Christ, Marx, and the Liberation of Slaves

I have received some pushback on my previous article, which argued that Karl Marx was, indeed, largely to blame for the horrors of communism.  A young philosopher named Eric DeJardin wrote a rebuttal on my Facebook page, which I will answer later.  But first, let me respond to a second and closely-related challenge he issued:  

DM: "And my demonstration of how Marx was to blame for the Gulag, which enslaved tens of millions, remains untouched."

ED: "I responded to it pretty extensively on your FB page. We're in the middle of discussing it, so it's not exactly 'untouched.'  Anyway, by your own criteria a better case can be made for holding Christianity responsible for slavery in Christian nations than can be made for holding Marx responsible for atrocities in Marxist nations.  Heck, we can point to texts plainly supporting slavery in the Bible while, as you have admitted, you can't even say that Marx would have supported what was done in his name." (emphasis mine)

My mistake.  Eric did try to rebut my arguments.  Good for him.  This is a better forum for more in-depth discussions, so I intend to answer his arguments here.  (Though one gets the feeling, with Marx and these young philosophers, that pushing them away from Marx, is like trying to talk Juliet into keeping from Romeo, after she has been smitten by Cupid's arrow.)

But first, let's tackle Eric's claim that by my six criteria for historical causation, given in that article, Christianity is more responsible for slavery than Marx is for communist atrocities.  The evidence points overwhelmingly in the opposite direction, I will argue.  

I. Judging Christianity and Marxism, Half a Dozen Criteria

1. Precedence.  "First, A must precede B, to cause it . . ."

"Christianity cannot be blamed for the general phenomena of inquisitions, or credited for the institution of marriage, since people were abusing others, marrying, or doing both at the same time, long before the first noel range out . . . 

"What belongs to our species as a whole cannot be credited to or blamed on any particular belief system . . . "

Nothing about slavery in Christian countries was unusual, except its ending.  Human beings had been enslaving one another since the dawn of time.  And the particular forms slavery took in Christian countries (including chattel slavery) were not unusual, either.  So by the criterion of precedence, it is hard to say Christianity caused slavery -- though easy to argue that it caused the abolition of slavery.  Slaves had often been set free before Christianity, but abolition movements were unusual.  (One finds hints of them here or there, such as under the rebel Wang Mang who temporarily overthrew the Han Dyansty.)      

Communism combined common and original elements, as I said: 

"KKK-like secret societies, and scapegoating, are common in world history, especially in the wake of a cataclysmic conflict like the Civil War.  So neither Christ nor Marx could have invented scapegoating or secret societies as a whole, but could have inspired or influenced the form a particular such phenomenon took . . . 

"Some other aspects of communism-in-practice were also common: dictatorship, mass murder, scapegoating, mass human bondage (when technology allowed).  But other parts of the system were fairly unusual.  Communes were established in most communist states.  They were not the first communes in history, but they were unusual in being established on a top-down basis, and the extreme to which, say, the Maoists and Kmer Rouge took them.  The attempt to put the proletariat in charge (or intellectuals in the name of the proletariat) was also unusual.  Attacks on one religion or other are not unique, but wholesale destruction represented a stark break from the past.  Rule by the communist party, and party organization from the top down to the village, school, and platoon levels, did not I think have close parallels in prior Russian or Chinese societies."  

So the Criterion of Precedence does not encourage us to blame Christ for slavery.  But it is easy to see how Marx's teaching may. in theory, have caused many of the evils of communism.  

2. Proximity.  "Second, like magnetism, the closer you stand, the harder a social influencer pulls.  Mohammed preached against idols, and before his death, Mecca had been cleared of them.  Marx advocated revolution, and seventy years later, the October Revolution erupted.  Most often, we are influenced by teachings we see lived out around us.  A hurricane spawned near Africa may break on Cape Cod, but only when warm water lies between source and destination.  Similarly, an ancient scripture may build great force over millennia, but only when the “warm water” of a practicing community of believers keeps it going . . . Proximity matters."

Early Christians did not, so far as I know, bring about any upsurge in slave-trading, or in slave ownership.  Indeed, in another post on this site, "Abolition of Slavery: The Early Years," I describe opposition to slavery in the Early Church.  And a reader cited a letter (which I have now verified) telling how St. Augustine's congregation liberated 120 slaves, a common sort of thing for them to do, Augustine implies:  

"About four months before I wrote this letter, a crowd of people collected from different regions, but particularly from Numidia, were brought here by Galatian merchants to be transported from the shores of Hippo (It is only, or at least mainly, the Galatians who are so eager to engage in this form of commerce). However, a faithful Christian was at hand, who was aware of our practice of performing acts of mercy in such cases; and he brought the news to the church. Immediately, about 120 people were set free by us (though I was absent at the time), some from the ship which they had to board, others from a place where they had been hidden before being put on board. We discovered that barely five or six of these had been sold by their parents. On hearing about the misfortunes that had led the rest of them to the Galatians, via their abductors and kidnappers, hardly one of us could restrain their tears." 

So there is no positive link between early Christianity and an increase in slavery: on the contrary, some push-back already occurred, including from the greatest early Christian thinker after St. Paul, and from others whom I cite, like Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Patrick.  

By contrast, as mentioned, revolution followed Marx within decades.  And after revolution, communes, abolition of private property, attacks on "religion," Dictatorship of the (alleged) Proletariat, secret police, mass arrests, and all the rest.  Not all of this was unique to communism (Point One), but much of it was highly unusual in European history, as was widely recognized at the time. 

So by the Criterion of Proximity, too, Marx can be credibly blamed for the Gulag, but Christ cannot reasonably be blamed for any increase in slavery.  (Which did not, it seems, occur for 1500 years.)    

3. "Third, duration.  Sometimes a religion is quickly accepted, but its deeper implications take generations to sink in." 

I should have made a distinction with this criterion, which is in some conflict with Criterion Two.  If the agents of social change gain great political power, change is often instituted quickly.  For instance, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young overthrew American tradition within their community, and instituted polygamy from the top down.  Chairman Mao overthrew the "Four Olds" and Confucian traditions within three decades.  However, both reforms proved short-lived: Mormon polygamy, because the larger American culture refused to admit Utah until they banned it, Maoism, because in later years, the Chinese Communist Party began to find Confucius useful.  (Though some reforms stuck, for instance, few Chinese now burn incense to ancestors.)  

I would argue that abolition of slavery was one of those "deeper implications" that took a while to sink in among Christians.  It was not imposed top-down when Christians finally took power, centuries after Christ.  But as shown above, and in the rest of that article, the anti-slave logic of the Gospel began having an effect early on through thinkers like Gregory of Nyssa and even (in a less sweeping manner) St. Augustine, an effect which grew, though there was often push-back, due to various forms of self-interest.  

Because Marxists gained dictatorial power, the effect of their thinking revealed itself early on, when zeal was still fiery, and then began to die down.  Early social experiments tended to be far infused with radical ideology, early in the revolutionary periods in Russia, China, Peru, Vietnam, and Cambodia.  Then reality began to set in.  People became exhausted by revolutionary fervor, and old ways reasserted themselves.  

Read The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, for an account of how that process played out in   

North Vietnam.  

4. An active ingredient.  "Fourth, something in the alleged cause should explain its supposed effect.  If Islam is blamed for encouraging prepubescent marriages, one should find something in the life of Mohammed or early Muslim teaching that encourages or allows men to marry young girls.  (Such as records of his consummating marriage to the nine-year-old Aisha.)  If Christianity is credited for saving girls from foot-binding in China, that claim will be strengthened if we find Jesus or the apostles helping women in analogous ways in the New Testament . . . "

Eric addresses this important criterion by claiming that the Bible clearly justifies slavery, while Marx opposed it.  (Forgetting, perhaps, that my argument against Marx does not particularly focus on slavery, though yes, his followers did resurrect it on a massive scale, for fairly predictable reasons.)  

So this is a key criterion, which I will focus on a little more than the others.  (But don't worry, I will be brief -- a thorough treatment would take a book!)   

In that previous article, I pointed to many "active ingredients" in Marx's personality and teaching which led to the Gulag and other horrors.  I need not repeat or explain them all again here.      

What does the Bible say about slavery?  Many think that the Bible is all over the map on the subject.  I wrote: 

"Perhaps religious texts are mere Rorschach ink blot tests: Mother Theresa and the Grand Inquisitor read the same Bible, then depending on their character or upbringing, reach opposite conclusions about how to treat folks.  Yet as novelist Tom Wolfe noted in The Kingdom of Speech, from Mohammed to Marx, history demonstrates the power of words to shape society.  A linguistic artist himself, Wolfe recognized Jesus as one of five men whose words have cut most deeply . . . " 

As for words that cut deeply, note how Jesus' sayings struck: (a) A black slave in a pre-Civil War novel; (b) a white traveler in the same novel; (c) the author, and (d) Americans outside the South.  

Uncle Tom's Bible

Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is often credited with helping form an anti-slavery consensus in the North before the Civil War, surprised me when I first read it.  I knew several men in Harriet's family were famous preachers and Bible teachers, and vocally opposed slavery.  (I had even spoken in a forum at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, where one brother served as pastor.)  But I didn't know that the novel was actually a kind of theological debate and a Bible study, not just a story.  

