Hi Kyle,

I enjoyed your piece here. I am afraid that you are flying in the face of most of the scholarship here. You are also ignoring the New Testament support for slavery, most specifically "Slaves obey your masters." Paul even returns a runaway slave to his master in Philemon.

The entire ancient world accepted slavery as a fact of life. Most American theologians accepted slavery prior to the early nineteenth century. Mark Noll has even argued that the Civil War was a theological crisis fought between those who believed the Scripture approved of slavery and those who thought it disapproved. The scholarly consensus in that the Bible is either split evenly on the subject or leans in favor of the pro-slavery argument.

I know this does not fit your view of the Bible, but what we appear to see is an evolving view of slavery where passages that were written later are more disapproving of slavery than earlier passages. Perhaps God was revealing more truth over time.

The fact of the matter is that many American theologians have used the Bible to support slavery, white supremacy, the denigration of women, etc. Slavery was not seriously questioned in Europe or North America until the Enlightenment. I think Samuel Sewell, a Puritan minister or judge argued against slavery in the late 17th century, but he was a voice crying in the Wilderness.

Blessings