Does Christianity condone or condemn slavery?

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Does Christianity condone or condemn slavery? Throughout the ages, slavery has been a very controversial topic. There has always been someone profiting off of slavery and someone who is being used and abused by it. To fully understand both sides of the argument one must look through the lens of two conflicting ideologies. 

Christians are commanded in their Bible to “love thy neighbor.” When men decide how to interpret that command, different ideologies can arise. In the history of mankind, when a person receives benefit from an activity, the profit from that activity can lead to a justification of that activity. For example, some slave-owning and profiting Christian supported slavery because they reasoned, it was Godly. This opinion stemmed from their interpretation that it was a loving act to removed persons from cultures that worshipped the devil, practiced witchcraft, and sorcery. This belief occurred in the early days of the United States when Christian slaveholders believed that because slavery brought heathens to a Christian land, where the heathen could hear the gospel, slavery was a good thing. These Christian believers assumed that Christian masters would provide religious instruction for their slaves and thereby mercifully save the slaves’ eternal souls. With this ideology, these Christians believe that they were following their God’s instruction to “Love thy neighbor” when they condone slavery.

 

A contradicting ideology decrees that if you want to know how true Christianity views slavery, you must not look to what man says about the Bible but what the Bible says about itself. The first chapter of Genesis records, "Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." Undeniably, the Bible is stating here that man does not have the authority to dominate another man. Actually, Slavery goes against the very nature of God. As spelled out in Deuteronomy 30:19, God has given man a free will of his own, "Today I give you a choice." This choice demonstrates that God refuses to force man to do anything against his will. To enslave a person is to take their God-given freedom away from them. To understand what is actually true you must look at the reoccurring theme of the Bible, Jesus died to set prisoners free. This predominate theme fully confirms that slavery in the eyes of God is condemned.

In summary, Christianity has been distorted while looking at slavery. In reality, the Christian faith condemns slavery.

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