In Chapter 12, for instance, two white Christians on a boat on the Mississippi which is transporting slaves cross swords over slavery, as onlookers take the side that suits their interests: 

A. “It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants,—kept in a low condition,” said a grave-looking gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. “‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be,’ the scripture says.” 

"I say, stranger, is that ar what that text means?” said a tall man, standing by.

“'Undoubtedly. It pleased Providence, for some inscrutable reason, to doom the race to bondage, ages ago; and we must not set up our opinion against that.'

“'Well, then, we’ll all go ahead and buy up niggers,' said the man, “if that’s the way of Providence,—won’t we, Squire?'”

Here a preacher, obviously part of the Establishment, cites an obscure Old Testament passage which actually has nothing to do with slavery, to justify what the South wished to see justified.  Then slave-traders echo that reasoning to justify their lucrative line of work.  (Which they would have gone on doing without such help, or found other ideological support for.)  

Then a young man, whom Beecher may model on one of her brothers, or her theology-teaching husband, responds:

B. "A tall, slender young man, with a face expressive of great feeling and intelligence, here broke in, and repeated the words, 'All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ I suppose,” he added, “that is scripture, as much as ‘Cursed be Canaan.’”

Beecher is greatly understating her point, as she no doubt intends readers to recognize.  (Thus the satirical, "Is that ar what the text means?" Followed by the glib, "Undoubtedly.")  

"Do unto others" are the words of Christ himself.  And they obviously apply to the pitiful case described onboard, of an old lady whose only remaining child is snatched from her arms and sold to another owner.  (While the first passage is, again, not about slavery at all.)  Beecher knows that the words of Jesus trump a mis-cited and irrelevant Old Testament passage. She then satirically goads her readers not to be hardened to such evil for the sake of national unity, even: 

"The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice.  His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have disturbed one less practiced; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union."

This passage satires how Scripture is abused to justify what Beecher shows it cannot justify.  Later in the same chapter, Beecher shows her hand more clearly, through the Christ-figure of Uncle Tom himself: 

C. "Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an American divine tells us has “no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.” But Tom, as we see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with views like these."

Beecher's point is that a hardened, establishment preacher, motivated by social standing, money, or national interest, can indeed find warrant for slavery in the Old Testament, even if he has to twist things a little.  And some verses, taken out of the full context of Scripture, may help even more.  But Christians are supposed to look to Christ for their example, and interpret Scripture through him.  And no one with any sense could read the New Testament -- not just this one verse, but hardly any of it -- and deny that the practices of American slavery were the opposite of what Christ taught and modeled -- and his disciples. 

For Augustine's animus against slave traders is explicitly affirmed in the New Testament, and would apply to those on that boat in Uncle Tom's Cabin, if the preacher were courageous enough to tell the truth:  

"We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers . . . "

There is nothing in the New Testament to explain any upsurge in slave-trading under the Christian watch, which would in fact not occur for more than a millennia, and then only after the Muslim slave trade had primed that pump for centuries.  

Eric cites the verse that instructs slaves to obey their masters, not to kill them.  And really, would Christianity be Christianity, if it instructed people to kill their bosses?  Hierarchy is part of life, and must be observed, within the bounds of Christian law.  But Eric omits this following set of instructions: 

"And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."

This is pretty revolutionary, in itself.  Masters should treat slaves "in the same way" as slaves treat masters?  And not only don't beat them, but don't even threaten them?  What's to keep them from running away, then?  

And slavery is not, a la Aristotle, a fundamental marker of human character.  We are all equal before God, who is the real boss.  

I already showed that there are many "active ingredients" in the life and teachings of Marx that explain the evils of communism: Marx's violent, arrogant character, his self-worship, his justification of class violence, his naivete about human nature, his over-generalizations, his absurd prophecies, his talk about the "dictatorship of the proletariat," his refusal to admit error, his hatred of God, etc.  

So by the fourth criterion, too, Marx can very reasonably be blamed for tyranny.  But Christ should be credited for the liberation of slaves, which began earlier than most people realize, and is still not complete.  

I might add that as a young missionary, I was inspired to try to liberate sex slaves in Asia, by passages in the Old Testament.    

5. Energetic motion. "Fifth, causation is also clearer if change moves uphill against so powerful an element in human nature.  Why would any man sleep with more than one woman?  The answer is too obvious, to most men, to need stating.  Lust and philandering need no explanation, nor do rape, conquest, polygamy, or enslavement of the weak . . . It takes moral energy to move society uphill against the gravitational resistance of political power."

This criterion, too, helps explain why Marx was in fact to blame for the Gulag.  Just to take one instance: common ownership of property, which led to so many millions of deaths and so much misery in China, was emphatically not normal for Chinese. They had to be forced into it, by Marxist ideologues.  The communes moved radically against human nature, and thus demonstrate ideological causation. 

By contrast, as noted, it has been normal since the dawn of time for the powerful to exploit the weak, including by enslaving them.  This requires no explanation by itself.  Chesterton, indeed, said early in the 20th Century that enslavement was very human, and could be expected again.  Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler would soon prove him a prophet.  

Of course, it did take some ideological energy to upset what had become European norms against slavery by that time, and Marx and Hitler did provide that energy.  But having established a dictatorship, demonized whole classes, and destroyed the economy by communizing property, mass slavery became a fairly natural expedient.  You have to blame someone for your mistakes!  (When did Marx ever accept blame?)  You have to make someone do the work once incentive is gone!  

Slavery was ubiquitous in the world in which Christianity first appeared.  Half of ancient residents of Athens were slaves.  If anything, early Christianity began fitfully to apply some brakes to human enslavement. 

So by this criterion, too, Eric has things backwards.  Marx's life and teachings help explain the radical, often anti-human, policies of his followers, which fairly quickly led into the old grooves of tyranny and slavery.  But Christ's disciples acted against human nature and interest to free slaves against opposition, then bring about abolition or effective near-abolition of slavery.  (The first time during the "Dark Ages.")       

   

6.  Citations.  "Finally, if reformers cite or allude to a text while instituting reform, that may indeed point to the source of their inspiration."

As I showed, Marx' disciples did cite Marx extensively, and translate and print his works, to justify and explain their actions. 

Yes, as mentioned above, Christians who wished to justify slavery also looked for, and found, verses which helped them do so.  Some of those citations were, no doubt, stronger than the one Stowe quoted.  

But I agree with Stowe, as did Wilberforce, and as did northerner abolitionists who were inspired by Scripture to risk their lives (against interest and Nature) to liberate slaves.  Read honestly, as Uncle Tom did, it is impossible to justify slavery from the life and teachings of Jesus, which are for Christians the heart of the Bible, from which all else must be interpreted.  Not just that one verse, but the tone and implications of the entire New Testament, and a deeper understanding of the Old, set world civilization up for what in fact occurred: a worldwide abolition movement, led by pious Christians like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom.    

So five of the six historical criteria I mentioned clearly show why Marx's teachings and example led to so much misery, so quickly, under the lead of his radical disciples.  Solzhenitsyn points out that some of the "losers," like Trotsky, were if anything worse!  The other criteria is ambivalent, and analyzed carefully, also indicts Marx.  But Jesus liberated slaves, he did not capture or mistreat them.  

Culture of Death, Thou Shalt Die!

They called my new article on The Stream "Halloween, Zombie Morality, and the Light of the World." My chosen title was a paraphrase of John Donne: "Culture of Death,Thou Shalt Die." In any case, it's my fullest apologetic for the Gospel of Life, for the good Christ has done for the world, in that forum yet. Shares welcome!  Celebrate Halloween by reminding people what "all the saints" who follow Jesus have really accomplished, and can still do to save us from our follies today:

https://stream.org/halloween-zombie-morality-light-world/

In Defense of "Christian" Civilization

Recently, I responded to Andy Rhodes, a former Christian with a lot of tough questions about Christian thought and the Christian record.  In that post, I offered some ideas about the Problem of Pain.  Andy responded with a couple dozen or so posts, which I don't have time right now to fully answer (or even read, because that will start me answering).  Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll take the time to sift through and respond to those posts more completely, because we do welcome serious challenges. 

But I would like to answer some of Andy's points on the relationship between Christianity and the western record.   This begins by delving into politics, on which of course Christians have different opinions: as a conservative, I'll freely share my own.  Then we get more specifically into the Christian record in reform.   

Adam Lee spin-doctors abolition

What is the relationship between Christianity, slavery, and abolition?  In The Truth Behind the New
Atheism, and elsewhere, I have argued that Christianity implicitly, if not always explicitly, undermines human bondage.  I have also suggested that Christian teachings were the main

motivational force behind the abolition movement.  These claims have often been contradicted, and sometimes confused.  (For instance, with the claim that the Bible clearly renounces slavery, or that Christians never owned slaves or engaged in the slave trade.) 

Why does Brian Blais oppose slavery?

