Slavery and religion

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Historically, slavery has been regulated, supported, or opposed on religious grounds.

In Judaism, Hebrew slaves were given a range of treatments and protections. They were to be treated as an extended family with certain protections, and they could be freed. They were property but could also own material goods.

Early Christian authors (except for Assyrian Christians who did not believe in slavery) maintained the spiritual equality of slaves and free persons while accepting slavery as an institution. Early modern papal decrees allowed the enslavement of the unbelievers, though popes denounced slavery from the fifteenth century onward. This denouncement of slavery did not discourage (for example) the diocese of the Anglican church from having an indirect involvement with the religious conversion of black slaves in Barbados, in which one of the main principles was the divine right of the master over the slave. In the eighteenth century, the abolition movement took shape among Christians across the globe, but various denominations did not prohibit slavery among their members into the nineteenth century. Enslaved non-believers were sometimes converted to Christianity, but elements of their traditional beliefs merged with their Christian beliefs.

Early Islamic texts encourage kindness towards slaves and manumission (legally freeing individual slaves), while recognizing slavery as an institution and permitting enslavement of non-Muslims imprisoned or bought beyond the borders of Islamic rule. Children born to slaves were also considered legally as slaves.

Slavery in the Bible

The Genesis narrative about the Curse of Ham has often been held to be an aetiological story, giving a reason for the enslavement of the Canaanites. The word ham is very similar to the Hebrew word for hot, which is cognate with an Egyptian word (kem, which means black) and is used to refer to Egypt itself, in reference to the fertile black soil along the Nile valley. Although many scholars therefore view Ham as an eponym which is used to represent Egypt in the Table of Nations, a number of Christians throughout history, including Origen and the Cave of Treasures, have argued for the alternate proposition that Ham represents all black people, his name symbolising their dark skin colour; pro-slavery advocates, from Eutychius of Alexandria and John Philoponus, to American pro-slavery apologists, have therefore occasionally interpreted the narrative as a condemnation of all black people to slavery. A few Christians, like Jerome, even took up the racist notion that black people inherently had a soul as black as [their] body.

Slavery was customary in antiquity, and it is condoned by the Torah. The Bible uses the Hebrew term () to refer to slavery; however, has a much wider meaning than the English term slavery, and in several circumstances it is more accurately translated into English as servant. It was seen as legitimate to enslave captives obtained through warfare, but not through kidnapping. Children could also be sold into debt bondage, which was sometimes ordered by a court of law.

As with the Hittite Laws and the Code of Hammurabi, the Bible does set minimum rules for the conditions under which slaves were to be kept. These are written as condition statements reflective of bronze age law. A set of if/then parameters to account for specific transgressions. Slaves were to be treated as part of an extended family; they were allowed to celebrate the Sukkot festival, Israelite slaves could not be compelled to work with rigour, and debtors who sold themselves as slaves to their creditors had to be treated the same as a hired servant. If a master harmed a slave in one of the ways covered by the lex talionis, the slave was to be compensated by manumission; if the slave died within 24 to 48 hours, he or she was to be avenged (whether this refers to the death penalty or not is uncertain).

Israelite slaves were automatically manumitted after six years of work, and/or at the next Jubilee (occurring either every 49 or every 50 years, depending on interpretation), although the latter would not apply if the slave was owned by an Israelite and was not in debt bondage. Slaves released automatically in their 7th year of service, which did not include female slaves, or did, were to be given livestock, grain, and wine, as a parting gift (possibly hung round their necks by the slave gaining a ritual ear piercing; after such renunciation, the individual was enslaved forever (and not released at the Jubilee). Non-Israelite slaves were always to be enslaved forever, and treated as inheritable property.

In New Testament books, including the First Epistle of Peter, slaves are admonished to obey their masters, as to the Lord, and not to men; and the Epistle to Philemon was used by both pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists; in the epistle, Paul returns Onesimus, a fugitive slave, back to his master.

Judaism

More mainstream forms of first-century Judaism did not exhibit such qualms about slavery, and ever since the second-century expulsion of Jews from Judea, wealthy Jews have owned non-Jewish slaves, wherever it was legal to do so;

The Talmud, a document of great importance in Judaism, made many rulings that made manumission easier and more likely:

• The costly and compulsory giving of gifts was restricted to the 7th-year manumission only.
• Putting phylacteries on the slave, or making him publicly read three or more verses from the Torah, was counted as a declaration of the slave's manumission. although loans were allowed; similarly slave trade with Tyre was only to be for the purpose of removing slaves from non-Jewish religion. Other types of trade were also discouraged: men selling themselves to women, and post-pubescent daughters being sold into slavery by their fathers. although masters were often granted access to the services of the wives of any of their slaves.

