How Religion Promotes Slavery - and Other Horrors

The Christianist far right loves to cite the supposedly inerrant Bible to justify their virulent anti-gay rhetoric. But, as noted many times before on this blog, Bible inerrancy if faithfully applied rules out selectively choosing from "column A and column B" as in a Chinese restaurant and leaves its proponents with the whole nasty ball of wax. It's a proposition of take or leave the entirety of the Bible's supposed dictates or be in truth nothing less than a fraudulent hypocrite. Sadly, most of the Christianists and the leadership of the Catholic Church fall into the lying hypocrite category. CNN's Religion blog looks at how religion and the Bible in particular supports and justifies slavery (why is it any surprise the many white Christianists are racists?). Here are some article excerpts:

Which revered religious figure - Moses, Jesus, or the Prophet Mohammad - spoke out boldly and unambiguously against slavery? Answer: None of them.

One of these men owned slaves, another created laws to regulate - but not ban – slavery. The third’s chief spokesman even ordered slaves to obey their masters, religious scholars say.

Most modern people of faith see slavery as a great evil. Though the three great Western religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – disagree on many matters, most of their contemporary followers condemn slavery. Yet there was a time when Jews, Christians and Muslims routinely cited the words and deeds of their founders to justify human bondage, scholars say. At times, religion was deployed more to promote the spread of slavery than to prevent it.

It’s been said that great religious figures transcend history. They rise above the peculiar customs of their day to show a new path forward. It’s a matter of debate if Moses, Jesus and the Prophet Mohammad did that with slavery. All three seemed to either ignore or tolerate some forms of slavery, some scholars say.

The parables of Jesus, for example, were full of references to slaves. Terms like “servants” or “stewards” are what we would call slaves today. Yet Jesus doesn’t seem to make any moral judgments about slavery in his parables, Crossan says.

Jesus’ apparent silence on slavery and Paul’s ambiguous statements on the issue had dreadful historical consequences. It helped ensure that slavery would survive well into the 19th century in the U.S., some scholars say.

American Christians who owned slaves had a simple but powerful defense in the run-up to the Civil War. The Old and New Testament sanctioned slavery and, since the Bible is infallible, slavery is part of God’s order, says Mark Noll, author “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.”

“The defenders of slavery said Jesus condemned quite a few things that were standard in the Old Testament,” Noll says. “He condemned polygamy, violence, easy divorce, but he never condemned slavery.”

It is perhaps more than a little ironic that today's Christianists - many of whom are descendents of the slave owners of yesteryear - cite that Jesus never condemned slavery yet totally ignore the fact that Jesus never condemned homosexuality whatsoever. Indeed, same New Testament passages - e.g., the centurion and his lover who Jesus healed - seem to indicate that Jesus was kind to same sex lovers and recognized their faith first and foremost rather than the gender of who they slept with.