Physicist Brian Blais has been challenging my historical defense of Christianity on his web site.  Brian hasn't read any of my books, so far as I know, but began by critiquing a few remarks I made on Justin Brierley's Unbelievable radio program on Premier Christian radio in London, as part of a series responding to the Unbelievable programs.  I responded last week, then Brian replied with this second and then this third post.

The most recent issue, which I would like to focus on, is how Christianity dealt with slavery, an issue that Christians and atheists have debated fiercely in recent years.  Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens all bring the subject up, blaming the Bible for not forthrightly condemning it (which Harris supposes was the patently obvious thing to do), and blaming the Church for at best,  turning a blind eye.  I responded in The Truth Behind the New Atheism by arguing that ending slavery was not really all that obvious, but zealous Christians reading their Bibles accomplished it anyway, not just in the West, but around the world. 

More recently, after I pointed out numerous errors in his harsh attacks on the Christian record, Iowa State Religious Studies professor Hector Avalos came after my 3-4 page argument on slavery in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, and myself as a scholar, in a long and no-holds-barred piece.  I responded willingly, and I think pretty effectively, first here and then here.  Avalos subsequently published a long book on that very subject, and sent me a manuscript copy, which I still hope to read and report on some day. 

Thankfully, Brian argues at a lower decibel level.  He does make a couple interesting points, but I think still needs to look at the bigger historical picture.    

6th best: Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God

"An Essential Book"             

*****     84 + / 5 -

If I were going to pick ten "must read" books out of the two hundred or so I have reviewed for Amazon or in print, this brilliant work would stand near the top. Your education is not complete, and may be defective, until you have come to terms with Stark's arguments.

Ko Thah Byu: Murderer and Apostle to the Karen

"God has chosen the weak things of the world to overcome the strong," wrote St. Paul, thinking perhaps of his own journey as a one-time theo-thug and ayatollah of hate, to his role in bringing the Greco-Roman world to Christ, who preaches love.  So, might the people of Burma think about a man named Kho Thah Byoo, a one-time mass-murderer and slave who was partly responsible for the conversion of millions of Karen to Christianity. 

Abolition of Slavery: The Early Years

"Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

"Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!"

-- Lepanto, G. K. Chesterton

(Note: latest edit, August 2022)

A year ago, I wrote a response to Dr. Hector Avalos' critique of a passage in The Truth Behind the New Atheism where I talked about the role Christianity played in liberating slaves.  At the end of a fairly long rebuttal (actually two), I appended a timeline of key events in the Christian anti-slave movement, for the past two thousand years. (But ending where most such records begin -- about the year 1800.) 

I did not claim that Christians have everywhere and always liberated slaves.  We haven't, of course.  Christians have also sinned against God and man by enslaving many millions of human beings, over the centuries.  Popes have justified slavery, and even owned slaves.  The Council of (unholy) Toledo decreed that the children of priests be enslaved.  This is a story that one could also tell, and it is shameful. 

But I did want to make the point that the modern abolitionist movement, led by zealous believers like William Wilberforce, was no fluke. There is, in the genome of Scripture, something that pushes towards liberty, that eventually emerged in a big way. 

This timeline was buried at the end of those articles.  I'd like to give it due prominence by featuring it as the key item in this blog. 

Not every item on this list is, strictly speaking, about "abolition" in the full sense.  But these are important markers in that general direction. 

I've also added some "key events" that I have learned about since, including one from the 1830s that was so interesting, I just ignored the time-line's end date.  As I learn of more such stories, I'll add them to the list.   


Timeline of the Christian Abolitionist Movement

50s AD: Paul writes, “In Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free.” The full implications have been debated ever since; certainly it precludes treating slaves as less than human.

60s: Paul writes a letter to his fellow Christian, Philemon, asking that he take back Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but as a brother.” His meaning has been debated ever since.

300s: Ambrose, bishop of Milan, melts down communion vessels to redeem captives: “The ornament of my sacrament is the redemption of captives; and those alone are precious vessels, that redeem souls from death.”

354-431: Paulinus, bishop of Nola, (whom Avalos criticizes for alleged racism) liberates his own slaves, spends his considerable wealth redeeming citizens of Campania, and then, (allegedly, will need to look into this further), goes into slavery to redeem one captive.

4th Century: Gregory of Nyssa critiques slavery in the light of Christian theology:

"'I obtained servants and maidens.' What are you saying? You condemn man who is free and autonomous to servitude, and you contradict God by perverting the natural law. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept. You have forgotten the limit of your authority which consists in jurisdiction over brutish animals . . . “

"God has said, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness' [Gen 1.26]. Since we are made according to God's likeness and are appointed to rule over the entire earth, tell me, who is the person who sells and buys? . . . How can we properly estimate the earth in its entirety as well as its contents? If these things are inestimable, tell me, how much greater is man's value who is over them . . . ? "

Meliana the Younger (383-429 AD) inherited “immense estates,” apparently in Africa, and with her husband Pinian, who would become a bishop, “distributed that immense territory to their slaves (more than a thousand).” Pernoud, 24 (Note: a French Catholic medieval historian, in Women in the Days of the Cathedrals, translated and adaopted by Anne Cote-Harriss (Ignatius: 1989)).

“Church councils never ceased to enact measures to make the fate of slaves more human and gradually to have them recognized as human beings. Thus we can measure progress between the Council of Elvira in 305, which imposed seven year’s penance on anyone who had killed his slave, until the Council of Orleans (511), where the right of asylum in churches was proclaimed for freeing slaves, and the Council of Eauze (551), which automatically emancipated a slave whose master forced him to work on Sundays..” Pernoud, 25

5th Century, St. Caesarius, blamed for paying for the emancipation of slaves, “I would like to know what those who criticize me would say if they were in the place of the captives I am redeeming. God, who gave himself as the price of man’s redemption, will not reproach me for redeeming captives with the money from his altar.” Pernoud, 26

400-425: Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary historian, tells how Acacius, Bishop of Amida in modern Turkey, talked his priests into melting down holy vessels in order to redeem 7,000 Persian captives and send them home. He explains:

“Our God, my brethren, needs neither dishes nor cups; for he neither eats nor drinks, nor is in want of anything. Since then, by the liberality of its faithful members the church possesses many vessels both of gold and silver, it behooves us to sell them, that by the money thus raised we may be able to redeem the prisoners and also supply them with food.”

410s: St. Augustine argues that, while slavery occurs as punishment for sins, and might be a just substitute for killing soldiers on the losing side of a just war, it was not part of God's plan for humanity:

"This relationship is prescribed by the order of nature, and it is in this situation that God created man. For he says, 'Let him have lordship over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky . . . and all the reptiles that crawl on the earth.'  He did not wish the rational being, made in his own image, to have dominion over any but irrational creatures, not man over man, but man over the beasts . . . The origins of the Latin word for slave, servus, is believed to be derived from the fact that those who by the laws of war could rightly be put to death by the conquerors, became servi, slaves, when they were preserved . . . But even this enslavement could not have happened, if it were not for the deserts of sin . . . "

"The first cause of servitude, therefore, is sin, by which man was placed under man in a condition of bondage: a condition which can come about only by the judgment of God, in Whom there is no injustice."

Augustine continues:

"By nature, then, in the condition in which God first created man, no man is the slave either of another man or of sin. But it is also true that servitude itself is ordained as a punishment by that law which enjoins the preservation of the order of nature, and forbids its disruption . . . The apostle therefore admonishes servants to be obedient to their masters, and to serve them loyally and with a good will, so that, if they cannot be freed by their masters, they can at least make their own slavery to some extent free . . ." (City of God, Book 19, chapter 15)

Doug also brings to my attention a letter from Augustine to his friend Alypius (who he writes about in the Confessions; by this time bishop of the nearby city of Tagaste).  In the letter, apparently written in 428 AD, he writes sadly that in Africa "there is now an enormous crowd of what are called mangones" (slave-traders), who were "draining the population" of North Africa.  Slave-traders inhabit wild places to waylay travelers, and break into peoples' homes to snatch children.  (One of whom, having been liberated, he describes interviewing.)  He recounts how, in one incident, the Christians of Hippo liberated more than a hundred slaves:

"Let me give you just one example, and you can estimate from it the total extent of their activity throughout Africa and along its coasts. About four months before I wrote this letter, a crowd of people collected from different regions, but particularly from Numidia, were brought here by Galatian merchants to be transported from the shores of Hippo (It is only, or at least mainly, the Galatians who are so eager to engage in this form of commerce). However, a faithful Christian was at hand, who was aware of our practice of performing acts of mercy in such cases; and he brought the news to the church. Immediately, about 120 people were set free by us (though I was absent at the time), some from the ship which they had to board, others from a place where they had been hidden before being put on board. We discovered that barely five or six of these had been sold by their parents. On hearing about the misfortunes that had led the rest of them to the Galatians, via their abductors and kidnappers, hardly one of us could restrain their tears."
400s: St. Patrick rebukes Coroticus for enslaving Christians and threatens him with damnation:

“I do not know what to lament more: those who have been slain, or those whom they have taken captive, or those whom the devil has mightily ensnared. Together with him they will be slaves in Hell in an eternal punishment; for who commits sin is a slave and will be called a son of the devil.”

