Slavery

Q: Where is God’s guidance about slavery? Nowhere in the Old or New Testaments does it say that slavery is a bad thing. It actually seems to encourage / guide slavery ownership in various verses. Wouldn’t this have been a great commandment? “Thou shalt not have slaves.” What a lot of suffering this may have eliminated through history.

A: This is an important question especially since we are witnessing the return of slavery in some parts of the world. I’ll attempt to answer this in reverse order.

First, it is no coincidence that the abolition of slavery was spearheaded in history by Christian activists. My family last weekend watched for the second time the movie, “Amazing Grace” that tells the story of William Wilberforce, the British politician who led the fight against slavery. I highly recommend the movie. It’s not only inspiring but it shows how deeply ingrained the ugly institution was and that it was people of deep faith who destroyed it. Wilberforce’s anti-slavery bill passed in 1807; it would take an additional 55 years and a civil war for it to be outlawed in America. The abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad in the US were led by Christians as well. Where did they get this conviction to fight slavery? The Bible.

The person asking this question is correct in noting that...

there isn’t a commandment outlawing slavery. Its antislavery message takes a subtle, subversive approach. That subtlety is lost to us when we read the Bible, but it is there. It takes an understanding of the cultural conditions surrounding it. For much of world history, slavery was thoroughly accepted socially. Any call to end slavery would have been seen as revolutionary and would have been violently opposed. It could be argued that if the early Christians had taken an anti-slavery stance, the movement would have been stomped out. But, the message is there, just below the surface.

First, it must be noted that there is no scripture that explicitly blesses the institution of slavery or encourages the owning of slaves.

Second, there are verses that don’t hide the antislavery message. Consider a couple of these verses from the New Testament:
Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you--although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord's freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 1 Cor. 7:21-23

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

These are radical statements for that day and time. Add to this the whole Exodus story of Moses freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and you find a deep anti-slavery bent. Because of passages like these, slave owners didn’t want their slaves owning Bibles or going to church to hear such scriptures read. They considered the message too dangerous.

Because it says it so much better, I’ll share this rather lengthy explanation from the book, Hard Sayings of the Bible, which comments on Paul’s words in Ephesians 6 about slaves and masters…

“The master is to treat slaves appropriately in the light of knowing that in reality both he and they are slaves of the same heavenly Master (Eph 6:9). After all, even Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ. This part of Paul’s teaching is revolutionary. It was unheard of to call a social superior to respect and respond to a call to duty toward social inferiors. In fact, one could say that Paul brings the masters down to the level of their slaves and makes them treat their slave as a brother or sister. This implication in Ephesians becomes quite explicit in Philemon. Paul’s strategy, then, is to elevate the inferior and to abase the superior by pointing to their relationship to Jesus Christ as the context for all other relationships in their lives…

In the social world of Paul’s day slavery was an accepted institution. There was also a genuine fear of slaves. In Rome slaves were prohibited from wearing distinctive clothing for fear that they would discover how numerous they were and start a revolt. Slaves all over the Roman world were under the total control of their masters. If a master wished, he could have a slave executed (or kill the slave himself). While this was frowned on if there was no reason for it, it was not outside of the master’s rights. It was just as today a person can demolish their house if they wish, even though their neighbors may think it a stupid and wasteful act. A slave in the first century was property.

Given this context, what would it look like if Christianity were believed to be calling slaves to disobedience? Christianity was already viewed as a subversive form of thought. It rejected the traditional gods (which made it seem treasonous to city and country, for worship of the traditional gods was a major expression of patriotism) and did not allow any compromises in this matter. It rejected many of the “normal” forms of recreation (drinking bouts, use of prostitutes and the like). It formed its members into “secret societies” (at least in the eyes of pagan observers), and in those societies it was rumored master and slave ate the same food at the same table and that wives were present along with their husbands. In other words, first-century social decorum was not observed in the church. Notice that in the New Testament there is no separation of religious duty according to social status. Every member is spiritually gifted, whatever their social status. Any person can become an elder, not just freeborn males. Every member of the church is called to the same obedience to Christ, slave or free, male or female.

So Paul (and other New Testament writers) calls the social inferiors, including slaves, to obedience. This both reassured the Roman society and made the real reason for persecution clear. Christian slaves should be more obedient slaves than other slaves; for they knew that the “pay” in heaven would be good. If their masters persecuted them, it should be for their faith and nothing else. Christianity was not subversive in the sense of stirring up rebellion. At the same time, it raised the slave to a new status of an equal human being before Christ. After all, in the eyes of the church slavery was just a job, and what job or social status one had on earth did not matter. (Jesus did not have a great social status at any time in his life either, and he died a most shameful death, an executed slave’s death.) If the job was done “as a slave of Christ” the reward was equal, whether one was a human slave or a human master. Paul’s strategy was thus that of producing an expression of the kingdom of God in the church, not that of trying to change society.

What was the result of this strategy? The church never adopted a rule that converts had to give up their slaves. Christians were not under law but under grace. Yet we read in the literature of the second century and later of many masters who upon their conversion freed their slaves. The reality stands that it is difficult to call a person a slave during the week and treat them like a brother or sister in the church. Sooner or later the implications of the kingdom they experienced in church seeped into the behavior of the masters during the week. Paul did in the end create a revolution, not one from without, but one from within, in which a changed heart produced changed behavior and through that in the end brought about social change. This change happened wherever the kingdom of God was expressed through the church, so the world could see that faith in Christ really was a transformation of the whole person.

Did Paul believe in slavery? Yes, indeed. He believed that all Christians are all equally slaves of Jesus Christ and that that is the one social relationship that has permanent value.”