#Church and Slavery

[ausetkmt]

Introduction

For most of the past two millennia, Christian churches have not only accepted slavery, but have also participated in the slave trade and owned human property. The ethics of Christian slaveholding, however, have changed significantly. While Christians owned other Christians without controversy during the late ancient period, Christian churches began to forbid that practice over time. By the early modern period, it was considered taboo for Christians to own other Christians, although the practice sometimes continued illegally. While some individual Christians, including ministers and members of the clergy, questioned the legitimacy of slavery during the early modern period, it was not until the 18th century that a small minority of Christian churches began to assert an abolitionist stance.

Even then, it was deeply contested. For the majority of the early modern period, most Christian churches—both Catholic and Protestant—supported slavery and benefited from the institution. Even the Quakers (Society of Friends), who were leaders in the abolitionist movement, took a century to disown enslavers from their congregations. In the United States, many Christian denominations split on the issue of slavery in the 19th century, and Christian ministers and missionaries developed robust defenses of slavery based on Christian scripture and proslavery theology.

Enslaved and free Black Christians were the most ardent abolitionists, and they drew on scripture to support antislavery and abolition. While a significant amount of scholarship has debated whether Christian churches were pro- or anti-slavery, some of the most exciting research about the church and slavery has focused on why enslaved people became Christian and how they used the bureaucracy of the church to advocate for their rights and to protect their communities.

Much of this scholarship has emerged from a Latin American context, where archival records are more robust, but there are also important studies focusing on Black churches in the North America, especially the role of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and other African American–led churches. Within this area, scholars debate the meaning of conversion as well as the relationship between African religions and Black Christianity. Recent scholarship has emphasized that Africans and their descendants were not passive recipients of Christianity.

Rather, many enslaved men and women actively sought out baptism and used church institutions not only as a place of worship, but also as a way to protect themselves and their families. Another significant area of research has examined the relationship between the church, slavery, and race. Scholars have demonstrated how European Christians drew on categories of religious difference as they developed new racial categories. They have shown how categories like “Whiteness” and “purity of blood” were transformed within the context of slavery, as enslavers sought to reconcile slaveholding with Christian practice.

General Overviews

As Christian nations began to build empires across the Atlantic, the pope condoned the enslavement of Africans as long as certain conditions were met. A century later, Protestant nations followed Catholic lead in creating colonial slave societies in the Americas, although they developed different laws and practices related to slavery and Christianity. Blackburn 1997 provides an overview of the shifting relationship between slavery and Christian churches in European empires, while Davis 1966 is a classic study of slavery from Antiquity to the early modern period.

Over the past decades, scholars have sought to understand the history of the church and slavery from the perspectives of non-Europeans, especially Africans and Native Americans. Sanneh 2006 and Gray 2012 examine the history of Christianity in Africa, focusing on the role of African Christians. Johnson 2015 is a wide-ranging study of the relationship between African American religions (including Christianity), slavery, and colonialism, while Frey and Wood 1998 is an important survey of African American Protestantism in the British Atlantic world. Gin Lum and Harvey 2018 contains several essays relevant to the study of religion, race, and slavery. Reséndez 2016 explores the under-examined history of Native American enslavement.

Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London and New York: Verso, 1997. Blackburn examines the Old World foundations for American slavery. While not the focus of his study, Christian churches play a central role in creating a precedent and a legal justification for slavery in the New World.

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966. The first in David Brion Davis’s classic trilogy about slavery and abolition. Davis examines the ancient history of slavery and traces the relationship between slavery and the church in Europe and the Atlantic world.

Frey, Sylvia, and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. An important survey of Afro-Protestantism in British America and the early United States. Early chapters cover the history of Catholicism in Africa and the persistence of African religious traditions under slavery in the Americas. Later chapters cover Protestant missionary efforts, and the expansion of Afro-Protestantism after the Great Awakening.

Gin Lum, Kathryn, and Paul Harvey, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. An excellent edited volume with over thirty essays, covering race and religion from the colonial period until the 2020s. Several essays are relevant for discussions of the church and slavery.

Gray, Richard. Christianity, the Papacy, and Mission in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012. A posthumously published set of essays. Gray’s overarching argument is that African Christians played a central role in initiating papal interest and involvement in sub-Saharan Africa. Several essays touch on the history of slavery and the slave trade.

Johnson, Sylvester. African American Religions, 1500–2000. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139027038While not focusing exclusively on the church or Christianity, Johnson’s synthesis of five hundred years of African American religions is an indispensable study that traces the relationship between Black religion, slavery, racism, and colonialism within a transatlantic frame.

Lampe, Armando, ed. Christianity in the Caribbean: Essays on Church History. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001. A helpful overview of the relationship between the church and slavery in the Caribbean, with essays on Catholic and Protestant churches in different imperial and national settings.

Reséndez, Andrés. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. The history of Native American enslavement has long been under-examined, largely because indigenous slavery was illegal for most of colonial American history. This study does not focus on the church explicitly, but the relationship between Catholicism and Indian slavery is an important theme.

Sanneh, Lamin. “Christianity in Africa.” In The Cambridge History of Christianity. Edited by Stewart Brown and Timothy Tackett, 411–432. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Sanneh’s survey traces the changing role of Christianity—both Catholic and Protestant—in West and East Africa, focusing on the role of Christian missions and the impact of slavery and colonialism

Abolition of Slavery

Michael Guasco, Matthew Wyman-McCarthy

Subject: Atlantic History »

Date Added: 2010-05-10

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Abolitionism and Africa

Bronwen Everill

Subject: Atlantic History »

Date Added: 2016-02-25

Abolitionism and AfricaIntroductionFrom the beginning of the organized abolition campaigns in the Atlantic world in the 1780s, antislavery campaigners...