The assumption here, which has NT precedent, is that slave-trading is a “sin,” and a particularly nasty one, showing that the sinner is “mightily ensnared” by the devil. Patrick’s rant continues:

“Far from the love of God is a man who hands over Christians to the Picts and Scots . . .They have filled their houses with the spoils of dead Christians, they live on plunder . . . This is the custom of the Roman Christians of Gaul: they send holy and able men to the Franks and other heathen with so many thousand solidi to ransom baptized captives. You prefer to kill and sell them to a foreign nation that has no knowledge of God. You betray the members of Christ as it were into a brothel. What hope have you in God, or anyone who thinks as you do, or converses with you in words of flattery? God will judge.”

500s: An anonymous Christian believer in Egypt makes a legal declaration that a woman dependant on his family named Martha is not a slave, as she says, but free. After she certified that she was in fact of slave status, “fearing the judgment of God, and mindful of the Savior’s love of mankind, I groaned aloud.” He warned that anyone who tried to enslave the woman and her children would be subject to God’s judgment.

610: Isidore of Seville, one of the great intellectual leaders of his age, insists that "God . . . has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman."  He also writes, "I can hardly credit that a friend of Christ, who has experienced that grace, which bestowed freedom on all, would still own slaves."

781: Jing Jing, in Chang An, the Chinese capital, writing an authoritative summary of the history and characteristics of the Church of the East:

“They do not keep slaves, but make the noble and humble equal. (不畜臧獲。均貴賤於人). They do not amass wealth, but put their stock in common.” (Note: the first Chinese phrase here is an unusual classical expression, used similarly by the Han historian Si Maqian, among other places.)

972: Counsel of Koblenz

1008: Wulfston, Archbishop of York, writes legislation banning the export of slaves from England.  Several years later, in the "Sermon of the Wolf to the English," Wulfston lambasted the English for many social evils, including restricting the rights of slaves, and sex slave trade:

"And poor men are grieviously betrayed and cruelly deceived and widely sold out of this land into the possession of strangers even when perfectly innocent.  And widely throughout this nation children in the cradle are enslaved for minor theft through savage injustice.  And the rights of free men are taken away, the rights of slaves are pared away . . . and to put it briefly, God's laws are hated, and His councils despised."

"Too many Christian people have been sold out of this country.  All this is hateful to God, believe it who will." 

"These people club together and buy a woman for themselves out of the common fund . . . taking turns like dogs . . . And then for the right price they sell God's creature . . . out of the country into the hands of enemies."

Wulfston makes it clear that God was judging the English people through disease, "rapacious taxes," storms, and most of all, the ravages of the Vikings, for such sins. 

 Slaves seem to have constituted either about 2 or 10% of inhabitants of England.

1000-1150 Iceland: ¨Christian influences were also one reason why slavery declined and disappeared in the 11th and early 12th centuries.¨ Jon Hjalmarsson (a history teacher in Iceland and regional administrator of education), History of Iceland, 34

1102: Under the leadership of Anselm, philosopher and Archbishop of Canterbury, the Council of Westminster condemned the slave trade: “Let no one here after presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals.”

1198: Founding of Trinitarians, who are credited with freeing almost a million (Christian) slaves over following centuries, among other acts of charity.

1200s: Founding of Mercedarian Order, also dedicated to freeing Christian slaves.

1256: The city of Bologna decided to place all bonded servants under eccelesiastical jurisdiction, then to grant them liberty.  According to David Hart, "The municipal government reached this decision explicitly on Christian grounds." (Atheist Delusions, 181) 


1300s: Louis X allows slaves to buy their freedom, as Avalos notes, to swell his coffers; actually his rationalization extended beyond that. In any case, France remained mostly slave-free, which did not need to happen.

1335: Magnus IV outlaws slavery (for Christians, anyway) in most of Scandinavia.

1416: The Republic of Ragusa (in modern Croatia) abolishes slavery and slave-trading.

1404 /1435: Spain colonized the Canary Islands and enslaved its inhabitants. In 1435 Pope Eugene IV wrote a bull entitled "Sicut Dudum." In it, he commanded that all enslaved Christians who were inhabitants of the Canary Islands be freed. This was no real step forward in doctrine.  But it marked the opening shot in a long struggle between colonists and a church that often tried to ammeliorate or reverse the oppressive acts the colonists took against "heathen natives." 

1508: Thomas Hunt, one of John Smith's lieutenants (see Pocahontas for the Disney version!), kidnaps an American Indian named Tisquantum (Squanto) and attempts to sell him as a slave in Europe. Friars educate him, he is freed and returns to North America. While he is gone, everyone in his village died in an epidemic. Settlers at Plymouth are surprised to meet an Indian who speaks English. He teaches them how to fish, fertilize vegetables, and talk with other local tribes, enabling the colony to survive.

1537: Pope Paul III wrote (Sublimis Deus) about the enslavement of the natives of the West and South Indies. Satan, the "enemy of the human race," had:

"... thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving Word of God. ... Satan has stirred up some of his allies ... who are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians be reduced to our service like brute animals. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions we would scarcely use with brute animals. ... Rather, we decree that these same Indians should not be deprived of their liberty・and are not to be reduced to slavery."

The Pope did, however, allow that non-Christian soldiers captured in a just war could be enslaved.  (One cannot, after all, simply set them free, and have them rejoin their units.  James Herriot tells, in one of his books, how German prisoners-of-war often rather cheerfully helped farmers in Yorkshire in World War II: no doubt it beat a POW camp.) 

1588: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth abolishes slavery.

1772: The Somersett’s case essentially ruled against the (already rare) institution of slavery in England.

1777: The Republic of Vermont adopted a Constitution outlawing slavery: "no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent."

1778: Slavery is outlawed in Scotland.

1780: Pennsylvania passes an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery; other northern states follow with similar laws in 1783, 1784, 1799, and 1804.

1783: Slavery is ruled illegal in Massachusetts.

1780-1803: Other new laws are adopted against slavery in various parts of Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

c 1790  “Although the Catholic Church did not forbid it, Koreans also seem to have understood that the Christian gospel precluded slave-holding. Yun Gun-myeong of Chungcheong province liberated all his bondservants after he was baptized (Dallet 1874: 271), and when Hwang Il-gwang – a butcher and therefore an outcaste – became a Christian, he was received on the same footing as other believers . . . “ Kim and Kim, A History of Korean Christianity, 26

(Note: not all early Korean Catholics seem to have recognized this principle either, but there was already a long such history in the Catholic church.)

1804: Haiti declares independence and abolishes slavery.

1825: American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson buys a Karen slave and mass-murderer, Thah Byu. He teaches him Christianity and baptizes him.  Thah Byu is the first Karen Christian, and spends the rest of his life preaching the Gospel, helping found a Karen church that now exceeds a million believers. 

1881: Griffith John, Leading the Family in the Right Way (Yinjia Guidao, 1881) (note: John was a famous and effective Protestant missionary to China), covers Christian doctrines, and deals with ancestor worship, the Sabbath, etc. “It also treats social themes such as child slavery and education for girls, almsgiving and polygamy, footbinding and work ethics, equal rights that should exist between men and women, and marriage between Christians and non-Christians.” Oak (B &L Christianity in Korea), 84

1884: Ernest Faber, Zixi Cudong, Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, 1884 book. Confucianism should be ally to Christianity. “Grafting.” Includes discussing of peace-making, humane treatment of animals, honest admin, street improvements, “and of prohibiting the slave trade and female infanticide.” Oak, 88

c. 1908: "You see, in those days foreigners were afraid we would take their heads. But that didn't stop Mr. Young Man (Watkin Roberts, a Welsh missionary to eastern India.) Why, once when he heard that a dying Lushai chief was having his slaves buried with him, he traveled day and night to save them. The slaves were already buried to their waist when he arrived. He ordered his native helpers to dig them out, and nobody laid a hand on him." (James and Marti Hefley, God's Tribesman: The Rochunga Pudaite Story, 19)

After 1800, and with this precedent, evangelicals (and Quakers) led what became the moral crusade against slavery, first in the English world, then extending around the world to this day. (I myself was privileged to play a small role in the continuing struggle.)

But not being a slave myself, I think I'll end here. A more proactive argument for the influence Christianity had and continues to have in ameliorating and ending slavery is probably needed to join all these little dots; maybe I’ll find time to write such a paper, or book, later.  

Did All Greeks Deny Human Equality? A response to Avalos' claim that I dissed the ancients.

In his latest sallies in our on-going dispute over slavery, Hector Avalos seems to have mellowed a bit, if I'm not deluding myself. Perhaps he recognizes now that he is not going to win this debate purely on the beauty of fine footnotes. Or perhaps he is satisfied with having savaged me on a popular web site, where any response (if posted) is likely to be lost in the thicket of miscellaneous post-script.

It is a bit rich, though, of Avalos to describe my first response as a "personal attack." It was in part a defense against Avalos' personal attacks, as anyone who reads them will, I think, see was necessary.

