CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY
_Nothing during the American struggle against the slave system did
more to wean religious and God-fearing men and women from the old
interpretation of Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery._
ANDREW DICKSON WHITE.
The Christian Church has had the audacity, in modern times, to proclaim
that it had abolished slavery and the slave trade. It is difficult to
understand how any "righteous" man could make that contention
remembering that it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century
that slavery became illegal in Christian countries, with one exception,
Abyssinia, the oldest of the Christian countries, which still maintains
slavery. In our own country, a nation had to be embroiled in a civil war
before slavery could be abolished. Abolished by Christianity in the
nineteenth century, when Christianity has been dominant in most
civilized countries since the third century, and when the traffic in
human flesh flourished right through those centuries in which
Christianity was most powerful!
A reference to the facts show that this claim is as spurious as many
others which the ecclesiastics have boldly affirmed throughout the ages.
For not only is this contrary to the truth, but it is an undeniable fact
that it was only by the aid and sanction of the theological forces that
slavery was able to degrade our civilization as long as it did.
On referring to that legend which has been the source of most of our
suffering and inhumanity, the Bible, a direct sanction for slavery is
given in the Old Testament. Leviticus XXV gives explicit instructions as
to where and from whom slaves should be bought, and sanctions the
repulsive feature of separation of the slave from his family. Leviticus
XXVII gives the "price" of human beings.
The Koran, which the Christians look upon as a ridiculous smattering of
utterances of a spurious prophet, sets a superior example to the
Christian "Divine Revelations."
"God hath ordained that your brothers should be your slaves, therefore,
let him whom God hath ordained to be the slave of his brother, his
brother must give him of the clothes wherewith he clotheth himself, and
not order him to do anything beyond his power.... A man who illtreats
his slave will not enter paradise.... Whoever is the cause of separation
between mother and child by selling and giving, God will separate him
from his friends on the day of resurrection."
The New Testament follows the Old Testament, and there is nowhere to be
found in its contents anything to suggest the elimination of this
practice. Jesus did not condemn this practice, but accepted slavery as
he accepted most institutions about him, and all superstitions. The
teachings of Paul on the question of slavery are clear and explicit.
Pope Leo, in his letter of 1888 to the Bishop of Brazil, remarks:
"When amid the slave multitude whom she has numbered among her children,
some led astray by some hope of liberty, have had recourse to violence
and sedition, the Church has always condemned these unlawful efforts,
and through her ministers has applied the remedy of patience...."
St. Peter was addressing himself especially to the slaves when he wrote,
"For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God a man endures
sorrows, suffering wrongfully."
The Church certainly saw nothing wrong with slavery when she preached
patience to her slaves. It did not condemn slavery, but condemned the
slaves for revolting. This in 1888!
In the "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics" is found: "There is no
explicit condemnation in the teaching of our Lord.... It remains true
that the abolitionist could point to no one text in the Gospels in
defense of his position, while those who defended slavery could appeal
at any rate to the letter of Scripture."
It is true that slavery existed under Pagan civilization, but there it
represented a phase of social development, while Christian slavery stood
for a deliberate retrogression in social life. It was Seneca who said,
"Live gently and kindly with your slave, and admit him to conversation
with you, to council with you, and to share in your meals."
Think of what would have occurred if one of our philosophers had
admonished a slave-holding Christian in the above manner.
"We are apt to think of the ancient slave as being identical with the
miserable and degraded being that disgraced Christian countries less
than a century ago. This, however, is far from the truth. The Roman
slave did not, of necessity, lack education. Slaves were to be found who
were doctors, writers, poets, philosophers, and moralists. Plautus,
Phaedrus, Terence, Epictetus, were slaves. Slaves were the intimates of
men of all stations of life, even the emperor. Certainly, it never
dawned on the Roman mind to prohibit education to the slave. That was
left for the Christian world, and almost within our own time." (For a
good account of the close association of Christianity with slavery see,
"_Christianity, Slavery, and Labor," Chapman Cohen._)
In Rome, the slave kept his individuality, and outwardly there was no
distinction in color and clothing; there was very little sound barrier
between the slave and the freeman. The slave attended the same games as
the freeman, participated in the affairs of the municipality, and
attended the same college. The ancients kept the bodies of their slaves
in bondage, but they placed no restraint upon the mind and no check upon
his education. It has even been said that the slave class of antiquity
really corresponded to our free laboring class. It is also well known
that a well-conducted slave, by his own earnings, was able to purchase
his freedom in the course of a few years.