Africa and the Atlantic World

David Northrup

Subject: Atlantic History »

Date Added: 2010-05-10

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African American Religions

Stefania Capone

Subject: Atlantic History »

Date Added: 2011-08-26

African American Religions Introduction Since its beginnings, the study of African American religions has combined anthropological and histori...

African Religion and Culture

David Northrup

Subject: Atlantic History »

Date Added: 2010-05-10

African Religion and Culture Introduction Africa has been home to a great variety of religious and other cultural practices and beliefs, i...

#Church and Slavery #White Lies #religion #Black people enslaved by the church #american slavery #world history

[saitamastamaticsoup]

Nightbringer is so funny bc if diavolo didn’t threaten to send us back to the human world(idk of that happens I’ve only heard) Lilith would still he here no? I don’t think she would be like a baby when they said she was reborn as a human I just assume they just put her in the world and erased her memories but she was probably reborn as a child and grew up. But she would still be around meaning that it would be so incredibly far into the past because even they had a hard time tracing MC’s lineage😭 so imagine going back to like a time before lightbulbs were invented. Absolutely the FUCK NOT!!! I could not for a second live as a small sickly Victorian child no way I would be able to survive watching people Live in their own filth😭🤢 I’m sorry i’m not witnessing slavery or the black plague Dia has me all the way fucked up I’m too spoiled by modern technology like socks and hoodies

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me x black reader #obey me nightbringer #nightbringer lucifer #nightbringer spoilers #om! nightbringer #nightbringer mc #nightbringer diavolo #Barbados you better take my ass home now!! #I think I would actually change the course of history #if you put me in there and I’m watching slavery happen in like real time #I am going to overthrow the Catholic Church and change Christianity and Catholicschism as we know it #i’m going to start killing priests #I’m so serious telling people to shoot Christopher Columbus on site don’t even let them step foot on America #get gone!!! #like they didn’t take baths I know they smell bad🤢 #they have a bouquet of flowers at weddings because those used to be onions #to disguise the smell of how bad people smelled because weddings used to take place in the summer #and these people haven’t discovered soap yet so onions #I would literally be throwing up so quickly #And if we have a canon Lilith design I need that white women to protect me #ain’t no way

[durn3h]

One of the most interesting things about religion to me is that so many people don’t even see the mental gymnastics they are doing to try and shape the biblical texts into a framework that is acceptable in the modern day and it comes out looking like something that none of the authors would have approved of.

#not to mention that they were written by authors at different times and for different purposes #so they say lots of different things #which makes it easy to pick and choose the interpretation that best matches what you want #like the ‘one man one woman’ definition of marriage that doesn’t exist literally anywhere in the Bible #women were property and men could have as many as they wanted #but then once the Greeks influenced them a bit in the New Testament it says leaders of the church should have one wife #so that means the Bible is against polygamy even though every man in the Bible had multiple wives #or the people that say the Bible is against slavery #even though there is literal chattel slavery described in the Old Testament with commands on how to do it #and in the new testament slaves are told to obey their masters #then they say that they aren’t slaves just servants #which is completely false #it reminds me of how so many Protestants are vehemently against alcohol #so whenever the Bible refers to wine in a good context they say it’s juice #and whenever it’s bad it is wine #even though several different words are used that basically all refer to fermented alcoholic wine #they translate them all differently as needed #like how Jesus said sell all your belongings and give them to the poor #then the Bible tells how literally all of the early Christians sold all their possessions and donated the money #and now people say that just means to be generous #and then don’t even leave a tip at a restaurant because they hate handouts

[gxlden-angels]

One of these days I will write about the nuances of The Black Church and how it acted both as a force for good; providing food, shelter, and community to those in need from slavery onward, and as a force for destruction, actively treating drug addicts and LGBT people as diseases and cutting them off from that sanctuary. I should do it at my most powerful (Now during BHM) but alas.....

#I recently attended a conference #and one of the presentations I went to was about Ballroom Culture and History #the presenter compared it to being in a black church #and of course not all churches are the same even with groups #but when I say 'The Black Church' I usually mean the southern baptist/methodist combination that emphasizes freedom. emotionalism and praise #There's a big focus on being freed from slavery both literally and metaphorically (from sin) #Youve probably seen those videos of praise breaks with ppl screaming crying frowing up and falling on the floor #That type of church #It seems silly as an outsider but it's all about connection #In Ballrooms they danced. they performed. they loved #In church they danced. they performed. they loved. #After the church comes together and feeds everyone #If someone is sick the whole church nurses them and prays #Ballroom was a place for queer folk to gather. Black people gathered at church. It wasn't entirely safe but it was something #But then things happened #Black churches kick out addicts and sex workers and queer folk #And during the AIDS epidemic #and war on drugs started #Cis gay men turned on the trans women that built those Ballrooms #They decided they didn't want their spaces pulled down #They decided this was the only way to rise. By stepping on others #And as the communities grew they changed #Of course these community churches and Houses still exist #People are still there supporting each other #But Madonna 'invented' vogue and Ru Paul partakes in fracking #But Creflo Dollar owns a private jet #This was probably a rambling mess but I hope you get it #I also lost my ipad on the other side of the country so I'm a bit too upset to organize my thoughts better rn #ex christian #religious trauma

[chancellorgriffin-blog]