True, I also criticized Avalos. I think my critique was judicious: Avalos is an intelligent, accomplished scholar and talented teacher. He is also grossly unfair towards Christianity and those who believe it. He is often remarkably sloppy in how he represents other scholars and historical facts. His arguments are undermined by logic that strikes me as atrocious.

The main purpose of that article, though, was neither to defend myself, nor dismiss Dr. Avalos, but to put his attacks on me, other Christian scholars, and the Christian record, in proper contexts. This needed to be done, because Avalos left way too much context out: our history, the nature of the books I was responding to, the nature of The Christian Delusion, indeed the nature of man and human exploitation.

Dr. Avalos owed it to me, but even more to his readers, to put his arguments into their proper contexts -- an even more important aspect of good scholarship, perhaps, than accurately listing publishing dates of books cites.

That was my main point. In his responses, however, Avalos not only neglects it, but is again grossly negligent with context.

I'll respond to his first post here (reproduced in the previous blog, also on the "Debunking Christianity" website) then to his other posts later.

(1) First, it is untrue that I have "no personal knowledge whatsoever" about the Craig-Avalos debate, and just "repeat material found on the internet."

In fact, I watched the thing. I cited Craig and Gonzalez on it, in part because I found their analysis on the money.

Nor am I sure it is fair to describe comments by the principals in Avalos' prior disputes merely as "material found on the internet." This description is literally true -- I found Gonzalez' comments in my "In-Box" after sending him an e-mail asking about his experiences with Avalos, for instance -- but rather misleading.

(2) Why should I care if Dr. Craig mistakenly described Dr. Avalos' position at Iowa State University? For the record, having watched a few of Craig's debates, it seems to me he usually goes out of his way in them to properly credit debate partners for their accomplishments. (Unlike, say, Bart Ehrman, who seemed to think he could win his debate by disparaging Craig's academic associations.) But that has little to do with our debate, or even with Craig's evaluation of Dr. Avalos' methods.

(3) Avalos admits he mistakenly added the word "the" to a quotation from me about how common it was in the ancient world to dismiss the humanity of other people. He avers that his error did not much change the meaning of my original comment, however, and that the original was still misleading somehow.

Here again, context makes a big difference. Here are the three paragraphs to the citation in question (which I'll put in bold):

"Jesus Frees Slaves
"The outlawing of the slave trade was a huge milestone in history. Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens all pin their criticism of the Bible on its failure to condemn this institution. For Harris, this is inexplicable. Isn't it obvious that a slave is a human being who suffers and enjoys like all of us? Every reasonable person understands that treating people 'like farm equipment' is 'patently evil.' Harris argues, 'It is remarkably easy for a person to arrive at this epiphany.' Yet it had to be spread 'at the point of a bayonet' in the pious American South.

"Only a historically sheltered child of the West and the product of a politically correct public school system could achieve such breathtaking and uncritical naivite.

"Slavery was obviously not wrong to Aristotle. The equality of humanity was denied by by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless smaller tribes . . . " (The Truth Behind the New Atheism, 144)

I am, clearly, arguing that the teachings of Jesus led to the liberation of slaves. I am also arguing against Harris' naive and anachronistic view that since slaves are obviously human, it is "remarkably easy" for civilizations to arrive at the "epiphany" that slavery is "patently evil."

I return to both points again in the next paragraph, on page 145, which begins, "No great civilization arrived at the 'epiphany' Harris thinks so obvious until the rise of Christian Europe."

To support this point, that civilizations do not spontanteously recognize the evil of slavery, it is not necessary that I show that no one other than Christians ever decried it. Indeed, in that following paragraph, I point out that "a few voices" in India were raised against caste, but "the system shook them off." Analogously, as evidence warrants, I have no problem granting that such voices might perhaps have also been heard against slavery -- few and far between though they seem to have been.

All I need to support my argument is to show is that Harris' 21st Century Bay Area perspective was not the norm in the pre-modern world. Does Avalos really want to ally himself with Harris on this point? I offer examples from Greece, Islam, India, and the European Enlightenment to show that slavery and / or human inequality were often taken for granted.

The sentence Avalos objects to claims that "the equality of humanity" was denied by "Greeks, Gnostics, Indians," etc. The function of this sentence is not to show that no non-Christian ever spoke out against inequality -- I admit in the next paragraph that some Indians (at least) did. Its function, rather, is to show that what Harris describes as "remarkably easy" -- our modern dislike of unpaid exploitation -- in fact came with great difficulty, and a lot of leafing of Scripture.

That the sentence should be read as referring to individuals should be clear from sentences immediately before and after it, in which I give examples of influential people who denied what Harris saw as self-evident: Aristotle, Hume, Voltaire, Ernst Haeckel.

True, I might have made THAT sentence more clear by adding the word "many:" "The equality of humanity was denied by MANY Greeks . . . " My books are not sacred scripture, and one wants to keep even determined opponents from misunderstanding what one writes, if at all possible. But in context -- again -- it is hard to read this page as meaning ALL Greeks, Gnostics, Indians, etc, denied the equality of humanity -- which I neither believe to be the case, nor wish others to believe.

Avalos' other remarks are mostly focused on the meat of the issue, and it should be possible to answer them in a single, later post.

(Pirates of Caribbean photo copyright Disney 2003)

Dr. Avalos' Response I

Hector Avalos recently responded to my first two blogs on John Loftus' Debunking Christianity site. This blog will give his response, and I will respond then in a separate blog. (Are there copyright objections to quoting his full response? If so, I'll adjust. And some readers may wonder when I'm going to get on to other subjects! But our debate is scattered all over cyberspace; I'll try to consolidate things here and at christthetao.com, before launching into happier topics.)

Avalos' response came in 6 posts, which I'll identify with letters of the alphabet. I'll begin with his first post. (I'm having trouble importing the others, and will try to add them later.) The rest of the blog will be his unedited words.

******************************************************************

A. I won't spend much time on Marshall's responses because he repeats the same sorts of techniques, arguments, and methods that I already criticized.

I will respond on this thread in case Marshall decides to edit or delete my posts on his threads, which may be found at:

http: //christthetao.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-why-hectoring-dr.html

http: //christthetao.blogspot.com/2010/08/ii-slave-to-cherry-picked-footnotes-19.html

His Part I is mostly a personal attack that has little bearing on my arguments on slavery. Marshall repeats material found on the internet about my debate with Craig, and other issues of which he has no first-hand knowledge whatsoever (e.g., the Gonzalez case).

For example, he cites a critique of my debate with William Lane Craig at Common Sense Atheism, but then does not cite my subsequent interview with Luke Muehlhauser about this debate.

See http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p_7046. He also oassumes those criticisms are correct.

For the record, I have answered many of Dr. Craig's allegations, including some of Craig's factual errors, and so why didn't Marshall note that fact? Craig never has retracted even the clearest of factual errors (e.g., Craig misidentifies my position at my university), but Marshall does not seem to mind. I list some of them here:

http: debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/07/dr-w-l-craig-caught-telling-more.html

I've answered some of Dr. Gonzalez's claims here:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/DISmokingGun.cfm

In the interest of fairness, I do grant that I mistakenly added a "the" in manually typing (versus cut and pasting, which I prefer to do for accuracy) one of Marshall's quotes (see below). Though inadvertant, that should never happen. That is my responsibility.

Marshall is, however, wrong to say that it really changed the meaning of his claim. Compare the two statements at issue as he summarizes them:

A. "The equality of human was denied by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Marshall classic version, p. 144.)

B. "The equality of humanity was denied by THE Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Avalos redacted version, emphasis added.)

If, as he claims, he did not mean to overgeneralize in the way that adding "the" appears to have made it, then he seems inconsistent with other statements he makes.

The whole context of his discussion is that Christians were different from other cultures in regard to slavery.

So, how would that make his point if some Greeks denied the equality of human beings, but then some Christians did, too?

In any case, Marshall's premise seems to be that a cultural / national word such as "Greeks" without the article is fine as long as "SOME Greeks believe X." An expressions such as "THE Greeks" applies only if "ALL Greeks believe X." Fine.

If this is the case, then I surmise that the following statements would also satisfy Marshall's rules for the presence or omission of the definite article.

A. "Greeks affirmed the equality of humanity" (since all I need is for some Greeks to affirm this equality to use "Greeks" instead of "the Greeks").

B. "Christians endorsed slavery" (all I need is for some Christians to endorse slavery to make this statement true).

Yet, the point remains. How does Marshall intend to convince us that Christianity was better or superior in regard to slavery if we can make equivalent statements about Christian and non-Christian cultures without the use of a definite article at the equivalent grammatical junctures?

(II) “Slave to Cherry-picked Footnotes: 19 problems with Hector Avalos on religion and human bondage.”


This is Part II of my response to Dr. Hector Avalos’ criticism of myself, and of the Christian record against slavery, in his article "A Slave to Incompetence: The Truth Behind David Marshall's Research on Slavery" on the “Debunking Christianity” web site. (See here for Part I, which mostly deals with Dr. Avalos' attempts at ad hominen; comments welcome below.)

