John Derosa – Catholic Answers Article –
How do we respond to quotes like this from Dan Savage–
The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn’t say “Christians don’t own people.” Paul talks about how Christians own people.
Dan Savage from his keynote speech at a conference for high school journalists in 2012
We ignore what the Bible says about slavery, because the Bible got slavery wrong. Tim — uh, Sam Harris, in A Letter to a Christian Nation, points out that the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong.
Even a quick examination of the New Testament and the letter to Philemon shows that Savage misses the mark in his interpretation. St. Paul exhorts Philemon to grant freedom to his slave Onesimus. In a key passage of the letter, Paul says: “Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me (15-17, emphasis mine).
It’s true that Paul doesn’t use the phrase, “Christians don’t own people,” but he doesn’t have to say that to teach that slavery is no longer acceptable. It is plain from his teaching here, as well as in his other letters, that Christ has ushered in a law of love and that Christians ought to live by that love in how the treat others. Savage twists Paul’s teaching to make it seem like it condones slavery when it does not. That’s a specific example you may want to memorize when discussing slavery in the Bible.
“Slavery” in the Old Testament context does not mean what most people today, especially in America with the evils of slavery in its not-too-distant past, have in mind. There are at least three different ways to use the term.
- There is the “chattel slavery” that most people call to mind, which involves forcing people into service indefinitely, unwavering cruelty, and the reduction of people to mere property. Although this was common in the African-American slave trade (and gravely wrong),it’s not what the Old Testament describes.
- Old Testament slavery commonly refers to a process of indentured servitude that the poor and destitute (or those with enormous debts) would make use of temporarily. They could “sell themselves” as servants (“slaves”) to pay off a debt or obtain sustenance for themselves and their families in a time and place with no government welfare programs. Although this type of “slavery” is a hard thing to experience, it is not intrinsically wrong.
- Sometimes “slavery” refers to penal servitude in which where wrongdoers are punished with forced labor. This is also not wrong in itself (even today, some criminal punishments include “community service”), although depending on circumstances it may not always be prudent.
Why didn’t Jesus condemn slavery? We could say first that Jesus had a greater purpose than eliminating slavery or any other particular social evil. His mission transcended all social and political issues. He came not to be the perfect political leader that some were expecting, but rather the Messiah who would “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).
Next, we must note that Christ’s teaching to love God above all things and to love our neighbors as ourselves does mean that the practice of chattel slavery is intrinsically wrong. He may not have laid out a policy plan against slavery in particular, but he spoke plainly and powerfully about a way of love that is incompatible with chattel slavery.