According to the Talmudic law, killing a slave is punishable in the same way as killing a freeman, even if it was committed by the owner. While slaves are considered the owner's property, they may not work on Sabbath and holidays; they may acquire and hold property of the owner.

Several prominent Jewish writers of the Middle Ages took offense at the idea that Jews might be enslaved; Joseph Caro and Maimonides both argue that calling a Jew slave was so offensive that it should be punished by ex-communication. However, they did not condemn enslavement of non-Jews. Indeed, they argued that the biblical rule, that slaves should be freed for certain injuries, should actually only apply to slaves who had converted to Judaism;

Christianity

Different forms of slavery existed for over 18 centuries within Christianity. Although in the early years of Christianity, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, and the Christian view that all people were equal including slaves was a novel idea within the Roman Empire, the institution of slavery was rarely criticised. David Brion Davis writes that the "variations in early Christian opinion on servitude fit comfortably within a framework of thought that would exclude any attempt to abolish slavery as an institution". Indeed, in 340, the local Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for urging that slaves should liberate themselves; with one of the 20 canons of the Synod declaring:

3) If anyone shall teach a slave, under the pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away from his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will and all honor, let him be anathema.

A variation of the Canon would be adopted as Orthodox Catholic Law, during the 451 AD, Council of Chalcedon, as:

4) ... Every monk must be subject to his bishop, and must not leave his house except at his suggestion. A slave, however, can not enter the monastic life without the consent of his master.

Augustine of Hippo, who renounced his former Manicheanism, argued that slavery was part of the mechanism to preserve the natural order of things; John Chrysostom, who is regarded as a saint by Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, argued that slaves should be resigned to their fate, because by "obeying his master he is obeying God". but he also stated that "Slavery is the fruit of covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable greediness" in his Epist. ad Ephes. As the Apostle Paul admonished the early Christians; "There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus". And in fact, even some of the first popes were once slaves themselves. Though in the following centuries Roman popes would ban the ownership of Christian slaves by Jews, Muslims, heathens, and other Christians, while the Catholic Council of London in 1102, issued a local blanket decree, though not a Church canon: "Let no one dare hereafter to engage in the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals."

In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which granted Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. (This papal bull was issued in response to the wars which were triggered by the Fall of Constantinople in 1453) In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility. Also, in 1639 Pope Urban VIII purchased slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta.

In the 15th and 16th centuries other popes denounced slavery as a great crime, including Pius II, and Eugene IV.

In 1639, Pope Urban VIII forbade slavery, as did Benedict XIV in 1741. In 1815, pope Pius VII demanded that the Congress of Vienna suppress the slave trade, and Gregory XVI condemned it again in 1839. As a response to this position, the Spanish monarchy's subsequent Requerimiento provided a religious justification for the enslavement of the local populations, on the pretext that they refused to convert to Roman Catholicism and therefore denied the authority of the pope.

Various interpretations of Christianity were also used to justify slavery. For example, some people believed that slavery was a punishment that was reserved for sinners. George Whitefield, who is famed for his sparking of the so-called Great Awakening of American evangelicalism, overturned a province-wide ban against slavery, and went on to own several hundred slaves himself. Yet Whitefield is remembered as one of the first evangelists who preached to the enslaved.

At other times, Christian groups worked against slavery. The seventh-century Saint Eloi used his vast wealth to purchase British and Saxon slaves in groups of 50 to 100 in order to set them free. The Quakers in particular were early leaders of abolitionism, and in keeping with this tradition they denounced slavery at least as early as 1688. In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed, and 9 of its 12 founding members were Quakers; William Wilberforce, an early supporter of the society, went on to push through the 1807 Slave Trade Act, striking a major blow against the Atlantic slave trade. Leaders of Methodism and Presbyterianism also vehemently denounced human bondage, convincing their congregations to do likewise; Methodists and Presbyterians subsequently made the repudiation of slavery a condition of membership.

