Christianity and slavery

Christian views on slavery are varied both regionally and historically. Slavery in various forms has been a part of the social environment for much of Christianity's history, spanning well over eighteen centuries. In the early years of Christianity, slavery was a normal feature of the economy and society in the Roman Empire, and this persisted in different forms and with regional differences well into the Middle Ages.Saint Augustine described slavery as being against God's intention and resulting from sin. In the eighteenth century (in the context of a particularly savage and rapacious slave system), the abolition movement took shape among Christian people across the globe.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century debates in the UK and the US, passages in the Bible were used by both pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists to support their respective views.

In modern times, various Christian organizations reject the permissibility of slavery.

The Bible uses the Hebrew term eved () and Greek doulos () to refer to slaves. Eved has a much wider meaning than the English term slave, and in many circumstances it is more accurately translated into English as servant or hired worker.Doulos is more specific, but is also used in more general senses as well: of the Hebrew prophets (Rev 10:7), of the attitude of Christian leaders toward those they lead (Matt 20:27), of Christians towards God (1 Peter 2:16), and of Jesus himself (Phil 2:7).

Historically, slavery was not just an Old Testament phenomenon. Slavery was practiced in every ancient Middle Eastern society: Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman and Israelite. Slavery was an integral part of ancient commerce, taxation, and temple religion.

In the book of Genesis, Noah condemns Canaan (Son of Ham) to perpetual servitude: "Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers" (Gn 9:25). T. David Curp notes that this episode has been used to justify racialized slavery, since "Christians and even some Muslims eventually identified Ham's descendents as black Africans". Anthony Pagden argued that "This reading of the Book of Genesis merged easily into a medieval iconographic tradition in which devils were always depicted as black. Later pseudo-scientific theories would be built around African skull shapes, dental structure, and body postures, in an attempt to find an unassailable argument—rooted in whatever the most persuasive contemporary idiom happened to be: law, theology, genealogy, or natural science—why one part of the human race should live in perpetual indebtedness to another."

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