#Cake #church of the subgenius #subgenius #workplace #work #job #birthday #sublimable messaging #sign #chocolate #its a trap #clip art #poster #wage slavery #bob dobbs

[reasoningdaily]

The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

people want to pretend that this didn't happen so we got a little learning for you here

#Catholic Church #White lies #slavery #enslavement of Black people #religion #racism #colonialism #Youtube

[tetsunabouquet]

To this day I wonder something. We live in a time period were we are looking a lot at the transgressions since the discovery of America. Whilst Europe gets called out for it, I find it odd how pretty much no one ever mentions the Church. When it comes to slavery, the Church profitted off of it too! There's literally religious propoganda that justifies slavery, like an Irish monk claiming Africa is where Kain settled and that's why black people have their skin color as it is a reflection of Kain's sinful legacy. This even is amongst the reasons why Irish people as well as the main reason why South Europeans got misteated. South European countries were invaded by north Africans more then once. This is why Southern European people weren't considered 'white' back in the day as they have some mixed heritage. When the Spanish Armada hooked up with some of the Irish, this led to an ethnic group called the Black Irish, despite them being white. Robert Sheehan is an example of someone ethnically Black Irish. Now the Church literally was as rich as monarchies and the profits of slavery obviously ended up back in Europe. Do any of you seriously think not a single coin of that money ended up in the Church's pocket? If they weren't outright encouraging people to go to Africa and enslave people then why did the propoganda exist in the first place? THINK! Then there's the history of medical malpractise that goes beyond people being stupid enough to think praying will cure cancer. Did you know that historians found suggestions, that the people burnt at the stake were mentally ill and that it was neurodivergent behavior that got many suspected of being witches? For fuck's sake, in the past the Church considered one of the signs of being a witch is to have a deformity and this falls directly into the pattern of deformed people having been religiously sacrificed by beliefs all around the world. This continues on in the pattern of exorcisms. There are still hardcore believers who'd exorcise the mentally ill, there are still people dying of exorcisms. Last year, a 3 year old girl was killed in one. Do you seriously think this isn't a pattern that's been going on for centuries? THINK! I really wish we'd all actually start holding the Church accountable for their part in slavery and long history of ableism. Everyone always talks about the gays without realizing that the Church has blood on their hands regarding almost every minority group out there. But they do. Hold the Institution of the Church accountable for its crimes.

#tetsutalk #the church #religion #history #slavery #witch hunts #religious propoganda #medical malpractise #Stop exorcising neurodivergent people #it makes me sick

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

Enslaved to Sin

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” — John 8:34 | New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cross References: Romans 6:16; 2 Peter 2:19

#addiction #sin #slavery #John 8:34 #Gospel of John #New Testament #NRSV #New Revised Standard Version Bible #National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America

[yr-obedt-cicero]

What were the hamkids relationship with slavery like?

I can't find much on Alexander Jr, but according to The Hamiltonian Tradition in the United States, 1804-1912, when James was writing in the newspaper advocating for the use of black regiments against the Confederacy, Alexander offered to volunteer and lead one. Although he was like 77 years old, so of course it didn't actually happen.

James's early stage of politics was... pretty bad. Back when he was a member of the Democratic Party (And a pretty big Jackson fan), and was pro-states rights; he tried to argue that slavery was Constitutional. Although thank the Gods, around 1840, James switched to become a Whig. And then when the Civil War broke out, he became an early supporter of emancipation and was an abolitionist.

“The following pages relate to the most interesting period of my life—the Rebellion. I was sternly opposed to slavery because I knew it to be a great crime and a great evil to the oppressor as well as the oppressed. I had learned this from the writings of the wise and good men of all times. [...] I also learned, from a thorough examination of the Constitution and the history of its formation, that much was yielded to slaveholders in order to secure the adoption of the Constitution by the Southern States, and thus to secure the union of all the States, but without establishing slavery or doing more than recognizing the fact that ‘persons were held to service and labor in certain States by the laws thereof.’ And it was well understood, that slavery should not be interfered with directly by the Free States. I therefore did not permit myself to become an abolitionist. As soon, however, as the Slave States threw off their allegiance, freed from my constitutional obligations, I became a most determined abolitionist, and prepared by all means in my power to abolish slavery throughout the land. How useful I was in this direction, or in any other, in sustaining the government, these pages will indicate. My whole time and all my faculties were directed to the work; stimulated by the con- viction that should we abolish slavery and crush the rebellion, cost what it might, we should thus be made a wiser, better, and happier people, and a much more powerful nation, among other reasons, because ‘the Union of the States would be perpetuated.’”

(source — Reminiscences of James A. Hamilton)

In the November of 1864, towards the end of the Civil War, John Church wrote a speech entitled“The Slave Power Its Heresies and Injuries to the American People”. He talks about slavery's large influence on the origins and development of the government, and also on how the Southern states insistence on perpetuating their “peculiar institution” nearly proved the undoing of the Constitution.

“The public deeds of public men are the property of the public, and whether good or evil, are living lessons to those who come after them.”

(source — Loyal Publication Society of New York)

William owned a slave, who was a black man called “Black Davie”, but his actual name and identity are unknown. Muldoon claims that Davie didn't do much labor, and instead stood aside as William himself worked away in the mines. If this is true, it is likely Davie worked more indoors, as Edgar (William's grand nephew that lived with him while Edgar's mother did) mentions that Davie was a sort of babysitter when his mother wasn't around;

“Black Davie used to ‘tote’ me around and take entire care of me in my mother's absence.”

