Christian support of slavery:
5th to 17th century CE

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Christian attitudes towards slavery: 5th to late 17^th century CE:

The Christian movement gradually reversed its stance on slavery, starting early in the 4th century CE. This reversal may have been influenced by the establishment of  Christianity as the only allowable religion in the Roman Empire by the late 4th century. This subsequently created a close integration of church and state. Since the Empire was dependent on slave labor, it was reasonable for the church to support the institution. The church became generally supportive of slavery, even as a very few of its theologians wrote in opposition to it:

"... the enemy of the human race...has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving Word of God. ... Satan has stirred up some of his allies ... who are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians be reduced to our service like brute animals. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions we would scarcely use with brute animals. ... Rather, we decree that these same Indians should not be deprived of their liberty…and are not to be reduced to slavery."  only  hostile non-Christians, captured in just wars, could become slaves.   ₄

Late in the 17th century, Leander, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote:

"It is certainly a matter of faith that this sort of slavery in which a man serves his master as his slave, is altogether lawful. This is proved from Holy Scripture...It is also proved from reason for it is not unreasonable that just as things which are captured in a just war pass into the power and ownership of the victors, so persons captured in war pass into the ownership of the captors... All theologians are unanimous on this." ₅

We have been unable to find anyone other than St. Augustine and Bartholomew De Las Casas, opposing the institution of slavery prior to this time. People considered it quite appropriate for one person to own another human being as a piece of property. Paul's comment in Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free...for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." did not appear to have been followed, except perhaps spiritually. Neither were the statements by Jesus about treating one's fellow humans accepted and applied.

Author Eddie Becker wrote:

"Throughout most of the colonial period, opposition to slavery among white Americans was virtually nonexistent. Settlers in the 17th and early 18th centuries came from sharply stratified societies in which the wealthy savagely exploited members of the lower classes. Lacking a later generation’s belief in natural human equality, they saw little reason to question the enslavement of Africans." ₆

In a book review, Dennis Hidalgo stated that the

"... most abominable aspect of the slave trade, was fueled by the idea that Africans, even children, were better off Christianized under a system of European slavery than left in Africa amid tribal wars, famines and paganism" ₇ 

Continue with the early abolition movement in the 17th century

Related essays on this site:

References:

1. "St. Isidore of Seville," New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08186a.htm
2. Mark Brumley, "Let My People Go: the Catholic Church and Slavery," at: http://www.petersnet.net/research/
3. Edward C. Rogers, "Slavery illegality in all ages and nations," (1955). Online at: http://medicolegal.tripod.com/
4. "The Saints of Canada," at: http://www.catholicdoors.com/
5. Leander, "Quaestiones Morales Theologicae," Lyons 1668 - 1692, Tome VIII, De Quarto Decalogi Praecepto, Tract. IV, Disp. I, Q. 3. Quoted in Reference 17.
6. Eddie Becker, "Chronology on the history of slavery and racism," at: http://innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html 
7. Dennis Hidalgo, Review of Willie F. Page, "The Dutch Triangle: The Netherlands and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1621-1664," Garland Publishing, (1997), Page xxxv, in H-Review, 1998-AUG, at: http://www.h-net.org/

Copyright © 1999 to 2007 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2007-AUG-24
Author: B.A. Robinson