In the Southern United States, however, support for slavery was strong; anti-slavery literature was prevented from passing through the postal system, and even the transcripts of sermons, by the famed English preacher Charles Spurgeon, were burned due to their censure of slavery. When the American Civil War broke out, slavery became one of the issues which would be decided by its outcome; the southern defeat led to a constitutional ban on slavery. Despite the general emancipation of slaves, members of fringe white groups like the Christian Identity movement, and the Ku Klux Klan (a white supremacist group) see the enslavement of Africans as a positive aspect of American history.

America

In the United States, Christianity not only held views about slavery but also on how slaves practiced their own form of Christianity. Prior to the work of Melville Herskovits in 1941, it was widely believed that all elements of African culture were destroyed by the enslavement experience. Since his work, scholarship has found that "Slave Christianity" existed as a patchwork of African and Christian religious traditions. The slaves brought a wide variety of religious traditions with them including African traditional religions and Islam.

During the early eighteenth century, Anglican missionaries who attempted to bring Christianity to slaves in the Southern Colonies often found themselves butting up against uncooperative masters and resistant slaves. An unquestionable obstacle to the acceptance of Christianity among slaves was their desire to continue to adhere to the religious beliefs and rituals of their African ancestors as much as possible. Missionaries who worked in the South were especially displeased with the slaves' retention of African practices such as polygamy and what they called idolatrous dancing. In fact, even black people who embraced Christianity in America did not completely abandon the religions of Africa. Instead, they engaged in syncretism, blending Christian influences with traditional African rites and beliefs. Symbols and objects, such as crosses, were conflated with charms which were carried by Africans in order to ward off evil spirits. Christ was interpreted as a healer, similar to the priests of Africa. In the New World, fusions of African spirituality and Christianity led to distinctly new practices within slave populations, including Louisiana Voodoo or Vodun in Haiti. Although African religious influences were also important among Northern blacks, the exposure to African religions was more intense in the South, where the percentage of the black population was higher.

There were, however, some commonalities across the majority of tribal traditions. Perhaps the primary understanding of tribal traditions was the commonly held belief that there was no separation of the sacred and the secular. All life was sacred and the supernatural was present in every facet and focus of life. Most tribal traditions highlighted this experience of the supernatural in ecstatic experiences of the supernatural which were brought on by ritual song and dance. Repetitious music and dancing were often used to bring on these experiences through the use of drums and chanting. These experiences were realized in the "possession" of a worshipper in which one is not only taken over by the divine but actually becomes one with the divine. This practice was a major mark of African American Christianity during the slavery period.

Christianity came to the slaves of North America more slowly. Many colonial slaveholders feared that baptizing slaves would lead to emancipation because of vague laws that concerned the slave status of Christians under British colonial rule. Even after 1706, by which time many states had passed laws that stated that baptism would not alter a slave's status, slaveholders continued to believe that the catechization of slaves would not be a wise economic choice. Slaves usually had one day off each week, usually Sunday. They used that time to grow their own crops, dance and sing (doing such things on the Sabbath was frowned upon by most preachers), so there was little time for slaves to receive religious instruction.

During the antebellum period, slave preachers—enslaved or formerly enslaved evangelists—became instrumental in shaping slave Christianity. They preached a gospel that was radically different from the gospel that was preached by white preachers, who often used Christianity in an attempt to make slaves more complacent with their enslaved status. Instead of focusing on obedience, slave preachers placed a greater emphasis on the Old Testament, especially on the Book of Exodus. They likened the plight of the American slaves to the plight of the enslaved Hebrews of the Bible, instilling hope into the hearts of those who were enslaved. Slave preachers were instrumental in shaping the religious landscape of African Americans for decades to come.

Islam

According to Bernard Lewis, slavery has been a part of Islam's history from its beginning. The Quran like the Old and the New Testaments, states Lewis, "assumes the existence of slavery". Muhammad and his Companions owned slaves, and some of them acquired slaves through conquests. However, some argure that Muhammad never owned slaves himself. He also advised people to free slaves. An example of this is Zayd ibn Haritha, who was a slave Muhammad freed and adopted as a son.

During the beginnings of Islam, Classic slavery was not forbidden, but the latter (Islam) encourages the emancipation of slaves. In various verses, Quran refers to slaves as "necks" (raqabah) or "those whom your right hand possesses" (Ma malakat aymanukum).