(source — Alexander Hamilton's pioneer son; the life and times of Colonel William Stephen Hamilton; 1797-1850, by Sylvan Joseph Muldoon)

Although William's opinion on slavery isn't fully know due to the lack of surviving papers, he was a loyal and strong-headed Whig, so one can assume like many Whigs; he opposed slavery despite his actions. He was also close political partners with Henry Clay, who also opposed slavery despite some of his hypocrisy and racist ideologies.

Phil II was also said to have been a “mild abolitionist” according to, his second son, Allan. The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early-to-mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. Phil assisted the Underground Railroad in the escape of at least one slave by concealing the fugitive in his cellar until he could safely resume his travel to Canada, as Allan says;

“I recall this very well, for my brother and I saw a very black and ragged man in the cellar who was being fed by my father himself, and kept until such time as he could safely resume his journey. The mystery of why he was in our house, for which no explanation was given at the time, impressed us then intensely, and our imaginings, it is needless to say, ran riot. After President Lincoln’s great proclamation we were told all, but it was not until after my father’s death in 1884 that Mr. Dana referred in the Sun to the latter’s many acts of self-sacrificing kindness in this direction.”

(source — Recollections of an Alienist, Personal and Professional, by Allan McLane Hamilton)

Holly also seemed to have owned slaves, but it was likely her husband doing or just to have some assistance and care while she was a widow. From her phrasing, it sounds as though she also opposed the idea;

“I have just been interrupted by my poor little slave girl who takes every opportunity to come and see me – Poor creature, she seems to love no one save me! Poor girls, she was glad to take a piece of bread to help out her evening meal at her hard stinting task master’s, as she dared not stay, long enough, to eat her supper in my kitchen or even from my table, as I offered it. What will God do for these people – will He not take them from this, their Egypt, as He did the Isrealites of Old! And shall we not be punished if we be not willing to let them go?”

(source — Eliza Hamilton Holly to Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler Malcolm Cochran, [December 16, 1856] . Via; @hamiltonschuylercollection )

Frances Antill, a little girl the Hamilton's adopted after her father's death in the mid-1780s, went on to marry Arthur Tappan, a prominent abolitionist.

#amrev #american history #jackson era #alexander hamilton jr #james alexander hamilton #john church hamilton #william s hamilton #william stephen hamilton #william hamilton #black davie #eliza hamilton holly #eliza hamilton #frances antill tappan #frances antill #slavery #history #hamilchildren #hamilton family #hamilton kids #hamilkids #hamilton children #asks #sincerely anonymous #Cicero's history lessons #philip hamilton ii #allan mclane hamilton

[coolspacequips]

My unpopular opinion abt the new Castlevania series ig is that I just don't have any care or sympathy for these little church goons that they were trying to humanize this time around... Like Olrox revenge kill go off, I watch u kill that boys mom minute 1 but I'm still in ur corner bbygirl! I see ur thru line.

But then his little shitty church bf sanctioning and standing by all the actions of the church and also we don't talk about the homophobia he's supporting while also being gay and also sleeping w a man his church would have (and did) sanctioned the genocide of several times over... I'm supposed to think the way he shut Olrox down was anything worth feeling bad for, I just rolled my eyes at his self righteousness. Walk away from that man, Olrox!! We saw where this manic Christian love leads, and it's what ur Abbott did (who I also don't give 1 fuck about him or his white xtian guilt especially after That LOL)

I guess I can tentatively respect that the church guard's storyline is gonna potentially be about deprogramming him, but I hate that they seemed to be posing him as correct in accusing Olrox of having no soul, when we as the viewer know it was an act of love that he didn't think he was capable anymore, after what was done to him at the hands of ppl that the church guard. To me all i felt was the heartache from his POV so common in these communities where u thought you have a Good Christian that saw you, but he still sees you as the monolith of his imaginary enemy the second push comes to shove, even though your actions have shown again and again that there's nuance to be had

#the only whites that gave gotten a pass from me is baby belmont and the speaker mom #who's daughter I'm sure will mature i want to like her but she got shackled into a plot w the abott #which means we have to spend a lot of time on his white man pain about how he had the power to do so many terriblw things and chose to do i #anyway just wanted to get this off my chest i couldn't watch it fast enough and don't remember the guards name #and didn't look it up bc i don't want someone looking for him and starting a fight w me #just sucks bc i love Olrox so much and a lot of his fan content is him w this man i can't stomach tbh #i hoped he would be different i hope he can change or that Olrox finds someone else #text posts #i don't want to get into it too much more i have to rewatch this show bc baby belmont and Annette are my kids and Edouard is so special 2 m #bls im not a hater so if u like the guard i don't care #i just have a lot less interest in these types of threads ik some ppl who have been victims of the church find them cathartic #but i often find the storyline too much in the business of comforting the oppressor being represented and find them tedious #raised in American South where a lot of the cultures being examined exist and have flavored it #particularly this time period being looked at w plantation slavery plus French and native relations being v highlighted in my region #ugh anyway let me not get started x2 plus i don't care who's side drolta is on #she's bad and unjustified just insane and likes murder and looks very hot while she does it the end #(i love her every show putting black girls in it take note of the way they treated her hair so many styles 🥺💕)

[caffeinatedopossum]

Tw abuse

Why was the worst part of my abuse just the fact that I was so delusional about it? Like the amount I was lied to is hard to even process. Nothing was true. I was told I wanted things to be like that and I just believed it... now it feels like it was all my fault because I accepted that.

