modern day view of slavery

[jpd]

For hundreds of years, Christianity has accepted slavery as legitimate. They found nothing in the bible that prohibited the owning of slaves.
Yet now, all Christian denominations have come to the conclusion that slavery is wrong. How did the church come to this understanding so late?

It doesn’t appear this revelation came from the bible. If anything, the bible was used to defend the rights of slave owners. In the US, the Christians in the “bible belt” were the last to give up the practice of slavery. No doubt they quoted Old Testament scripture which acknowledged the slaves as the property of the owners.

I’m not questioning the modern teaching which prohibits the owning of slaves. I just question why is it that this teaching did not come from the bible? After all, we are to believe that nothing the bible alone is to be the source of our theology. I know that there are a few bible verses which limit the ownership of Hebrews or Christian brothers as slaves, but this falls far short of clearly stating that ownership of all slaves is wrong.

It would seem that this modern day view of slavery comes from the Holy Spirit, not the bible. But this would suggest bible is not the sole source of revelation.

[wildboar]

jpd:

It really seems that you are grasping at straws here. There are a number of practices which many in the church-world have determined as being sinful which the Bible does not say are.

Many Baptists have determined that all consumption of alcohol is sinful. Would you conclude from this that they have been led by the Holy Spirit and that we must now accept this as infallible truth from God?

I have no desire to spend any time trying to convince anyone that people should still own slaves. In the U.S. it led to hideous abuses. However, slave owning or being a slave is not sinful. The Bible gives guidelines to each party as to how they ought to behave towards one another and which ought to be obeyed by all of us. Many of us do not go by the name slave, but we have the same responsibilities to our employers as the Bible gives to slaves and employers must obey God in His commands to them.

Sola Gratia,
WildBoar

[jpd]

I guess I made a false assumption that all modern day Christians believe that the practice of slavery is wrong. Perhaps this is a point where fundamentalist differ from non-fundamentalist Christians.

I'm always learning.

[Brandan Kraft]

It depends on the definition of slavery. If you're suggesting the slavery of the Black Americans in the 1800s was wrong (forced work and no wages), no doubt! The Bible never gives any of that credence.

But the slavery of modern america where you go to work for a company (employment), of course there is nothing wrong with that.