There can be no comparison, therefore, between Pagan and Christian
slavery, except to the detriment of the latter. The Christian slave
trade represents one of the most frightful and systematic brutalities
the world has ever known. The contrast between the Pagan and Christian
slavery is even more marked when the dependence of the Christian slave
upon the good nature of his master is considered. Compare this with the
decrees of the Roman emperors:
"Masters were prohibited sending their slaves into the arena without a
judicial sentence. Claudius punished as a murderer any master who killed
his slave. Nero appointed judges to hear the complaints of slaves as to
ill-treatment or insufficient feeding. Domitian forbade the mutilation
of slaves; Hadrian forbade the selling of slaves to gladiators,
destroyed private prisons for them, and ordered that they who were
proved to have ill-treated their slaves be forced to sell them.
Caracalla forbade the selling of children into slavery."
"All that need be added to this is that the later Christian slavery
represented a distinct retrogression, deliberately revived from motives
of sheer cupidity, and accompanied by more revolting features than the
slavery of ancient times." (_Chapman Cohen._)
In the "History of Ethics Within Organized Christianity" is recorded,
"The Church, as such, never contemplated doing away with slavery as
such, even though Stoicism had denounced it as 'Contra Mundum.' Nowhere
does the early Church condemn slavery as an institution. Kindness to the
slave is frequently recommended, but this was done quite as forcibly,
and upon a much broader ground by the pagan writers. It would be indeed
nearer the truth to say that the Christians who wrote in favor of the
mitigation of the lot of the slave were far more indebted to pagans than
to Christian influence."
The Church itself owned many slaves, advised its adherents to will their
slaves to her, and was the last to liberate the slaves which she owned.
Yet, the apologists for the Church would have us believe that she was
instrumental in the destruction of slavery, when it is a fact that there
is nowhere a clear condemnation of slavery on the part of the Church.
H. C. Lea in his "Studies of the Church History" says, "The Church held
many slaves, and while their treatment was in general sufficiently
humane to cause the number to grow by voluntary accretions, yet it had
no scruple to assert vigorously their claim to ownership. When the Papal
Church granted a slave to a monastery, the dread anathema, involving
eternal perdition, was pronounced against anyone daring to interfere
with the gift; and those who were appointed to take charge of the lands
and farms of the Church, were especially instructed that it was part of
their duty to pursue and recapture fugitive bondsmen."
It must not be assumed that the Catholic Church was the only
ecclesiastical body to condone slavery, or that it was only the traffic
in black slaves that flourished a few hundred years ago.
"In the seventeenth century, thousands of Irish men, women and children,
were seized by the order or under the license of the English government,
and sold as slaves for use in the West Indies. In the Calendar of State
Papers, under various dates, between 1653-1656, the following entries
occur: 'For a license to Sir John Clotworthy to transport to America 500
natural Irishmen.' A slave dealer, named Schlick, is granted a license
to take 400 children from Ireland for New England, and Virginia. Later,
100 Irish girls and a like number of youths are sold to the planters in
Jamaica.
"Had the Church been against slavery it would have branded it as a
wrong, and have set the example of liberating its own slaves. It did
neither. Nay, the Church not only held slaves itself, not only protected
others who held slaves, but it thundered against all who should despoil
its property by selling or liberating slaves belonging to the Church.
The whole history of the Christian Church shows that it has never felt
itself called upon to fight any sound institution, no matter what its
character, so long as it favored the Church. Slavery and serfdom, war,
piracy, child labor, have all been in turn sanctioned." (_Chapman Cohen:
"Christianity, Slavery, and Labor."_)
In Abyssinia, the influence of Christianity has been dominant for a
longer period of time than anywhere else in the world. The population of
Abyssinia is at least ten million, and of this population not less than
one-fifth, probably more, are slaves. In 1929, Lady Kathleen Simon
published her book entitled, "Slavery," dealing with the slave trade of
the world. In this work it is pointed out that slave-owning is an
integral part of the religion of the country, and that opposition to the
abolition of slavery comes principally from the priesthood which
considers itself the guardian of the Mosaic law, and regards slavery as
an institution ordered by Jehovah.
Slave raids are constant in this country, and are accompanied by the
greatest brutality and cruelty. Vast areas are depopulated by these
raids and even at this date, gangs of slaves may be seen by travelers,
with the dead and dying bodies of those that have fallen strewn along
the roadside. "The slave trade in Abyssinia is open, its horrors are
well known, and it is supported by the Christian Church of the country.
Such is slavery in the most Christian country in the world today, the
country which has the longest Christian history of any nation in the
world. Its existence helps us to realize the value of the statement that
the power of Christianity in the world destroyed the slave trade.