#my gf literally used the word slavery to describe how i grew up so yeah. #just trying to let that sink in but its not happening #also apparently my whole entire was a cult 👍 like a lot of churchs are i guess but still #there should be less cults maybe?? #(yes-that maybe was a yes)

[ausetkmt]

It was the morning of May 24, 1888, and a large, ethnically diverse crowd waited in the Sala Ducale of the Apostolic Palace in Rome for the pope to arrive. Led by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, the French missionary archbishop of Algiers, the group had traveled to Rome on a double pilgrimage from North Africa and from the Diocese of Lyon, France. The pilgrims had earlier entered St. Peter’s Square with camels and a special gift for the pope: a pair of gazelles wearing silver collars inscribed with Latin verse.

Shortly after noon, the smiling Pope Leo XIII and his entourage entered the Sala Ducale to sustained applause from the pilgrims. It was a special year for Leo: the golden jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood. Preparations had been underway throughout nearly the entirety of 1887 for the yearlong celebration in which the pope would receive thousands of gifts from all over the world and greet an abundance of well-wishers.

Among the pilgrims who traveled to Rome during Leo’s jubilee, however, this group was unique, and its uniqueness was indicated by the 12 men strategically placed at the front of the crowd. These 12 African men had been enslaved before their freedom was purchased by Lavigerie and his missionaries. They were at the head of the group because today’s audience was an unofficial celebration of the release of Pope Leo’s encyclical on slavery.

On Feb. 10, the Brazilian statesman and abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco had met with Leo in a private audience and asked the pope to write the encyclical. Brazil was on the cusp of abolishing slavery, which would make it the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. Due to the Brazilian princess regent Isabel’s devout Catholicism, Nabuco thought a letter from the pope condemning slavery might embolden her to support abolition more aggressively. Leo was happy to oblige, and the news about this antislavery encyclical began to spread.

Upon hearing of it, Cardinal Lavigerie wrote to the pope and asked him to include something about the continuing presence of slavery in Africa. The anti-abolition prime minister of Brazil, however, was not happy with the news from Rome, and he successfully pressed the Holy See to delay the issuance of the encyclical.

Despite the prime minister’s back-channel machinations, Brazil’s parliament passed the abolition bill, and it was signed into law by Isabel on May 13. When the encyclical, titled “In Plurimis,” was released to the public on May 24, it was dated May 5, as if Pope Leo wanted it on the record that he had supported Brazilian abolition before it became the law of the land. Nevertheless, this late release intersected perfectly with Cardinal Lavigerie’s pilgrimage. The day before the audience, the 12 formerly enslaved men had been given the chance to read the document. Though other encyclicals of Leo would come to overshadow this one, it surely was one of his most theologically significant. For with “In Plurimis” and his follow-up encyclical, “Catholicae Ecclesiae,” Leo XIII did something astounding: He changed the church’s teaching on slavery. The Catholic Church, for the first time in its history, had finally gotten on board with abolitionism.

Divergent Explanations

That revolutionary day when Leo XIII became the first pope to condemn slavery is not well known by many Catholics and is rarely mentioned in scholarship related to the church’s history. This is not terribly surprising. The church’s historical engagement with slaveholding is very complex, and it is also widely misunderstood. Even in the past several years, well-intentioned Catholic writers have published accounts of the church and slavery that are full of inaccuracies.

Often, those inaccurate accounts are written to defend the church in some way. In 2005, for example, Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote a book review in First Things claiming that the popes had denounced the trade in African slaves from its very beginnings and yet had never condemned slavery as such, retaining a continuity of teaching that always allowed for some “attenuated forms of servitude.” Other apologists have taken a more absolute position: The church has always been against slavery itself. Both these lines of argumentation seem to agree on two central assertions: The popes always condemned the trade in African slaves, and the church’s teaching did not change.

Defending the church, either in its reputation or its doctrinal continuity, can be praiseworthy. But when it comes to the history of the Catholic Church and slaveholding, this posture of defense has been deeply damaging. It has unnecessarily led to confusion around the church’s history with slaveholding, and that confusion has helped to prevent the church from reckoning with a troubling history whose consequences are still present in our world.

The history of the church was nothing close to a steady, if interrupted, march to eliminate slavery.

And yet it was once widely known, and still is among historians of slavery today, that the Catholic Church once embraced slavery in theory and in practice, repeatedly authorized the trade in enslaved Africans, and allowed its priests, religious and laity to keep people as enslaved chattel. The Jesuits, for example, by the historian Andrew Dial’s count, owned over 20,000 enslaved people circa 1760. The Jesuits and other slaveholding bishops, priests and religious were not disciplined for their slaveholding because they were not breaking church teaching. Slaveholding was allowed by the Catholic Church.

One of the reasons the church’s past approval of slaveholding is so little known among the general Catholic population today is that the very popes who reversed the church’s course on slavery and the slave trade also promoted that same inaccurate narrative that defended the church’s reputation and continuity—even, intentionally or not, at the cost of the truth.

