THE EVANGELICAL AWAKENING AND THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
(I Tim. 6:1-2)
Overview of I Tim. 4:1-6:2
4:1-2 How False Teaching Enters the Church
4:3-5 Common Grace
4:6 Word of God in Life of the Believer
4:7a Godliness – Divine / Human Role
4:7b Train Yourself to be Godly
4:7c Spiritual Disciplines (The Word of God)
4:7d Spiritual Disciplines (Devotions, Worship)
4.7e Spiritual Disciplines (Church Attendance, Journaling, Practicing Presence of God)
4:8-9 Why Godliness Has Great Value
4:10 Putting Our Hope in the Living God
4:12 Setting an Example for Believers
4:13 What a Christian Worship Service Looked Like in the First Century
4:14 Neglecting the Spiritual Gift God has Given Us
4:15-16 Getting Home Before Dark
5:1-2 So, How Should We Describe the Church?
5:3-16 God’s Tilt Towards the Disenfranchised
5:3-16 Sorting Out those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare
5:3-16 The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Relatives
5:5-16 The Tale of Two Widows – A Biblical Approach to Pleasure
5:9-10 The Good Works of a New Testament Woman
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Breaking Celibacy Vows
5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Gossiping False Teaching
5:15 Satan’s Effort to Keep Jesus from Fulfilling His Mission
5:17-18 Honoring the Work of Elders
5:19-20 How NT Church Discipline Illustrates Cultural Formation
5:21 Partiality – A Christian Problem?
5:22-24 Selecting Church Leadership
5:23 The Christian’s Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages
6:1 Honoring God’s Name
6:1-2 A What In Christianity Undermined Slavery?
6:1-2 B The Evangelical Awakening and Abolition of Slavery
1All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. Instead, they are to serve them even better, because those who benefit from their service are believers, and dear to them. These are the things you are to teach and urge on them.
INTRODUCTION:
1. Four Lessons from I Tim. 6:1-2
a. Honoring/Slandering the Name of God
b. What in Christianity Undermined Slavery
c. The Evangelical Awakening & the Abolition of Slavery
d. Treatment of Slaves / Masters
2. Last week in the introduction we said that slavery is an abomination but not as bad as not honoring the name of God, not loving God with all our heart or as bad as murder.
PROPOSTION: BY GRASPING THE KEY BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST SLAVERY, WE WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN THE CHRISTIAN POSITION AGAINST THIS TERRIBLE EVIL.
I. RATIONAL CREATURES ARE ENTITLED TO JUSTICE
(Thomas Aquinas, 1305-1366, reasoning from natural law)
II. JESUS DID NOT OWN SLAVES
III. PAUL CONDEMNED SLAVE TRADERS
[The] law is made … for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders …… (I Tim. 1:9-10).
IV. THE EMPHASIS ON BENEVOLENCE IN THE BIBLE
Christians are to love even their enemies and do good to them that hate them (Luke 6:27). …. ‘Matthew 7:12: ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’ (Mt. 7:12).
V. SLAVES & SLAVE OWNERS EQUAL BEFORE GOD
5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. 9And 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 (Ephesian 6:5-9).
VI. SLAVES/SLAVE OWNERS ARE ALL MEMBERS OF GOD’S FAMILY
Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. ……… (I Timothy 6:2).
15Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— 16no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord (Philemon 1:15-16).
VII. CHRISTIANS ARE TO DEAL JUSTLY WITH SLAVES
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven (Col. 4:1).
The very concept of ownership brings with it the right not to be ‘right and fair.’ No body tells a farmer to be ‘right and fair’ with his cows. He doesn’t have to consider dealing justly.
The minute we emphasize what is ‘right and fair’ we are admitting the humanity of an individual.
QUESTION: At the very minimum, what would have been ‘right and fair’ for slaves?
VIII. SLAVES AND FREEMEN ARE ONE IN CHRIST
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).
Some have called this “The Magna Carta of Humanity.”
The verse strips the superiority out of the Jewish prayer: “Thank you God for not making me a Gentile, a woman or a slave.” (The Talmud: Menahoth 43B-44A).
Womens liberation groups have tried to use this verse to show there is no difference between male and female. There is a difference and between slaves and masters …. But there is a big change when they believe …. They are “one” in Christ, in a spiritual sense.
IX. CHRIST’S KINGDOM IS A KINGDOM WITH AN HEROIC ROLE FOR LOSERS
ILLUSTRATION: I just completed reading “The Life of Alexander the Great” who was great in men’s eyes and longed to be worshipped as a god but died at the age of 33 or either poison or over-drinking. He is in the list of Western Civilizations heroes along with Achilles, Cesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Lord Nelson, Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower etc, etc. And the Bible heroes, e.g. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Paul ….
READING: Phil Yancey
Jesus was the first world leader to inaugurate a kingdom with a heroic role for losers. He spoke to an audience raised on stories of wealthy patriarchs, strong kings, and victorious heroes. Much to their surprise, he honored instead people who have little value in the visible world: the poor and meek, the persecuted and those who mourn, social rejects, the hungry and thirsty. His stories consistently featured “the wrong people” as heroes; the prodigal, not the responsible son; the good Samaritan, not the good Jew; Lazarus, not the rich man; the tax collector, not the Pharisee” (Rumors of Another World, Phil Yancey, pg. 197-198).
And so with slaves, from social rejects and “living tools,” true losers in the game of life, to members of the family of God, the truly blessed.
I. A SHORT OVERVIEW OF THIS HISTORY OF SLAVERY
“Slavery has been a nearly universal feature of ‘civilization’” (Stark, 292).
“Historically, most slaves have been racially identical with their masters, although usually members of some other community or ethnic group” (Stark, 293).
