1. Lopez 1
Nastassja Lopez
Ms. De Mare
AIT English III ¾
March 11, 2013
Christianity and Slavery
Christianity has been around since the beginning of time to introduce hope, and a set of
moral guidelines that people follow in order to reach “heaven” or in other terms, Christianity has
provided a false sense of security that their followers would attend paradise in the afterlife.
Christianity itself is an ironic religion that promotes “spiritual freedom” while being a firm
advocate for slavery.Every religion has an evitable flaw, and as it turns out to be, slavery is
Christianity’s flaw. “The Christian Bible is very clear that slavery was not only permitted in
ancient Israel, but was in fact endorsed by God” (Faithless). Using verses from the Bible,
Christianity has negatively impacted slavery throughout the ages by convincing humans that
slavery is just and fair. That sort of thinking gave birth to the ideology behind slavery in the
1800’s in the U.S. Slaves were treated the same way in the 1800’s as they were in ancient
Christianity; like property. Christianity has negatively influenced and encouraged slavery since
the birth of the Bible to the renaissance of slavery in the United States.
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you
may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and
members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can
bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you
must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”(Lev 25:46) The Bible blatantly states that
one may own a foreigner slave, thus ensuring that the slave is the property of the master and

2. Lopez 2
inheritance to the master’s children. Slaves in the Israelite society had limited rights, were
emotionally and physically abused; they were worth less than an average person. “Israel’s law
about releasing a permanently disfigured slave applied to the master’s treatment of the
slave.”(Thom Stark). If the slave is beaten by the master, and is not deathly injured then the
master has not committed a crime, and is not fined. Slaves during ancient Israel came from the
poor families who needed food, or people who have sinned. These people eventually become
slaves and are looked down for being inferior. Slaves are subject to coercion and violation, with
no rights to integrity or privacy.“Since as a result of sin, different classes of' men have been
produced, and that these differentiated classes are "ordained by divine justice."”(Quodlibet) Pope
Gregory in 600 A.D divided mankind into a hierarchy of rulership, where one man is more
dominant than the following. This notion of supremacy is exemplified in the story of Ham. The
story of Ham involves Ham and his descendants being cursed to eternal servitude due to
Hamseeing his father naked. The curse slowly turns Ham’s descendants black referencing that
Ham is the biblical ancestor of African-Americans. By doing so, people of darker skin were
forced to become slaves.
While there are bold and clear slavery commandments in the Bible, and there are no anti-
slavery commandments. This culminates to pro-slavery activists having the upper hand in the
biblical debate against the abolitionists on whether slavery should be kept or condemned. Using
the Bible as a tool, pro-slavery advocates were able to institute slavery in pre-war America. “If
we apply sola scriptura to slavery, I’m afraid the abolitionists are on relatively weak ground.
Nowhere is slavery in the Bible lambasted as an oppressive and evil institution.”(Faithless). The
absence of anti-slavery passages and verses on how slaves were treated are found in the Old
Testament, and spoken naturally in the New Testament inferring that slavery is normality.

3. Lopez 3
Therefore, by using just the Old Testament, promoters of slavery were able to enact a doctrine of
slavery during the times of the slave trade in America. From the prosecution to the beating of a
slave, the masters in pre-war America were able to defend their crimes by arguing that under
God’s right, slaves were to be treated inferiorly to their masters as they were in biblical times.
In addition contrary to modern belief, the eradication of slavery in the United was not due
to Christians. In fact, the Bible was used to justify the American slave trade for years. Slavery in
ancient Christianity is the basis for slavery in the antebellum South. Slaves were brought, sold,
and kidnapped if they ran away from their masters. This is how early Christianity influenced the
actions of the Europeans. While the Bible establishes the code of conduct for the treatment of
slaves, these codes were vague and easily bent. Usually those codes of slave treatment are only
applied to Hebrew slaves, none else. Just how in Israel you could kidnap, capture, or purchase a
slave against their will, so could you in the South. More over in the South, the enslavement of a
U.S. citizen was termed illegal in the same way that an Israelite could not enslave a fellow
Israelite. Slavery in early Christianity set the foundation for the building blocks of slavery in the
eighteenth-century South.Since slavery was God’s right, Christian slave holders would use this
term as an excuse to buy slaves, or a cheap work force. The slave holders would use the Curse of
Ham to rectify the use of African-Americans during the triangular trade. All in the name of God,
slaves were ill-treated and sometimes even killed during the Atlantic slave trade.
Christianity planted a seed that blossomed to a rose; beautiful but deadly. Just like how
this religion gives humanity hope, this religion also enslaves humanity to serve under one
another. As corrupt as slavery was, this was the norm of the people in biblical times for they
operated at different standards than modern day societies. Just as how Europeans believed the
Earth was flat, the people in Israel believed slavery as being commanded by God. While this

4. Lopez 4
theory is sane, slavery advocates during the pre-civil war in America knew slavery as being
horrid and still held on to the notion of slavery by acclaiming to the bible for support. Until this
day, not only did Christianity negatively impact the use of slavery but there still pious Christians
who try to defend and justify the use of slavery in the antebellum South.