Condemning the Atlantic Slave Trade

The shifts began quietly. In 1814, Pope Pius VII, at the request of Great Britain prior to the upcoming Congress of Vienna, privately sent letters to the kings of France and Spain asking them to condemn the slave trade. At this time in history, condemning the trade did not equate to condemning slavery itself. “The slave trade” meant the transatlantic shipping of enslaved persons from the African continent to the New World. Hence, the slaveholding U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, prior to signing an anti-slave-trade bill into law in 1807, saw no contradiction in referring to the trade as “those violations of human rights” against “the unoffending inhabitants of Africa” all while continuing to keep Black descendants of the trade’s immediate victims enslaved. Britain itself outlawed the trade in 1807, but slaveholding remained legal afterward in parts of its empire. In the same vein, Pius’s private letters referred only to the trade, not to slavery itself.The Door of No Return is a memorial in Ouidah, a former slave trade post in Benin, a country in West Africa. (Alamy)

The papacy’s condemnation of the trade became a public one in 1839 with Gregory XVI’s bull “In Supremo Apostolatus.” Though the bull came, once again, at the request of Great Britain, Gregory deserves praise for being the first pope to publicly condemn the Atlantic slave trade after nearly four centuries of its operation. The bull was a strong one in many ways, blaming the advent of the trade on Christians who were “basely blinded by the lust of sordid greed.” And yet, as with Pius VII, Gregory did not speak directly on the issue of whether slaveholders in the Americas should free their enslaved people, something he easily could have included.

So when some abolitionists in the United States greeted Gregory’s bull as a fully antislavery document, Catholic bishops like John England of Charleston, S.C., and Francis Patrick Kenrick of Philadelphia argued that the only thing the bull did was precisely what the United States had already done: ban participation in the international slave trade. Gregory corrected no one’s interpretation, and so Catholic slaveholding was able to continue in the United States and elsewhere, arguably without disobedience to church teaching.

The Catholic Church approved, multiple times and at some of its highest levels of authority, of one of the gravest crimes against humanity in modern history.

Why Gregory was the first pope to publicly condemn the trade is an agonizing and perhaps unanswerable question. The arguments that Gregory used to support his condemnation had been articulated by countless theologians and activists over the previous few centuries, including by the representatives of Black Catholic confraternities who protested the trade before the Holy See in the 1680s. Any pope since at least the 1540s, when the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas changed his opinion on the trade after researching its injustices, could have issued nearly the same bull as Gregory did. Gregory was just the first to choose to do it.

Rewriting History

Unfortunately, Gregory also provided a narrative in his bull that did not present a truthful portrait of the church’s engagement with the trade. Pius VII had made an ambiguous and dubious claim that the church had helped to abolish much of the world’s slavery and that the popes had always “rejected the practice of subjecting men to barbarous slavery,” but Gregory expanded upon this claim in detail. He wrote that in ancient times, “those wretched persons, who, at that time, in such great number went down into the most rigorous slavery, principally by occasion of wars, felt their condition very much alleviated among the Christians.” He claimed that slavery was gradually eliminated from many Christian nations because of “the darkness of pagan superstition being more fully dissipated, and the morals also of the ruder nations being softened by means of faith working by charity.”

In Gregory’s telling, this steady Christian march toward eliminating slavery from the earth was then interrupted by greedy Christians who reduced Black and Indigenous peoples to slavery or who bought already enslaved persons and trafficked them.

Gregory claimed that the papacy had been opposed to these new situations of enslavement: “Indeed, many of our predecessors, the Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, by no means neglected to severely criticize this.” As evidence for this statement, he cited the bulls prohibiting the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas written by Paul III, Urban VIII and Benedict XIV, as well as the then recent condemnations of the trade by Pius VII. He also included a curious reference: a 1462 letter of Pius II that, Gregory wrote, “severely rebuked those Christians who dragged neophytes into slavery.”

This narrative was deeply misleading. The history of the church was nothing close to a steady, if interrupted, march to eliminate slavery. Rather, the early church embraced slaveholding both before and after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the medieval church expanded the ways by which someone could become enslaved beyond those allowed by pagan Rome—allowing, for example, that women in illicit relationships with clerics could be punished with enslavement. Theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas theologically defended the practice of keeping humans enslaved, and St. Gregory the Great gave enslaved people to his friends as gifts.

Moreover, while it was true that the popes condemned the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the trade in African slaves was permitted and encouraged by a series of popes from Nicholas V, who died in 1455, forward. Gregory XVI mentioned none of this, instead seeming to suggest that Pius II’s letter meant the popes’ hands had always been clean with regard to the trade. But Pius II’s condemnation had nothing to do with the general Portuguese trade in enslaved Africans; it instead concerned a particular instance of Catholic converts being kidnapped. Nicholas V’s bulls had specified that only non-Christians could be seized and enslaved. Pius II’s letter was in accordance with Nicholas’ permissions, not against them.

While it was true that the popes condemned the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, the trade in African slaves was permitted and encouraged by a series of popes.

The inaccuracy of this narrative did not go unnoticed. The Portuguese consul in Brazil scoffed at the bull, writing that “its doctrine has been most rarely sent forth from the Palace of the Vatican, for it is well known that Nicholas V…and Calistus III…approved of the commerce in slaves” and that Sixtus IV and Leo X also approved of the trade even after the letter of Pius II. He noted that Scripture did not condemn slavery and that the popes had previously condemned only the enslavement of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Erroneous as Gregory’s narrative may have been, he was not pulling it out of thin air. Some British and American abolitionist historians had been promoting such a narrative for decades in an attempt to argue that Christianity had historically been an antislavery religion. Just five years prior to Gregory’s bull, for example, the American historian George Bancroft falsely claimed that the slave trade “was never sanctioned by the see of Rome.” It is possible, then, perhaps even likely, that Gregory XVI honestly believed this narrative to be accurate. Nevertheless, it was wrong, and its publication in a papal bull meant that it would spread more widely.

