tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14054730.post2199006844842485577..comments2024-03-12T06:18:44.998-07:00Comments on Brain Cramps for God: The Listening Heart: The Bible and SlaveryJohn Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17015850035301812424noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14054730.post-12303641662360321082007-08-22T14:59:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:59:00.000-07:00JCH,I'm not familiar with the book you're critiqui...JCH,<BR/><BR/>I'm not familiar with the book you're critiquing here, but I think you've missed something important if you are asking the question, does the Bible explicitly claim that slavery is God's will. In reading pro- and anti-slavery Christian polemics from 19th century America, I learned that the crucial question was the more conservatively-phrased, "Does the Bible prohibit slavery?" After all, no one sat around reasoning theologically before instituting modern chattel slavery--it arose for economic reasons. The debate, when it developed, was between those who found in the Bible grounds for upholding the practice and those who argued against it. In this debate, from a textualist or "conservative" hermeneutical point of view, the pro-slavery Christians had much the better of the argument (see Thornton Stringfellow on this point, or Mark Knoll's recent writing). Text after text mentioned slavery, and in almost every case the plain meaning of the text upheld slavery as a practice that was sanctioned by God (and saying that the Mosaic laws on slavery only treated it as a fact of life would have been an unforgiveably liberal exegetical error in those days--God was legislating, after all, and God doesn't legislate in a historically-constructed manner). The New Testament was, if anything, even more damning evidence that Christians could rightly own slaves. <BR/><BR/>To see what I mean, try reading Christ's slave parables as parables about Jim Crow--the bad, lazy slave is bound and lynched, etc. That the social arrangements described therein were a given is in part the point--by simply repeating it as a given, a reasonable reader would conclude that Jesus was, if not approving of the arrangement, certainly not objecting to it. <BR/><BR/>The progressive exegetes who argued against this interpretation generally did so on two grounds: one, the frankly spurious reading of "setting the captives free" in Isaiah and Luke as referring to slaves; and two, the argument from the sweep of Scripture, that while it affirms slavery in every particular instance, the drift is against it on grounds of human equality, etc (and if I may be provocative, this is somewhat analogous to the arguments made by liberals today about homosexuality). <BR/><BR/>I have not seen arguments from the mid-19th century to the effect that slavery was a feature of economic life in Biblical times and therefore Biblical statements had no relevance for modern slavery, but I can't imagine they would have been made by any but the most liberal congregationalists and Unitarians. It suggests that God's will is mutable and, moreover, that the Bible is inflected with human institutions and history. <BR/><BR/>And indeed, the institutional church was not necessarily helpful in abolishing slavery. Rome never condemned modern slavery, though it did persistently argue for humane treatment of slaves. Many of the other traditions split geographically, with Southerners claiming Biblical warrant for slavery and some (though by no means all) Northerners claiming the opposite. <BR/><BR/>This is all a long way of saying that while I find it plausible that the author you cite here overstates Christianity's historic endorsement of slavery, that is hardly the same thing as saying that Christianity didn't play a significant role in upholding modern slavery, with the aid of copious Scriptural evidence.Benjamin Dueholmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12223314091512163603noreply@blogger.com