I’m not going to defend the Southern Baptist Convention, lol. But it is worth noting that slavery had existed since civilisations have existed - likely before the first words of The Torah were ever penned. Despite it taking almost two millenia, Christianity was the force that generally stopped it around the time it gained the most influence, as well as the global reach of colonial empires, even if they were just acting to appease the voters back home - although it still exists underground.
It’s quite silly to blame someone for partaking in a practice they didn’t start, but eventually stopped.
If anything, you could probably argue that if Christianity didn’t have the influence that it had, there’ll still be slaves in our society today.
Here’s the issue about that though. The Bible doesn’t have a single syllable condemning slavery. It just wasn’t part of the social structure of the millennia to do so. Instead, there are rules and laws governing slavery and how to do slavery better. I don’t doubt that Christians contributed to the abolition of slavery, but that’s not a very high bar when everybody is a Christian, regardless of their thoughts. How can one be so confident that it wasn’t Christianity and the enlightenment or Christianity and gospel music or something else? What specifically in Christianity made abolition more likely?
From what I understand, enlightenment principles as well as the slave trade becoming unprofitable ended up stopping the slave trade
I’m not going to defend the Southern Baptist Convention, lol. But it is worth noting that slavery had existed since civilisations have existed - likely before the first words of The Torah were ever penned. Despite it taking almost two millenia, Christianity was the force that generally stopped it around the time it gained the most influence, as well as the global reach of colonial empires, even if they were just acting to appease the voters back home - although it still exists underground.
It’s quite silly to blame someone for partaking in a practice they didn’t start, but eventually stopped.
If anything, you could probably argue that if Christianity didn’t have the influence that it had, there’ll still be slaves in our society today.
Here’s the issue about that though. The Bible doesn’t have a single syllable condemning slavery. It just wasn’t part of the social structure of the millennia to do so. Instead, there are rules and laws governing slavery and how to do slavery better. I don’t doubt that Christians contributed to the abolition of slavery, but that’s not a very high bar when everybody is a Christian, regardless of their thoughts. How can one be so confident that it wasn’t Christianity and the enlightenment or Christianity and gospel music or something else? What specifically in Christianity made abolition more likely? From what I understand, enlightenment principles as well as the slave trade becoming unprofitable ended up stopping the slave trade