An Abolitionist Church

When Leo XIII condemned not merely the slave trade but slavery itself on that exciting day in 1888, it may have not been too shocking to most people who heard the news. Slavery was now legally abolished in the Christian world; why would the church not be opposed to it? And yet both Nabuco and Lavigerie understood that Leo was making history. The condemnations of slaveholding that Leo issued in 1888 and 1890 did not represent merely a change in policy, which itself would have been momentous enough. The change was a theological one. What the Holy Office only a couple decades prior had proclaimed was “not at all contrary to natural and divine law” was now declared by Leo to be contrary to both.

Leo even used the arguments of abolitionists to make his case. There was a certain set of theological propositions that abolitionist theologians had been promoting for centuries, from as early as St. Gregory of Nyssa to the 19th-century abolitionists Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass and the French Catholic journalist Augustin Cochin. These propositions had been criticized or ignored by most Catholic theologians who wrote in favor of slavery, but Leo’s documents were filled with them. His successors would repeat and even deepen those abolitionist ideas in their own antislavery documents over and over again.

And yet, bold and praiseworthy as Leo’s abolitionist encyclicals were, he further concealed the truth about church history. Ignoring centuries of papal, conciliar and canonical approval of slavery, Leo strengthened Gregory’s narrative of a long antislavery march through history and inaccurately listed additional popes who had supposedly condemned the trade in African slaves and even slavery itself—including one of the popes who had renewed Nicholas V’s permissions.

What the Holy Office only a couple decades prior had proclaimed was ‘not at all contrary to natural and divine law’ was now declared by Leo to be contrary to both.

As with Gregory, Leo may sincerely have believed these falsehoods to be true. But far from being officially corrected, this erroneous papal narrative has survived online and in print. Even St. John Paul II, who apologized for the participation of Christians in the slave trade, repeated the false claim that the trade had been condemned by Pius II.

The Need for Reckoning and Reconciliation

The Catholic Church’s change in teaching regarding slavery was striking. While that change raises important theological questions about ecclesiology and doctrinal development, we must reject the temptation to jump straight to those questions without also doing the hard and painful work of reckoning with this history. It is morally imperative that we admit and deal with a series of difficult truths: that the Catholic Church approved, multiple times and at some of its highest levels of authority, of one of the gravest and longest-lasting crimes against humanity in modern history—and did not withdraw that approval for nearly 400 years.

During the full history of the Atlantic slave trade, roughly 12.5 million African men, women and children were forced onto ships to be sent across the ocean to a life of forced labor. Almost two million did not survive that journey. The survivors and millions of their descendants, all human beings made in God’s image, were the chattel property of other humans who had the power to whip them, force them to work unpaid their entire lives and keep their children enslaved as well.A bas-relief sculpture on the wall of the Our Mother of Africa chapel at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., depicts the African American experience from slavery to emancipation and the civil rights movement. (CNS photo/Patrick Ryan for the National Black Catholic Congress via Catholic Standard)

As Catholics, we must consider the human beings affected by the church’s actions. How many people died chained to the disease-ridden hulls of ships because the popes before Gregory XVI repeatedly failed to take a bold stand? How many enslaved people were sexually assaulted because they were placed in a legal position allowed by the popes before Leo XIII that left them vulnerable to such abuse? How many enslaved people fell away from the Catholic faith because priests told them that the oppression they were experiencing was occurring with the approval of Holy Mother Church?

A process of reconciliation is needed. Our church needs to admit these past injustices.

As part of that reconciliation process, we need to do our best to repair the harm caused by the injustices our church perpetuated. Anti-slave-trade Catholic theologians of the 16th century were already writing about the need to make restitution to enslaved people. One 17th-century Capuchin even wrote about the eventual need for the descendants of slaveholders to make restitution to the descendants of the enslaved. Some religious communities have taken steps toward reconciliation, including the Jesuits of the United States, but at some point the Vatican will have to do the same. Perhaps there could be an international commission, or maybe a synod. When we consider the millions of lives the trade harmed and still harms to this day, it is difficult to imagine even the convoking of an ecumenical council as being too extreme a remedy.

Pope Leo XIII righted one significant wrong when he changed the Catholic Church’s teaching on slavery in 1888, and the popes since then should be lauded for their continual denunciation of slavery, slavery-like economic practices and contemporary human trafficking. But as with every unconfessed and unaddressed sin, harm remains. It takes courage to pick up that examination of conscience and pray with it. It takes courage to enter the confessional, say what needs to be said and commit to doing what needs to be done. And yet the justice and love of God demand such steps.

#Slavery and the Catholic Church: It’s time to correct the historical record #catholic church #curse of cannan #church lies #white lies #Black Lives Matter #Reparations

[shallowrambles]

Sam’s blood addiction was so reviled but then he saved the world in part because of it

Sam’s “vices” are so reviled by the narrative Dean, even though Sam’s sacrifice and self-corruption save the world

It’s an eloquent parallel to the concept of the sacred executioner role, really (Dean will do self-corruption with MoC later to stop “a great evil”)

Doing the ugly thing, the reviled thing, the untouchable thing so everyone else can go on about their lives none the wiser and completely unaware of the corrupt underbelly and awful work that keeps it running

Or if they are aware, they can righteously judge it, and then mope about how unfair and ugly it is

#Sam’s vices are so held against him #jack too #America is like this #so much of our riches are built on sin #modern continuing slavery etc #nihilism #sacred executioner #my mom did not accept drug use in her don #or husband #but she volunteered at church for recovering addicts #and talked the talk #because she liked feeling superior and needed #but husband and son and family? were not allowed this #because our job as family is to support her #spn sometimes accidentally stumbles on exactly how is it down here #dean crit #just to be safe #it’s also just dynamics of addiction #family and loved ones are judged differently #because you actually rely on them not just the idea of them #expecting too much of your kids #demanding better of your spouse #the trailer trash way #sighs all around

