them, society might treat you like nothing, like a worthless object, but that is not how Jesus sees you. And that's not how your brothers and sisters in Christ should see you either. Through baptism, slave and free are placed on equal footing. God judged the greedy objectification of human souls in the Roman Empire, and he judges it wherever it has appeared since then.
