MATHETΩN

“In A.D. 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manichean sect for their urging that slaves should be liberated: the canons of the Synod declared that anyone preaching abolition should be excommunicated. …

“Later, the Council of Chalcedon — regarded by Christians as one of the most important doctrinal councils — declared that these canons of the Synod of Gangra were ecumenical (i.e., conclusively to be believed by the whole church) … .

“Several prominent early Fathers advocated slavery. For example, Augustine insisted that slavery is part of the natural order. … By the Middle Ages, all the most powerful and influential Christian voices had united in favor of slavery. Pagans and Muslims were enslaved — indeed, Muslim slaves carried out the grand construction of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that slavery is ‘morally justifiable’. The Teutonic Order of Christian Knights objected strongly when Lithuania’s rulers coverted to Christianity, in the fourteenth century, since it meant the end of lucrative slaving … .

“Meantime, the papacy increasingly hardened itself against slaves. The seventh-century Pope Martin I condemned ‘unjust slavery’ (suggesting a just slavery also). But in the early thirteenth century, slavery and the slave trade was incorporated into canon law by Pope Gregory IX. Popes subsequently sometimes ordered the enslavement of excommunicated (‘interdicted’) populations. In the 1450s, Pope Nicholas V instituted hereditary enslavement of nonbelievers in two papal bulls, while in a third he  demanded the populations of South America convert on pain of slavery or death. Popes are known to have owned slaves, bought them in bulk, or distributed them as gifts to cardinals and nobles.”

“Protestant opposition to slavery was unknown before the eighteenth century. … The Protestant Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts bought the Codrington plantation in Barbados comprising several hundred slaves; all slaves in the plantation were then branded with ‘Society’ to signify their new ownership.”

“A consensus had come to prevail throughout the ages of European Christendom that Christians must not keep other Christians as slaves. This was broken by the slave-holders of the North American colonies, where religious justification for slavery changed from slaves’ unbelief to a doctrine of God-cursed races. Africans were taught to be the descendants of Cain, Ham, or some other biblical villain. In 1667, Virginia’s assembly decreed that baptism could no longer grant freedom to a slave.”

“George Whitefield, the English itinerant preacher already famed for his sparking of the ‘Great Awakening’ of American evangelicalism, campaigned for a recognition of the morality of slavery, in Georgia where it had been outlawed; due to his efforts, slavery was re-legalised in 1751.”

“By the 1830s, tension had begun to mount between Baptist churches in the North and South over slavery. In 1845 a ‘disunion’ was announced in Augusta, Georgia, and slaveholding pastors formed the Southern Baptist Convention. …

“According to an internal census in 1968, ninety percent of Southern Baptist churches forbade membership to African-Americans.”

“Members of the Christian Reconstructionist movement have said that biblical doctrine would justify slavery today.”

God damn Christianity.