So what did Jesus have to say about slavery? Certainly the alleged world’s greatest moral philosopher would have volumes to say about human bondage; arguably the most egregious practice to inflict misery upon our fellow human beings than any other in recorded history.
Jesus, however, had little to say about the slavery ever-present in his very midst. Instead, he appears to have condoned slavery as he never once spoke out against it. Turning directly to the Gospels—instead of denouncing slavery—we find our loving, merciful, gentle Jesus providing specific instructions on when and how much to beat your slave. He advised his followers that if your slave does not understand what you want and disobeys, you should beat him (or her), but not too severely. (Luke 12:48) However, if your slave knows what you want yet continues to disobey, you should beat the crap out of him. (Luke 12:47-4)
Again, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus metaphorically casually uses the master/slave relationship in a parable to illustrate a point regarding our relationship to God rather than to take a moral stand against it. (Luke 17:7-1) Why not make the same point but using the more appropriate parent/child relationship?
Likewise, the self-appointed apostle Paul, who claims to be a medium for the Christ, channeling his words and thoughts, employs numerous references to the slaves and their masters, clearly in support of slavery. In his letter to the the church at Ephesus, Paul instructs slaves to serve their masters well, but especially well their Christian masters. The apostle Peter offers the same instruction, insisting that slaves obey their masters in all things, even those masters that are brutal. (1 Peter 2:18)
Can you imagine the outrage of our contemporaries in this country and around the world if a celebrity, sports figure or one of our leaders were to hold a press conference to provide a list of instructions to husbands on the proper way to beat their wives? Or how to more effectively beat your children? That person would suffer an immediate backlash, to be denounced by every media outlet and from every pulpit (well, maybe not every pulpit) and by nearly every citizen. He would suffer major loss in every aspect of his life, to be shunned and relegated to some dark and distant corner of society, hopefully to never be heard from again. Yet Christian apologists have argued breathlessly the Biblical slavery issue from every angle possible in debates, untold numbers of essays, books and sermons written in futile brain-scrambling attempts to obfuscate the subject.
A favorite argument of contemporary apologists is that, in Biblical times, slavery was actually nothing more than “indentured servitude”, a fancy word for unpaid servant, and that for many individuals and families deep in debt or suffering economic distress, service to a master was a choice and the best and only way to pay down one’s financial obligations. However, looking to Jesus’ own words we see he draws a clear distinction between servant and slave, implying that slavery is the worst of the two. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” (Matthew 20:26-27)
A number of Christian apologists posit that because slavery was so ingrained in ancient societies, for God to suddenly ban it would have caused untold economic hardship to his chosen people. What about the hardship of those under the yoke of slavery, you ask? God had a plan, they say, to eventually, over time, to do away with the universally accepted practice of keeping humans as livestock or farm equipment. Nowhere in the Bible is there a shred of evidence of this plan. Apparently the Creator of the Universe could, without hesitation, set the death penalty for picking up sticks on the Sabbath and invoke an immediate ban on the “abomination” (God’s word, not mine) of eating shrimp, but as for the abomination of human bondage—not so easy.
Still other renowned Christian scholars and apologists, including Dr. William Lane Craig, Kyle Butts and Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, founder of the Apologetics Academy, promote Divine Command Theory which they state overcomes all arguments against what modern society would consider God’s bad behavior. According to Dr. Craig, the theory goes something like this: God is perfect in all things, therefore as Master, anything God does or commands is, by his very nature, perfect. We, as slaves to the Master are not to question or to judge his behavior, but to accept. As well, Jesus being God in human form is, by extension, inimitably perfect. Therefore, his failure to denounce slavery and appearing to support the practice is not to be questioned by today’s moral standards. Jesus, as God, must have had a reason for sidestepping the moral issue of slavery, one that you and I as mere humans could not possibly understand. End of argument. Again, nowhere in the Bible can be found such a theory.
There are other situations in the Gospels where Jesus encounters individual slaves and their masters. These were perfect opportunities for this revered rabbi and alleged supreme moral example to either free the slave or speak out against the practice, yet he does neither. Although Jesus had no problem going against a number of Jewish traditions, he apparently believed slavery was indeed Kosher.
Not surprisingly, the master-slave relationship, that of total submission, of unquestioning obedience to the Lord as Master, continues to be a core theme throughout the history of Christianity as evidenced in scripture, poetry, song and uncountable sermons. Below is just one contemporary example:
Prisoner of Love
by Dottie Rambo
I'm a prisoner of love
A slave to the master
I willingly toil
Through the heat and the cold
I seek no reward in this world below.
But payday will come
When the pearly gates unfold.
He holds me secure with his love strong and true.
I'm happy his servant to be.
In bondage to Jesus forever I'll stay
My soul doesn't want to be free.
In an audio debate with renowned journalist, contrarian and atheist, the late Christopher Hitchens, radio host Paul Edwards from the Center for the Study of God in Culture publicly and proudly proclaims his fealty to a heavenly master. “I readily admit I’m a slave,” he boasts. “I’m a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Is such blind, mindless submission to anything or anyone something one should be proud of? It is that very type of thinking that flies planes into buildings!
This begs the question, why would any descendant of black slaves want to worship a man who was mostly silent, if not complicit in the buying and selling of other humans as chattel? A man whose only comments regarding slavery were not to abolish the practice, but to literally contribute to the continued suffering of untold millions of men, women and children. Yet, according to recent religion profile studies from Pew Research, in America there are more black Christians per capita than white Christians by a significant margin. And in sub-Saharan Africa, where black is by far the dominant demographic, Christianity is by far the dominant religion.
Most recently, black leadership in America has traditionally been dominated by Christian pastoral figures such as Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and recently deceased congressman John Lewis, himself an ordained Baptist minister.
Martin Luther King, Jr., undoubtedly the most influential leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, was named after Martin Luther, the German Christian reformist that led the Protestant movement against the Catholic Church in 1517. Ironically, Martin Luther, like Jesus, never spoke out against slavery, only to say that slaves can be (Protestant) Christian, too. How nice.
King famously employed the Biblical Old Testament story of Hebrew enslavement by the Egyptians as a metaphor for his push against racial discrimination and segregation. Moses (Dr. King) implored the Egyptian Pharaoh (American government) to “let my people go”, and with God’s help, eventually freed the Hebrews (blacks) from bondage and leading them into the “promised land” (egalitarian society). Yet the very same God that freed the Hebrews not only encouraged, but commanded Moses and His “chosen people” to forcibly take the land and property of numerous other nations and enslave the newly conquered peoples! The God of Martin Luther King went so far as to provide detailed instructions on who they could buy and sell as slaves, to what degree and how often a slave should should be beaten, when and how a master could rape a slave, and what conditions must be met before any slave could be released from bondage. The irony here is exquisite.
Now back to the harsh reality of thousands of years of actual physical suffering of untold numbers of our fellow humans in bondage. Jesus, by his words and actions, was complicit in this, the worst of crimes ever committed by humanity against humanity. By Biblical standards, the proponents of the Atlantic slave trade and their beneficiaries, the wealthy, pious Christians of the Confederate States of America, were on clearly on the side of God, with Jesus carrying the flag at the front lines. Imagine the misery and suffering the so-called world’s greatest moral philosopher could have spared humanity if only he had spoken these three simple words:
DON'T
OWN
PEOPLE!