Originally posted by shunyadragon
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No where in the Bible is stated that it was a sin to buy and sell slaves.
Indentured servitude was common among the Jews, but so was the buying. selling and owning of foreign slaves.
No, because no where in the Bible, Torah, Tanakh nor the Quran does it specifically reject slavery.
The mind of the abolitionists
Christian abolitionists came from across the denominational spectrum and from various parts of the British Atlantic world. Yet throughout their varied writings, a number of key themes appear again and again.
‘Of one blood’: the idea of brotherhood
Abolitionists believed passionately in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Indeed, the campaign’s logo (devised by Josiah Wedgwood) was an image of a manacled slave on his knees beseeching his captor: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ Antislavery activism relied on the conviction that all people were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27) and precious in his sight. God was the Father of all mankind, all nations were his ‘offspring’, ‘of one blood’ (Acts 17:26). Disturbed that blacks ‘stand convicted – of a darker skin!’, the Anglican Evangelical Hannah More urged her readers to ‘Respect his image which they bear…They still are men, and men shou’d still be free’.[11] ‘Africans and Europeans, Pagans and Christians, are all on a level’, wrote the Calvinist Baptist Abraham Booth. Oppressed Africans ‘are brethren of the human kind’.[12] ‘We are the common offspring of one universal Parent’, wrote the Anglican Thomas Bradshaw, ‘with whom there is no respect of persons’.[13] When William Cowper contemplated slavery he lamented that ‘the natural bond/Of brotherhood is sever’d’.[14] Every reader of Scripture should know, wrote Cowper,
That souls have no discriminating hue,
Alike important in their Maker’s view;
That none are free from blemish since the fall,
And love divine has paid one price for all.[15]
The doctrines of creation, fall and redemption underscored human equality in the eyes of God.
The Christian belief in the fundamental unity of the human race clashed with fashionable theories of polygenesis and African inferiority, promoted by infidel philosophers. As Davis explains, ‘early antislavery writers like James Ramsay and Granville Sharp repeatedly identified the theory of racial inferiority with Hume, Voltaire, and materialistic philosophy in general; they explicitly presented their attacks on slavery as a vindication of Christianity, moral accountability, and the unity of mankind’.[16] Hannah More deplored the new philosophical racism:
Perish th’ illiberal thought which wou’d debase
The native genius of the sable race
Perish the proud philosophy, which sought
To rob them of the pow’rs of equal thought!
Does then th’ immortal principle within
Change with the casual colour of a skin?[17]
The most eloquent testimony against ideas of racial inferiority came from black converts to Christianity. Abolitionists pointed to the writings of accomplished Africans: the letters of Ignatius Sancho, the poems of Phillis Wheatley, and the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano.[18] Equiano himself pointed to Scripture. Commenting on a book arguing ‘that the Negro race is an inferior species of mankind’, he wrote indignantly: ‘Oh fool! See the 17th chapter of the Acts, verse 26: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth”’. Working out the logical implications of the text, Equiano argued in favour of racial intermarriage, and went on to marry Susannah Cullen of Soham in Cambridgeshire.[19]
‘Deliverance to the captives’: the idea of liberty slavery
Abolitionists believed that common humanity entailed equal rights, especially the right to liberty. Because liberty was a gift of the Creator, men were not free to dispose of it by selling themselves into slavery, nor could they lawfully deprive anyone else of their liberty by force. The slave-traders’ claim that Africans were now the property of Europeans was without foundation in natural law, and constituted a violation of natural rights. The Scottish philosophers who developed this line of argument were building on the Christian natural law tradition – Francis Hutcheson was a Church of Scotland minister, and James Beattie was a well known critic of Hume’s irreligion. Their argument had great appeal. ‘Liberty’, wrote John Wesley, ‘is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air. And no human can deprive him of that right, which he derives from the law of nature’.[20] Hannah More also used the language of human rights...
Christian abolitionists came from across the denominational spectrum and from various parts of the British Atlantic world. Yet throughout their varied writings, a number of key themes appear again and again.
‘Of one blood’: the idea of brotherhood
Abolitionists believed passionately in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Indeed, the campaign’s logo (devised by Josiah Wedgwood) was an image of a manacled slave on his knees beseeching his captor: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ Antislavery activism relied on the conviction that all people were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27) and precious in his sight. God was the Father of all mankind, all nations were his ‘offspring’, ‘of one blood’ (Acts 17:26). Disturbed that blacks ‘stand convicted – of a darker skin!’, the Anglican Evangelical Hannah More urged her readers to ‘Respect his image which they bear…They still are men, and men shou’d still be free’.[11] ‘Africans and Europeans, Pagans and Christians, are all on a level’, wrote the Calvinist Baptist Abraham Booth. Oppressed Africans ‘are brethren of the human kind’.[12] ‘We are the common offspring of one universal Parent’, wrote the Anglican Thomas Bradshaw, ‘with whom there is no respect of persons’.[13] When William Cowper contemplated slavery he lamented that ‘the natural bond/Of brotherhood is sever’d’.[14] Every reader of Scripture should know, wrote Cowper,
That souls have no discriminating hue,
Alike important in their Maker’s view;
That none are free from blemish since the fall,
And love divine has paid one price for all.[15]
The doctrines of creation, fall and redemption underscored human equality in the eyes of God.
The Christian belief in the fundamental unity of the human race clashed with fashionable theories of polygenesis and African inferiority, promoted by infidel philosophers. As Davis explains, ‘early antislavery writers like James Ramsay and Granville Sharp repeatedly identified the theory of racial inferiority with Hume, Voltaire, and materialistic philosophy in general; they explicitly presented their attacks on slavery as a vindication of Christianity, moral accountability, and the unity of mankind’.[16] Hannah More deplored the new philosophical racism:
Perish th’ illiberal thought which wou’d debase
The native genius of the sable race
Perish the proud philosophy, which sought
To rob them of the pow’rs of equal thought!
Does then th’ immortal principle within
Change with the casual colour of a skin?[17]
The most eloquent testimony against ideas of racial inferiority came from black converts to Christianity. Abolitionists pointed to the writings of accomplished Africans: the letters of Ignatius Sancho, the poems of Phillis Wheatley, and the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano.[18] Equiano himself pointed to Scripture. Commenting on a book arguing ‘that the Negro race is an inferior species of mankind’, he wrote indignantly: ‘Oh fool! See the 17th chapter of the Acts, verse 26: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth”’. Working out the logical implications of the text, Equiano argued in favour of racial intermarriage, and went on to marry Susannah Cullen of Soham in Cambridgeshire.[19]
‘Deliverance to the captives’: the idea of liberty slavery
Abolitionists believed that common humanity entailed equal rights, especially the right to liberty. Because liberty was a gift of the Creator, men were not free to dispose of it by selling themselves into slavery, nor could they lawfully deprive anyone else of their liberty by force. The slave-traders’ claim that Africans were now the property of Europeans was without foundation in natural law, and constituted a violation of natural rights. The Scottish philosophers who developed this line of argument were building on the Christian natural law tradition – Francis Hutcheson was a Church of Scotland minister, and James Beattie was a well known critic of Hume’s irreligion. Their argument had great appeal. ‘Liberty’, wrote John Wesley, ‘is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air. And no human can deprive him of that right, which he derives from the law of nature’.[20] Hannah More also used the language of human rights...
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