Slavery flourishes in the oldest of Christian countries in the world,
backed up by the Church, the Old Bible, and the New Testament. It has
all the horrors, all the brutalities, all the degradations of the slave
trade at its worst. Such is Christian Abyssinia, and such, but for the
saving grace of secular civilization, would be the rest of the world."
(_Chapman Cohen._)
The slave system that arose in Christian times, created by and continued
by Christians in the most Christian of countries, provides the final and
unanswerable indictment of the Christian Church.
Slavery was unknown to the Africans until it was introduced by the
Christian Portuguese. In 1517 the Spaniards began to ship negro slaves
to Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rica. John Hawkins was the first
Englishman of note to engage in the traffic, and Queen Elizabeth loaned
this virtuous and pious gentleman the ship _Jesus_. English companies
were licensed to engage in this trade and during the reign of William
and Mary it was thrown open to all.
Between 1680 and 1700, it has been said that 140,000 Negroes were
imported by the English-African Company, and about 160,000 more by
private traders. Between 1700 and 1786, as many as 610,000 were
transported to Jamaica alone. In the hundred years ending 1776, the
English carried into the Spanish, French, and English Colonies three
million slaves.
The cruelty experienced by these human cargoes on their transportation
defies description. The chaining, the branding, the mutilation, the
close quarters, the deaths by suffocation and disease, are a sterling
example of man's inhumanity to man when his conscience is relieved by
finding support of his inhumane actions sanctioned in that most holy of
holies, the Bible. Exclusive of the slaves who died before leaving
Africa, not more than fifty out of a hundred lived to work on the
plantations. Ingram's "History of Slavery" calculates that although
between 1690 and 1820 no less than 800,000 Negroes had been imported to
Jamaica, yet, at the latter date, only 340,000 were on the island.
Slavery in America received the same sanction by the religionists which
it received on the continent. George Whitefield, the great Methodist
preacher, was an earnest supporter of slavery. When the importation of
slaves finally ceased the states began the new industry of breeding
slaves; the leading state for this breeding, and the one which contained
the largest number of stud farms, was Virginia. Lord Macaulay, in a
speech delivered before the House of Commons on February 26, 1845, said:
"The slave states of the Union are of two classes, the breeding states,
where the human beast of burden increases, and multiplies, and becomes
strong for labor; and the sugar and cotton states to which these beasts
of burden are sent to be worked to death. Bad enough it is that
civilized man should sail to an uncivilized quarter of the world where
slavery existed, should buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them
away to labor in a distant land; bad enough! But that a civilized man, a
baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free state, a man
frequenting a Christian Church, should breed slaves for exportation, and
if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even beget slaves for
exportation, should see children, sometimes his own children, gambolling
from infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with
their faces, and should sell them for $400 or $500 a head, and send them
to lead in a remote country a life which is a lingering death, a life
about which the best thing that can be said is that it is sure to be
short; this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror
excited by that slave trade which is the curse of the African coast. And
mark, I am speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between
Dublin and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the
Thames."
It has been estimated that the members and ministers of the Orthodox
churches in the South owned no less than 660,000 slaves.
Thomas Paine, in 1775, when he wrote his article on "Justice and
Humanity," was the first to demand emancipation in a lucid manner. The
campaign for liberation of the slaves was therefore inaugurated by a
freethinker, and triumphantly closed by another freethinker, Abraham
Lincoln. In this manner did the Church abolish slavery. With
characteristic disregard for the truth, the religionists have laid claim
to Lincoln, which claim has been amply refuted; but we are still
awaiting the Church's claim to Paine as one of her devotees.
"And, truly, the case against Christianity is plain and damning. Never,
during the whole of its history has it spoken in a clear voice against
slavery; always, as we have seen, its chief supporters have been
pronounced believers. They have cited religious teaching in its defence,
they have used all the power of the Church for its maintenance.
Naturally, in a world in which the vast majority are professing
Christians, believers are to be found on the side of humanity and
justice. But to that the reply is plain. Men are human before they are
Christians; both history and experience point to the constant lesson of
the many cases in which the claims of a developing humanity override
those of an inculcated religious teaching.
"But the damning fact against Christianity is, not that it found slavery
here when it arrived, and accepted it as a settled institution, not even
that it is plainly taught in its 'sacred' books, but, that it
deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years
invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries
before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and
fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an
influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished
slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or
punishment for heresy. It was the growing moral and social sense of
mankind that compelled Christians and Christianity to give up these and
other things." (_C. Cohen: "Christianity, Slavery, and Labor."_)