Religion and Spirituality

Research on the New Testament and Early Christian Literature May Assist the Churches inSetting Ethical Priorities

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The hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName remind non-African
Americans of issues that black communities in the United States have long faced:
disproportionate police killings of black persons of all genders, mass incarceration
of black and brown persons, economic and educational disadvantages, discrimination
in housing, racial and sexual stereotypes that harm both rape complainants
and defendants, and so on. I view these issues through a deep lens into history,
extending back from Jim and Jane Crow through to religiously sanctioned legal
slavery, behind that to the Vatican-approved onset of the Portuguese and Spanish
slave trades with West Africa, canon-law sanctioned slavery going back from the
Middle Ages to late antiquity, and to the Christian Bible, both testaments of which
tolerate slavery. To be sure, Christians were at the forefront of opposing slavery in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and many other factors have played a role
in arriving at the current situation. Nevertheless, the Bible and the ancient sources
of canon law served as justifications for the slavery whose legacies linger.

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: The Society of Biblical Literature., 2017

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English

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Subject(s)

Vatican
Early Christian Literature
The Society of Biblical Literature
New Testament
Churches
Setting Ethical Priorities
Black Communities

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Article

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