(Note: Probably the most interesting part of this blog, especially for readers new to the discussion, will be the "Timeline for Christian Abolition" at the end of it. Some readers may like to skip my 19 critical points of response to Dr. Avalos' attack (immediately below) to this timeline beneath it. I especially welcome input, either by adding to the list, or by criticizing any errors or exagerations I may have made.)

No doubt Dr. Avalos chose to criticize the segment on slavery in my book, The Truth Behind the New Atheism for good reasons. In his on-going crusade to show how harmful Christianity has been, slavery is an obviously important front. Avalos is writing a book on the subject, so he has already done a lot of useful research. I explained, in Part I, why Avalos’ attempt to nurse his advantage on this topic into an attack on my scholarly credentials is bogus. But tactically, his choice of topics makes sense.

Hector Avalos is an accomplished and in some ways talented academic. With a doctorate from Harvard, a goodly number of publications, Avalos is recipient of the Professor of the Year award at ISU in 1996. He should be in a position, one would think, to offer formidable challenges to my arguments.

And in a sense, Avalos' critique is at least more detailed and (at first glance) convincing than most "new atheists" who have attacked the book, or than physicist Victor Stenger's critique in his book, The New Atheism.
But it is curious, given all these advantages, how often Avalos stumbles. It is also interesting to note the inconvenient facts he stumbles over.

Again, this is not meant to be a full rebuttal, which might best follow the publication of his book and more in-depth study. But I find nineteen initial problems with Avalos' critique, and with his approach to Christianity and slavery.

(Readers who have not read his critique might either like to read it first, or skip nos. 2-4, 11, and 13, which rebut specific criticisms. These bare less on the issue of Christianity and human bondage, than on the character of Hector Avalos' critique.)

(1) In one paragraph of page 145, I quote Sam Harris’ claim that the wrongness of slavery is “remarkably easy epiphany” and that Christians were especially dense for not arriving at it. I responded in part by saying Christianity DID stop it, twice, though “Not many people know about the first abolition movement.” I then briefly described Christian efforts in Antiquity to free slaves, and similar movements in the Middle Ages. I am not an historian of European history, and one paragraph for a thousand years is obviously a bit glib – though (as shown in Part I) much more than Harris or his allies offer. My main source for that paragraph was Rodney Stark, who does admittedly spread himself thin sometimes. (See my Amazon review of Carrier’s critique in The Christian Delusion.)

Avalos spends many pages rebutting that paragraph.

I took Avalos’ criticism seriously, and looked into the issue in more depth. Admittedly, some of what I found was depressing – Christian councils that saw it as a duty to return escapees, slave collars found with Christian symbols on them, slave-trading popes.

But after looking more deeply into the facts, I conclude that Stark was essentially right, as were my criticisms of Harris and Hitchens. A substantial and theologically-motivated movement against slavery did grow up in the ancient and Medieval worlds, among leading Christian thinkers. It ultimately helped liberate tens of thousands of people and make much of Medieval Europe almost free of slavery. It may be anachronistic to call it an “abolition” movement, but abolition was sometimes the effect.

But Avalos also errs by failing to note what I say about the nature of ancient and Medieval Christian reform. Were Avalos to read that whole chapter and the next, he would find that (in my view) what changes things for the better are usually not dramatic and instant revolutions, but incremental improvement:

(a) "Liberation often advances at glacial speed." (149)

(b) "Pluralism grew slowly in Western culture, like a sheltering tree from a small seed." (151)

(c) "Ideas are like Harry Potter's 'any-flavored candy,' or Forrest Gump's chocolates: there is a certain quantum variability to what comes out of the historical selection process at any moment. Influence is hard to pin down. How can we trace the flow of an idea from its intellectual origins through such a complex, ingenious, and devious organ as the mind, and out into human actions?" (158)

And here, on the Bible and slavery, a passage Avalos overlooks:

(d) "Some ideas are explicit. The apostles John and Paul wrote about the divinity of Jesus, which is why Christians have always believed him divine . . . . Other doctrines are implicit, and their logic mixes slowly, like juices in a crockpot. The New Testament has little to say about slavery -- it's taken for granted, but undermined by pervasive calls to love one another, talk about freedom, and the assumption that Christians form a united spiritual family. Still other doctrines or practices grow up in the face of commands against them, which we subvert for our own purposes." (158, emphasis added)

That, I think, accurately describes the process by which Christianity ended slavery. But Dr. Avalos does not seem to have read outside his four-page “strike zone,” and says nothing about these remarks.

(2) It is curious how often Avalos uses the "Yezbut" construction. It is never enough to admit my point: he always finds some complication, which of course history always furnishes, to pretend he is rebutting me, even when he essentially concedes my point. Finding such complexities is not hard to do when you’re responding with 24 pages to 4 pages.

(3) In two curious cases, Avalos quotes me, responds with the word “False!”, then goes on to admit that what I said is actually TRUE.

(a) Marshall: “Queen Bathild worked to free Christian slaves (at least) and stop the slave trade . . .”

Avalos: “False, at least in part. Bathilde did not work to ‘stop the slave trade’ . . . The Latin source . . . actually says that she ‘prohibited the sale of Christian captives . . . ‘”

Well, yes, that’s what I just said. Long before Islam had come to Europe, that’s what most people in her domain were, at least nominally.

And here’s a particular bald misreading:

(b) Marshall: “Hitchens claims that ‘this huge and terrible industry was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. He’s wrong. Many popes protested, beginning in the 15th Century . . . “

Avalos: “False. For ‘a long time’ slavery was blessed by the churches and did not arouse any religious protests. Any protests were isolated instances. Marshall himself seems to concede that it took a pope until the 15th century to protest . . . 1400-1500 years would qualify as a ‘long time’ to many . . . ”

Here the tendentious nature of Avalos’ criticism is revealed by the contradiction of his own words. If there were “isolated instances” of protest, as Avalos seems to concede (in fact there were MANY such instances, and they were not that “isolated,” as we will see), then Hitchens’ claim that there were “absolutely no” such instances is false, just as I said. So as Avalos implicitly admits, even while he explicitly denies, my claim is not “false,” but quite TRUE.

Worse, Dr. Avalos’ criticism is based on badly misreading our discussion. Hitchens is not talking about slavery in general, but, to be precise, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. If Avalos does not have a copy of Hitchen’s book, all he had to do was read the prior sentences of mine to know this: “With slavery an accepted institution, and warfare a way of life, as they became more ‘civilized’ themselves, it was natural for the Portuguese and Spanish to go into the trade on a massive scale in Africa and the Americas. The English, French, and Americans followed their lead.”

Thus Avalos’ rebuttal drains into the sand without remainder. The Transatlantic Slave Trade BEGAN in the 15th Century: it is hardly surprising that popes only started protesting it then! (Even if Hitchens’ assertion were about slavery in general, then his claim would still be wrong – see the timeline at end.)

(4) Avalos accuses me of a "gross and misleading overgeneralization." Actually he MISQUOTES me again, then goes on a twelve-paragraph panegyric that depends for its barb on his misreading! Note carefully the two versions, Marshall (A) and Avalos (B):

A: "The equality of humanity was denied by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asians and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Marshall classic version, p. 144.)

B: "The equality of humanity was denied by THE Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asians and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Avalos redacted version, emphasis added.)

What difference does Avalos' addition of the word "the" make to my sentence? It creates precisely what he accuses me of making, a "gross and misleading overgeneralization!" I left the word "the" out just because I didn't WANT to generalize about ALL Greeks, Chinese, etc!

Consider a similar example:

A. "A windstorm blew down trees in Mount Rainier National Park."

B. "A windstorm blew down THE trees in Mount Rainier National Park."

In which case are there probably still trees left in the park? In case A, of course. A is not a "gross and misleading overgeneralization;" B might well be.

This is not the first time Dr. Avalos, who makes so much of the importance of careful scholarship, and so often derides his opponents for failing at it, misquotes opponents. Nor is it the first time his misquotes give advantage to his arguments.

*In our debate, he tried to refute claims he ascribed to me about Stalin and Hitler that I had in fact not made.

*In Christian Delusion, Avalos claimed that Dinesh D'Souza admitted that Europeans had killed 100,000 people as witches – only D’Souza didn’t say that.

*Avalos falsely claimed that historian Richard Weikart blamed the Holocaust on atheism – but Weikart said no such thing, and when I asked him, he repudiated Avalos’ misreading. (See our Amazon debate for details on all these.)

* Later in this article, Avalos again quotes me as saying "slavery didn't die in Greece or Iberia," then responds, . . . "The fact is that it is in areas, such as Iberia and Italy, where the greatest Christian populations were concentrated in the Middle Ages." (sic) Aside from the confusing punctuation, it almost appears that Dr. Avalos is suggesting his "Italy" as a synonym for my "Greece!"

Slippery citations seem to be an unfortunate habit with Dr. Avalos. Given how usefully sloppy he can be working in English, it might be reasonable a fortiori to take his translations from Latin and Aramaic with a small grain of sal.

(5) Context again: as I emphasized, slavery was almost universal in advanced civilizations, because it was profitable. Even some ants enslave other ants. The wonder is not that anyone participated, but that any society ever stopped doing it for moral reasons. This is the point of some arguments I make that Avalos misreads as meaning something else.