[foxgirltail]

You'd assume that the LDS church and Mr Smith's whole dealio would have been exposed as a sham when the alleged "alternative doctrine of Abraham and Joshua" from the Egypt papyri (+4 mummies, allegedly a Pharaoh and his house) he acquired and "translated" into the Mormon scripture titled the pearl of great price were looked at by egyptologists who determined that most of them were, in fact, just books of the dead [as well as the fact that the names Smith claimed those mummies had don't match any records in the area they were stolen from]

Despite this evidence to the contrary, the LDS church still considers the pearl of great price translations to be divinely inspired and part of their standard literature. I can't even begin to imagine what the party line to cover that whole thing up is

#mormonism mention #early lds history is so goddamn weird and largely ignored by the so called church #like. smith took whatever stance on racism+slavery would garner him the most favor at any given time. flipping back and forth #across neighboring years. then his followup leader decided to stick with racism and that 'divine inspiration' stuck around until the 70s #like yeah sure these decisions come straight from god mhm but we also go with whatever will make us look the best/gain more followers #they did something similar recently wrt gay marriage were they loudly/publically announced they were changing their fucked up policy of #'if you have gay parents you have to publically disavow them/their actions before becoming a member of the church' #and then a few months after announcing that and the media died down around it they quietly reversed the decision so that still holds #its fascinating. and horrifying

[protoslacker]

Exploring History

I have been trying to understand better the upsurge in adoption of "White-Christian nationalism. I believe that freedom of and from religion are public goods. I am not a very good Christian, but I know there is a long tradition of Christians arguing for the separation of Church and state. So was inteerested in pursuing that topic a little.

I knew that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church supports the effort Christians Against Christian Nationalism.That Web site was the beginning of a rabbit hole adventure. I was curious about how the current bishop, Micheal Curry fit among the preceding presiding bishops. 

The eighth presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church was John Henry Hopkins. I had never heard of him before, but seeing his picture was enough to make me curious. It turns out that he was an important figure in  history locally to where I live now. Reading about his life informed me about aspects of local history I wasn't aware and filled me with curiosity about other connections. One aspect of Hopkins's remarkable life was that he defended slavery.

The first and fourth presiding bishop was William White, who I also knew little about. I had known that Samuel Seabury the second presiding bishop was the first American bishop ordained.  The head of the Church of England is the King or Queen, so American independence made ordination of American bishops a bit of a problem. What I had not known was that Seabury was a slaveholder.

In 1795 Bishop White ordained Absalom Jones as a deacon and as a priest in 1802. I was ignorant of Absalon Jones and the history of the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas the first Black church in Philadelphia.

Attending an Episcopal school in Greenville, South Carolina in the 1960's, Sewanee, The University of the South held prominence. I have never been there, but know of the abiding affection for the place and institution. I saw an essay about John Henry Hopkins at a blog from the University of the South, The essay was part of The Roberson Project On Slavery, Race and Reconciliation. The project was named for Sewanne's first tenured Black professor, Houston Robertson. The aim is from knowing history "to seek a more just and equitable future."

I really enjoyed how curiosity about John Henry Hopkins connected history to institutions and place connected to my personal history.

On the more general quest to better understand and respond to the rise of White Christian Nationalism I was reading about a book by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, entitled Resident Aliens. I didn't know anything about William Willimon and poking around a bit noticed one of his books is Who Lynched Willie Earle?: Preaching to Confront Racism. I knew Willie Earle was a man lynched in Greenville. It turns out that Willimon is a native of Greenville and his book recounts how a Methodist minister, Hawley Lynn, responded to the lynching. I haven't read Willimon's book, but I was inspired reading about Hawley Lynn.

My casual inquiry into the history of the denomination I grew up in was made meaningful by people and places which already familiar., but I hadn't noticed before how race and racism were at the core from the beginning. It's very hard to bury history nowadays. The encouraging thing is how some White Christians are engaging with history with a sense towards how history obligates actions to encourage better futures.

#episcopal church #american history #race #slavery #racism #books

[christ-our-glory]

The apostle Paul is clear: we go from "slaves to sin" to "slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification." One type of slavery leads to eternal torment, while the other leads to eternal joy.

All Christians are slaves. By definition, the Greek word for Christian, Χριστιανός, is the combination of two words: the Greek word Χριστός (Messiah / anointed / Christ) for Christ, with the addition of the suffix -ανός which is the Greek transliteration of the Latin suffix -ianus which means belong to/slave. Therefore, a Christian is a "slave of Christ" or someone who “belongs to Christ.” If you're not a slave of Christ, by the very definition of the original word, you're not a Christian. Side note, according to Thayer's Greek Lexicon, it wasn’t until the second century that the word Christian was accepted as a title of honor.

People tend to neglect the fact Jesus Himself tells us in His Word that “His yoke is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). Those “who are weary and burdened” will find rest in Him, but sadly too many people forget that He tells us about the yoke that is now upon us. Yes, His yoke is light but there is a yoke. We are not to roam around, lost, like the ones without any type of yoke. To be “free” in such a manner as described in Romans 1:24 is to be abandoned —or to be “given up” as the Bible says— by God.

Be a slave to Christ, not a slave of your sins.

#slave to sin #slave to righteousness #slave to Christ #slavery #Christianity #follower of Christ #sanctification #born again Christian #faith #religion #church #Bible notes #Bible study #Bible commentary #Holy Bible #Scripture #New Testament #Christians #Christian blog #Christian blogger