The Bible on Slavery

Above: A Portrait of Richard Furman (1755-1825), President of the South Carolina Baptist Convention

Furman in 1822: "the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example."

Pro-Slavery

1. Slavery had long been widely regraded as a universal feature of human society.

2. Several passages in the Old Testatment prescribe rules for buying, selling, inheriting and punishing slaves. For example:  Exodus 21:20-21:  "If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hands, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property."

3. The New Testament also supports slavery. Example: Ephesians 6:5: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."

4. Paul's New Testament letter to Philemon says fugitive slaves must be returned (this passage was known as the "Pauline Mandate").

5. Christ never spoke against slavery. As Andrew Delbanco notes in The War Before the War, "In 1819, the National Intelligencer (published in Washington) ran an article asking, 'If domestic slavery had been deemed by Jesus Christ the atrocious crime which it is now represented to be, could it have been passed over without censure?'" (53).

Abolitionist

1. Matthew 18:25-27 "recounts an incident in which a man is about to be sold along with his wife and children as satisfaction for unpaid debts--until 'the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt'" (Delbanco 53).

2. The general spirit of Christ's teachings are incompatible with slavery.

3. Matthew 25:40, adapted by Stowe in her Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) :  "In the last judgment will He not say to you, 'I have been in the slave-prison,--in the slave-coffle. I have been sold in your markets; I have toiled for naught in your fields; I have been smitten on the mouth in your courts of justice; I have been denied a hearing in my own church,--and yet cared not for it. Ye went, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.' And if ye shall answer, 'When Lord?' he shall say unto you, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'"