(6) Avalos claims that "Qualitatively, nothing in the NT compares to the extensive and thoughtful advocacy of fairness of slaves in Seneca's forty-seventh epistle . . ."

Avalos would be right if he said "quantitatively." There is no passage on slavery in the NT as LONG as that in Seneca's letter.

But note two points. First, Seneca is keenly conscious of spitting against the wind here:

"Associate with your slave on kindly, even on affable, terms; let him talk with you, plan with you, live with you. I know that at this point all the exquisites will cry out against me in a body; they will say: 'There is nothing more debasing, more disgraceful, than this.'"

I never claimed no pagan ever suggested it would be a nice thing to treat slaves nicely. In fact, some pagans freed slaves, possibly including the great Buddhist king of India, Ashoka, and the founder of the Late Han Dynasty in China, Liu Xiu.

Second, when it comes to QUALITY, while Seneca urges us to treat slaves as "friends," Paul tells Philemon to receive Onesius "no longer as a slave, but as more than a slave, a beloved brother." (αδελφον αγαπητον) Paul may or may not have been asking Philemon to manumit the young man (there is long debate over the point), but certainly the term of endearment he prescribed at least matches that of Seneca. (To say nothing against Seneca or Stoicism in general, for which I have profound respect.)

(7) There is no exegetical reason not to apply the hundreds of demands in Scripture that we "love" both other Christians and people in general to slaves. Slaves are human, and therefore fitting objects of all the imprecations along those lines in the New Testament. Of course slave owners can choose to ignore those demands, but that does not render them void.

(8) Avalos scoffs at the relevance of my pointing out that Jesus was a carpenter. Apparently he does not understand this point. Slave societies create a mindset in which owners think physical labor is beneath them. The example of Jesus forever renders this attitude heretical to Christians: how can the work Jesus did be too good for his followers? Of course people can again ignore the Gospel example, but that is their fault.

(9) “There is no evidence cited that loving one’s neighbor eventually led to abolition. As Harry M. Orlinsky, the prominent scholar of Hebrew, has deftly noted, the Hebrew term (re’eka) translated as ‘your neighbor’ is best understood as ‘your fellow Israelite’ in Leviticus 19:18 . . . ‘”

All one has to do is read what abolitionists like John Wesley, Francis Pastorius and his fellows, and William Wilberforce said about slavery, to see that “loving one’s neighbor” was the heart and soul of the abolition movement. They consciously drew on Jesus’ teaching and example here.

As for what “your neighbor” meant, let me suggest that Dr. Orlinsky, and Avalos again, “deftly” fail when it comes to reading context. Note just 15 verses later in the same chapter, 19:33: “When a stranger lives among you in your land, do not mistreat him; the foreigner who lives among you shall be like a native among you. You shall love him as your own . . . “

Is that not sufficiently clear?

If it isn’t, similar commands elsewhere in the book should make it so:

23: 22: “When you harvest the crop of your land neither mow to the very edges of your field nor glean what has been dropped in harvesting; leave it for the poor and for the foreigner. I am the Lord.”

25: 35: “If your brother becomes poor and unable to meet his obligations to you, then you shall sustain him, foreigner or neighbor, so he may keep alive with you. Charge no interest . . . “

There are numerous similiar regulations in Numbers, which immediately follows Leviticus, and throughout much of the OT.

(10) Avalos wants to ascribe the origins of racism to Christianity. I wait with interest to read his argument proving this point, contravening the plain meaning of Scripture.

(11) In regard to Darwin, I did not, in fact, "resort to guilt by association," as Avalos alleges. My point was that Haeckel was a prominent Darwinist, not that Darwin (as a person) was responsible for his views. As I’ve said elsewhere (in fact earlier in the same book from which Avalos read 4 pages, see subtopic on page 53, “Darwin was a Great Scientist!”), I have much respect for Charles Darwin.

(12) No, Pharaoh was not an "abolitionist," as Avalos claims. Nor, in the Exodus story, did he "manumit" anyone -- after all the trials God sent him, he allowed the Hebrews to go into the desert to sacrifice, then went after them with an army when they tried to stretch their holiday to a lifetime. I suggest Avalos re-read Exodus; it in NO way supports an abolitionist interpretation of his actions.

(13) No, I did not "excuse the Spaniards and the Portuguese because slavery was 'an accepted institution.'" I didn't even root for Spain in the World Cup.

(14) Avalos asks how the Bible could have had anything to do with getting rid of slavery in northern or western Europe, if it didn't serve the same function in southern Europe, "even though the Bible was known in both areas."

What a view of historical causation this seems to betray! Yet his fellow CD contributor, the historian Richard Carrier, makes the same mistake in trying to deny Christianity had anything to do with the rise of science, by offering this remarkable view of historical causation:

“One of the most basic principles of causality: when the cause is in place, its effect is seen.”

But history is not a machine in a pizza parlor that, when you hit the blue button, a the green alien pops out. It is multivariable chronology of events involving complex, obstinate creatures (human beings) who act out of a wide variety of often opaque and usually self-serving motivations.

Sure, there were Bibles in Spain. But few people owned them. There were also other books. Most people could not read any of them. Those few who read Bibles, were also acted on (like all of us) by lust, greed, pride, hunger, cowardice, stupidity, vanity, and social inertia. In addition it is, as I conceded in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, possible to rationalize slavery from the Bible, if you really want to. And of course, Sam Harris aside, human beings take a lot of motivating to give up power and wealth. To reduce a fantastically complex causal pathway to “when the cause is in place, the effect is seen” mocks modern post-determinative physics, still less any realistic understanding of how human history works.

(15) I argue, “A second and more radical abolition movement began among the Quakers,” then describe one of the antics of Benjamin Lay, the eccentric Quaker activist who agitated against slavery in the Philadelphia area until his death in 1759, to illustrate the point.

Dr. Avalos spills much ink arguing that, despite Lay, many Quakers in Philadelphia were and for some time remained slave-owners. He admits that the number of slaves there fell by 60% in just 8 years, from 1767 to 1775, but claims, “A better explanation for the decline of slaves is the inability of a slave population to reproduce itself after slave importations had virtually stopped.” On this basis he derides the idea that Quakers can “be counted as the second time ‘the Bible’ ended slavery.”

This response is questionable on several counts.

First, I didn’t say Quakers, or the Bible by means of one particular Quaker living in Philadelphia in the 1750s, “ended slavery.” I said a radical abolition movement BEGAN among Quakers. So it did. Nor did it begin or end with Lay, as anyone who reads the history of abolition should know. Misreading my real claim, not for the first time, Avalos simply fails to respond to it.

The first recorded protest against slavery in North America seems to have come from four Quakers in 1688. Half a century later, Benjamin Lay, Anthony Benezet, and John Woolman followed their lead. Woolman wrote, “my heart was enlarged in the love of Jesus Christ, and the favor of the Most High was extended to us in that and the ensuing meeting,” which gives a feel for his motivation.

Aside from their influence in the colonies, in England, “Friends taking the initiative against the slave trade in the 1780s drew on the colonial American Quakers Benezet and Woolman. The groundwork of a powerful testimony and action against the trade in slaves was laid by their writings.”

Second, is it really likely that the slave population of Philadelphia fell 60% in eight years through natural attrition? The slave trade to the US was outlawed in 1808. The 1810 Census counted 1.2 million slaves, while the 1860 census counted 4 million! (Not counting free blacks.) So even without slaves being imported, the number more than tripled over 52 years. So why should it have plunged so precipitously in Philadelphia? There is, then, something in need of explanation about the demographic claims Dr. Avalos draws from, here.

Third, why did Pennsylvania ban the import of slaves? Wasn’t that itself the fruit of agitation against slavery?

(16) No, I did not use the movie Amazing Grace as "evidence," as Avalos infers. Here's what I said:

"But as the movie Amazing Grace beautifully shows, Wilberforce's 'delusion' that God has raised him to make slavery 'vanish away' changed the course of history."

As should be clear, I mentioned the movie because I LIKED it, and wanted to encourage readers to see it. It is an illustration, nor an argument, thus the words "beautifully shows."

Having run up the flag of True Scholarship again, Avalos then tries to distract attention from the clear fact that Wilberforce DID play the leading role in banning slavery, by an historiographic aside questioning the "Great Man Theory of History." But if men like Jesus and Paul do not have a big effect on history, why does Avalos need to worry about something called Christianity? Furthermore, why does he spend so much effort trying to pin blame for the Holocaust on Martin Luther in his chapter in Christian Delusion? Should he add a postlude to that chapter: “But of course recent historiography has shifted away from the Great Man Theory of History, so the heart of my argument is null and void?”

Or does this argument, too, only work when employed against Christians?
(17) Avalos quotes Wilberforce as saying the NT undermines slavery, then pretends the man didn't really mean it. Again he plays a kind of verbal shell game, this time by first citing what he takes as a useful quote from Wilberforce, then transitioning with a sentence starting "In other words." Not uncommonly with Avalos, what follows are not just other words, but other meaning:

Wilberforce: “ . . . there certainly cannot be a doubt as to the principle of the Holy Scriptures especially of the New Testament on the subject of the Slave Trade or even that of slavery; tho on the latter point explanation would be required. But I believe it was better not to enter into any such discussion in the House of Commons for many reasons.”