Aboriginal slavery existed on the northwest coast of the USA. So did all ancients societies including the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Muslim slavery was immense, originally focusing on enslaving the Slavs of Central Europe and the Ukraine (the harvest of he Steppes) and forced tribute on Europeans of the Eastern Mediterranean (Every 4 years Ottoman officials passed through every subordinated Christian district and selected the most suitable children, who were taken away and raised as Muslims, and who served as highly prized slaves.) When Islamic forces were pushed out of Europe they went south and over a period of 200 years imported 10.2 million slaves from Africa.
“The slave fertility was extremely low in Islam, not only because of the frequent castration of black males, but because infanticide was routinely practiced on infants having any black ancestry” (Stark 304).
Historians have calculated that of the 10 million African slaves who were brought to the Western Hemisphere, 400,000 went to British North America, 3.6 million to Brazil, 1.6 million to Spanish colonies, 3.8 million to British, French, Dutch and Danish colonies in the Caribbean (Stark, 308).
II. NON-CHRISTIAN ATTITUDES TOWARD SLAVERY
“There is no record that any philosopher in summer, Babylon, or Assyria every protested against slavery, “nor is there any expression of the mildest sympathy for the victims of this system. Slavery was simply taken for granted.” Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1750 B.C.E.) prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave to escape (Stark, 325).
Plato taught because slaves have no souls, they have no “human rights.” Aristotle argued that without slaved to do the labor, enlightened men would lack the time and energy to pursue virtue and wisdom (Stark, 326-327).
Islam supported and encouraged slavery as we saw above.
Leaders of the “Enlightment” such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Voltaire, Baron Montesquieu, Comte de Mirabeau, Edmund Burke, David Hume. “It was not philosophers or secular intellectuals who assembled the moral indictment of slavery, but the very people they held in such contempt: men and women having intense Christian faith, who opposed slavery because it was sin (Stark, Pg. 359-360).
III. CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY
The decline of slavery in Europe is a mystery. Some feel that it was a direct result of military weakness in the Roman Empire. No longer were victorious commanders dispatching throngs of prisoners to the slave markets. With the fall of the Roman Empire there was a further decrease in slavery since slavery had never been a significant feature of Germanic societies.
Saint Bathilde (630-680), wife of King Clovis II, campaigned to end the slave trade. In 871 Anskar began his efforts to halt the Viking slave trade. Almost all Christian rulers in medieval Europe forbade Christian slavery. Saint Thomas Aquinas deduced that slavery was a sin and a series of popes upheld this position.
With the Spanish and Portuguese invasion of the New World slavers offered the rationale that slaves were not ‘rational creatures’ but were a species of animals and therefore could be enslaved.
The Catholic Popes continued to issued “bulls” forbidding and denouncing slavery but the King of Portugal and Spain forbade the reading of those ‘bulls’ in their colonies.
The Catholic Church did establish a code for treating slaves which required masters to have their slaves baptized, allowed to attend mass and celebrate feast days.
The first abolitionist tract was written by a New England Puritan, Samuel Sewell, on June 19, 1700 in Boston. In 1754 American abolition began in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Quakers prompted by a tract written by John Woolman. He dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery and in the 1770s Quaker Yearly Meetings in the north said that members who owned slaves would be excluded from the Quaker membership. (Stark 340-341).
The “Evangelical Awakening” of 1735-1745 (Whitfield preaching to 23,000 people on Boston Commons; John Wesley doing field preaching in Britain and the birth of Methodism (By 1830 or so one in three American Protestants were Methodists); Charles Wesley writing more than 2,000 hymns; Revival among the Scotch Calvinists (15,000 served communion at one time); vast out-door crowds in Wales, the awakening under Jonathan Edwards in Massachusetts) had a tremendous impact on the abolition of slavery.
Clapham Sect (wealthy evangelicals who were members of an Anglican Church in Clapham, England): Thomas Clarkson (essay on slavery at Cambridge, dedicated his life to abolition of slavery); Charles Middleton, an Admiral in the British navy and MP; William Wilberforce (became MP at age 21). All of these and many, many more were evangelicals and were encouraged by mass mailings from Methodist and Calvinists evangelicals. Slave trade was forbidden by law in 1807. Britain financed a special naval squadron that for the next 50 years patrolled the African coast and seized nearly 1600 slave ships and freed 150,000 slaves.
On August 1834 slavery was abolished in British colonies and money, equal to half of the British annual budget, was used to compensate British slave holders in the West Indies.
The British did not side with the South during the civil war because the politicians feared the wrath of British evangelicals who sided with the North in abolishing slavery in the USA.
It is important to note that no Muslim country has every fought a war to end slavery. The only nation in history that fought a war to end slavery was the USA and that only happened because of the abolition movement which was almost fully birthed and supported by the evangelical movement started in 1735.
Lincoln’s summation of the reason for the Civil War would have been endorsed by all evangelicals of that period:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of [civil] war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” (Lincoln’s final Inaugural Address)
The only reason that slavery is presently outlawed in the world is due to the work and sacrifice of evangelicals who came into God’s Kingdom during the great awakening.
SO WHAT????
1. We do not need to be apologetic concerning the New Testament’s treatment of the slavery question.
2. We need to remember how truly revolutionary Christianity was, is and should be? We should always be in the forefront of standing against oppression, especially where fellow Christians are involved.
3. The concepts of “loving our neighbor as ourselves” and “doing unto others as we would have them do to us” are the core principles of a Christian’s social interaction with others.
We should always show a deep concern for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters around the world.
4. Doing what is “right and fair” should always govern our relationship with others.
5. We need to thank God we are members of the family of God and embrace all those who are family members too, even though they may be different than us.
6. We must remember our heritage; remember that we as evangelicals have been in the past and must be presently in the forefront pushing for social justice.