The problem of slavery and persecution

The fight against slavery has passed through many controversial phases in the history of Christianity. Paul recommended to Philemon that he accept back his runaway slave Onesimus, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord" (verse 16). Although the biblical writings made no direct attack upon the ancient world's institution of slavery, its proleptic abolition in community with Christ--"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28)--has been a judgement upon the world's and the Christian community's failure to overcome slavery and all forms of oppression. Medieval society made only slow progress in the abolition of slavery. One of the special tasks of the orders of knighthood was the liberation of Christian slaves who had fallen captive to the Muslims; and special knightly orders were even founded for the ransom of Christian slaves.

With the discovery of the New World, the institution of slavery grew to proportions greater than had been previously conceived. The widespread conviction of the Spanish conquerors of the New World that its inhabitants were not really human in the full sense of the word and therefore could be made slaves in good conscience added to the problem. The attempt of missionaries, such as Bartolomé de Las Casas in 16th-century Peru, to counter the inhuman system of slavery in the colonial economic systems finally introduced the great basic debate concerning the question of human rights. A decisive part in the elaboration of the general principles of human rights was taken by the Spanish and Portuguese theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially Francisco de Vitoria. Even modern natural law, however, could still be interpreted in a conservative sense that did not make slavery contrary to its provisions. Puritanism, however, fought against slavery as an institution. In German Pietism, Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf, who became acquainted with slavery on the island of Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands, used his influence on the King of Denmark for the human rights of the slaves. The Methodist and Baptist churches advocated abolition of slavery in the United States in the decisive years preceding the foundation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1832 by William Lloyd Garrison. In regard to the fight against slavery in England and in The Netherlands, which was directed mainly against the participation of Christian trade and shipping companies in the profitable slave trade, the Free churches were very active. The overcoming of the institution of slavery did not end racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist pastor and Nobel laureate, led the struggle for civil rights in the United States until his assassination in 1968. In South Africa in the 1980s, Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop and Nobel laureate, exemplified a continuing Christian struggle for human rights.

The fight against slavery is only a model case in the active fight of the Christian churches and fellowships against numerous other attempts at desecration of a Christian understanding of the nature of humanity, which sees in every human being a neighbour created in God's image and redeemed by Christ. Similar struggles arose against the persecution of the Jews and the elimination of members of society characterized by political or racist ideology as "inferior." In Germany the members of the Confessing Church fought against the practices of National Socialism, which called for the elimination of the mentally ill and the inmates of mental and nursing institutions, who were considered "unfit to live."

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