About Christianity and Slavery

This comes from FB in a thread about ISIS taking sex slaves. The question came up as to why the Muslims, if they really object, haven't been stopping ISIS. Here's my answer.

Why didn't Christians stop slavery in the Americas for 370 years? Or the genocide of the American Indian? If you ask me, Christians were slow and/or complicit and non-responsive in both atrocities. Does it say anything about the Christian religion? Not really. Though it might say something about the effectiveness of morality based on monotheistic scriptures in general.

 ISIS is not Islam. It's a militant political movement marketed (yes marketed) to people raised in the Sunni Muslim culture. It's similar to the way White Supremacy is aimed at people raised in a Christian culture, where some even identifying themselves as churches, the Christian Identity movement.

ISIS calling themselves Islamic is really most meant as a recruiting tool. It has nothing to do with getting Muslim souls to heaven. Neither did slavery for Christian Southerners, BTW.

Why aren't Muslims stopping it? One question is who wants to step into that crumbling ruin of a clusterfuck we left in Iraq? The only nations with the power to do anything substantial are three that hate and/or distrust each other: Israel, Turkey and Iran. All of them would look at unilateral action by one another with suspicion. Syria would be happy just to push ISIS out of Syria. Muslims do denounce Islamic radicals quite regularly if you Google it you'll see that. Murder is the most egregious sin in Islam. https://www.facebook.com/newshour/posts/10153557663793675?comment_id=10153558469288675"

Then somebody said slavery was eradicated in Europe after Christianity.

No it wasn't. The Europeans took slaves, such as in the crusades, all the time. If it's not mentioned in history books, it was because if was considered no big thing. I challenge you to find any historical evidence of any emancipation by Christians before the 19th century.

When the Spanish took South and Central American Indians into slavery there was no outcry the rest of Europe because it was considered standard operating procedure. And for one plain reason: there is no call in the Bible to free slaves. If anything, the Bible gives regulations for keeping slaves, such as it says a man should be punished if he kills his slave (but not if the slave dies of his injuries after a certain time). But the Old and New Testaments have no renounciation of slavery. None. Zilch.

The closest thing the Abolitionists in the Bible could find to a call to end slavery was the story of Exodus. But the issue there wasn't owning slaves, it was having the Chosen People as slaves. In the Bible thereafter, the Hebrews owned slaves, both of their own people (who were treated differently) and others. There's also plenty of passages where God himself tells His people to take residents of conquered cities as slaves, especially the women. In other words, God in the Bible approves of sex slavery.

Therefore, when the Southerners argued that there was nothing in the Bible against slavery they had a solid argument. The only way the Abolitionists could find anything was by reading the scriptures with rose colored glasses. They cited the humanitarian violations slavery presented as a matter of course.

In Europe slavery of Christians was also institutionalized. They were called serfs. The Lord of the land by the way, could take any of the women of his hold as a sex slave. This is a matter of historical fact. The institution was handled differently, than the Americanized one, but it was there all the time.

The fact is, historians are still trying to figure out why slavery was considered right and commonly practiced for all of human history and suddenly was considered morally wrong in the 19th century. It definitely wasn't Christianity that did it.

https://www.facebook.com/newshour/posts/10153557663793675?comment_id=10153558469288675"

I know I should cite sources, but this is what I've been able to glean in various reading, mostly Norman Davies' thick book: Europe.