Avalos: “In other words, Wilberforce apparently recognized that arguing on the basis of the Bible was a losing battle in the Commons . . . if anything, it was abandoning the Bible that made the abolitionist argument much easier.”

The implication is that, as Avalos claims earlier, the New Testament does not furnish good arguments against slavery, or that it furnishes better arguments for it, and Wilberforce wisely recognized this. But Wilberforce actually MEANS exactly the opposite: “there can be no doubt” that the NT is AGAINST both the slave trade (obviously) and slavery in general (needs some explanation).

An unspoken premise here is that Wilberforce could have no other reason for not emphasizing the biblical argument, than that the NT is not really against the slave trade and slavery, wink, wink. (Never mind his explicitly stated view that it is!) In any case, this premise is also clearly false. Consider the famous words of William Lamb (aka Lord Melburne):

“Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade public life.”

A reprobate of the old school and friend of Enlightenment figures, Lord Melburne seldom seemed to allow religion to invade his private life much, either. Avalos seems to curiously assume that such orientations were unknown, even in the midst of the Enlightenment.

(18) Avalos' arguments about why Christians enslaved black Africans is something to behold, and seems to have little to do with historical reality. But this paper is growing long; I’ll leave that for another day.

(19) Finally, I write, "Evangelical Christians led the movement against slavery in England and America, and England led the world."

Dr. Avalos responds:

"Not quite. In 1791, Haiti became the first country where slaves successfully overthrew their slavemasters (Christian slavemasters in this case) and founded a new nation. Those slaves were heavily influenced by Voodoo and other African traditions rather than just Christianity."

The topic here is abolition, not slave rebellions. Slaves have always wanted to free themselves, of course, which is why we have so many movies about Roman slave rebellions. (Note: movies are an illustration, not evidence!)

And how did slavery end in Haiti? Perhaps the best and most effective leader of the revolution was Toussaint Louverture, the Father of Haiti, a zealous Catholic and abolitionist who believed God wanted slavery overthrown. This formed no part of my short argument, and I’m not quite sure why Avalos brought Haiti up, other than the need to find someone, somewhere, who was not a zealous Christian, to credit for abolition. No doubt one might well credit practitioners of voodoo in Haiti for some good deeds in that process; we will see what specifics Avalos comes up with.

But the Western movement culminating in abolition had been going on a long time before slaves were liberated in Haiti. Western history is not, as I have admitted, my primary field, and the following events deserve more in-depth research than I am able to give them right now. But with a bit of rummaging around, here’s a partial list of prior abolition-tending highlights, a tree, as I said, growing slowly from a seed:


Timeline for Christian Abolition

50s AD: Paul writes, “In Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free.” The full implications have been debated ever since; certainly it precludes treating slaves as less than human.

60s: Paul writes a letter to his fellow Christian, Philemon, asking that he take back Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but as a brother.” His meaning has been debated ever since.

300s: Ambrose, bishop of Milan, melts down communion vessels to redeem captives: “The ornament of my sacrament is the redemption of captives; and those alone are precious vessels, that redeem souls from death.”

354-431: Paulinus, bishop of Nola, (whom Avalos criticizes for alleged racism) liberates his own slaves, spends his considerable wealth redeeming citizens of Campania, and then, (allegedly, will need to look into this further), goes into slavery to redeem one captive.

4th Century: Gregory of Nyssa critiques slavery in the light of Christian theology:

"'I obtained servants and maidens.' What are you saying? You condemn man who is free and autonomous to servitude, and you contradict God by perverting the natural law. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept. You have forgotten the limit of your authority which consists in jurisdiction over brutish animals . . . “

"God has said, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness' [Gen 1.26]. Since we are made according to God's likeness and are appointed to rule over the entire earth, tell me, who is the person who sells and buys? . . . How can we properly estimate the earth in its entirety as well as its contents? If these things are inestimable, tell me, how much greater is man's value who is over them . . . ? "

400-425: Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary historian, tells how Acacius, Bishop of Amida in modern Turkey, talked his priests into melting down holy vessels in order to redeem 7,000 Persian captives and send them home. He explains:

“Our God, my brethren, needs neither dishes nor cups; for he neither eats nor drinks, nor is in want of anything. Since then, by the liberality of its faithful members the church possesses many vessels both of gold and silver, it behooves us to sell them, that by the money thus raised we may be able to redeem the prisoners and also supply them with food.”

400s: St. Patrick rebukes Coroticus for enslaving Christians and threatens him with damnation:

“I do not know what to lament more: those who have been slain, or those whom they have taken captive, or those whom the devil has mightily ensnared. Together with him they will be slaves in Hell in an eternal punishment; for who commits sin is a slave and will be called a son of the devil.”

The assumption here, which has NT precedent, is that slave-trading is a “sin,” and a particularly nasty one, showing that the sinner is “mightily ensnared” by the devil. Patrick’s rant continues:

“Far from the love of God is a man who hands over Christians to the Picts and Scots . . .They have filled their houses with the spoils of dead Christians, they live on plunder . . . This is the custom of the Roman Christians of Gaul: they send holy and able men to the Franks and other heathen with so many thousand solidi to ransom baptized captives. You prefer to kill and sell them to a foreign nation that has no knowledge of God. You betray the members of Christ as it were into a brothel. What hope have you in God, or anyone who thinks as you do, or converses with you in words of flattery? God will judge.”

500s: An anonymous Christian believer in Egypt makes a legal declaration that a woman dependant on his family named Martha is not a slave, as she says, but free. After she certified that she was in fact of slave status, “fearing the judgment of God, and mindful of the Savior’s love of mankind, I groaned aloud.” He warned that anyone who tried to enslave the woman and her children would be subject to God’s judgment.

781: Jing Jing, in Chang An, the Chinese capital, writing an authoritative summary of the history and characteristics of the Church of the East:

“They do not keep slaves, but make the noble and humble equal. (不畜臧獲。均貴賤於人). They do not amass wealth, but put their stock in common.” (Note: the first Chinese phrase here is an unusual classical expression, used similarly by the Han historian Si Maqian, among other places.)
.
972: Counsel of Koblenz

1014: In the "Sermon of the Wolf to the English," Wulfston is said to lambast the English for restricting the rights of slaves. Slaves seem to have constituted either about 2 or 10% of inhabitants of England.

1000-1150 Iceland: ¨Christian influences were also one reason why slavery declined and disappeared in the 11th and early 12th centuries.¨ Jon Hjalmarsson (a history teacher in Iceland and regional administrator of education), History of Iceland, 34
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1102: Under the leadership of Anselm, philosopher and Archbishop of Canterbury, the Council of Westminster condemned the slave trade: “Let no one here after presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals.”

As one blogger put it, Anselm “hated slavery.”

1198: Founding of Trinitarians, who are credited with freeing almost a million (Christian) slaves over following centuries, among other acts of charity.

1200s: Founding of Mercedarian Order, also dedicated to freeing Christian slaves.

1300s: Louis X allows slaves to buy their freedom, as Avalos notes, to swell his coffers; actually his rationalization extended beyond that. In any case, France remained mostly slave-free, which did not need to happen.

1335: Magnus IV outlaws slavery (for Christians, anyway) in most of Scandinavia.

1416: The Republic of Ragusa (in modern Croatia) abolishes slavery and slave-trading.

1508: Thomas Hunt, one of John Smith's lieutenants (see Pocahontas for the Disney version!), kidnaps an American Indian named Tisquantum (Squanto) and attempts to sell him as a slave in Europe. Friars educate him, he is freed and returns to North America. While he is gone, everyone in his village died in an epidemic. Settlers at Plymouth are surprised to meet an Indian who speaks English. He teaches them how to fish, fertilize vegetables, and talk with other local tribes, enabling the colony to survive.

1588: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth abolishes slavery.

1772: The Somersett’s case essentially ruled against the (already rare) institution of slavery in England.

1777: The Republic of Vermont adopted a Constitution outlawing slavery: "no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent."

1778: Slavery is outlawed in Scotland.

1780: Pennsylvania passes an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery; other northern states follow with similar laws in 1783, 1784, 1799, and 1804.

1783: Slavery is ruled illegal in Massachusetts.

1780-1803: Other new laws are adopted against slavery in various parts of Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

1804: Haiti declares independence and abolishes slavery.

Given this history, it is puzzling why one should see Haiti as the pivot around which modern abolition moved.

After this point, and with this precedent, it is I think fair to say evangelicals (and Quakers) led what became the moral crusade against slavery, first in the English world, then extending around the world to this day. (I myself was privileged to play a small role in the continuing struggle.)

But not being a slave myself, I think I'll end here. A more proactive argument for the influence Christianity had and continues to have in ameliorating and ending slavery is probably needed to join all these little dots; maybe I’ll find time to write such a paper, or book, later.

Part III will deconstruct Dr. Avalos’ argument that Christianity caused the Holocaust.