When I write a tract to convince others to change their behaviour, I include motives I think my audience may have. They do not necessarily have any hold on me. The same could be true of the early anti-slave tract writers.
Brilliant lecture. Many Christians believe that the abolitionists had Biblical justification for their antislavery beliefs. Rather, the truth is those that were Christians had to ignore the Biblical justification for slavery. So today Christians who believe, and rightly so, that slavery is an evil must ignore those passages of their holy books that describe God commanding slavery, or they must make futile and ineffective excuses to explain away those passages. The fact that the god of the Hebrews commanded the enslavement of non-Hebrew peoples for perpetuity, the fact that Jesus believed that those laws were given by the god that he believed in, and the fact that St. Paul did not consider slavery an evil to be abolished, these facts stand as an indictment against the holy scriptures of Jews and Christians. That the god of the Christian Bible was more concerned that his people avoided eating shellfish rather than proclaiming the evil of chattel slavery demonstrates that the Bible was the invention and work of humans with their limited imaginations and their prejudices of the times.
Really... How about the Jews who ran the slave trade or the Muslims that sold slaves or the Atheistic Communists of the 20th Century who killed over 100 million people. I don't think there's a single section of humanity that doesn't have it's hands dirty. So... Maybe you should take a little closer look at history. And be glad you live in an era as privileged as ours.
If you bother to read the bible more carefully, you will find far more anti-slavery statements than there are pro-slavery statements. And there is also a vast difference between slavery as it was in Rome and slavery as it was in American, wherein the latter it far more resembled the way Romans treated prisoners of war than the way they treated slaves. Roman slaves had many rights that American slaves were never allowed.
Curiously enough, the Mosaic Law seems rather ambivalent about slavery, even going so far as to forbid the return of escaped slaves and to make kidnapping for the purpose of enslavement a capital offense.
@@rosemaryphorson8064 But it still seems to be true that it was the religious people who opposed slavery most actively. Quote the Bible to the contrary, there is a lot in the spirit of Jesus' teaching that inspired the freedom fighters, including even the terroristJohn Brown.
Slavery was considered normal, acceptable, a 'necessary evil' throughout human history. The fact that our civilisation actually reached a point where it recognised, and acted upon, the realisation of the evil of slavery is something I am very proud of. So many people are trying to take Britain and the West down, as if we invented slavery, when in fact to make the moral leap that we did is perhaps the most profoundly moral act in the whole of human history. People who try to pin it all on Britain should be ASHAMED of themselves
Im not ashamed, and I don't believe i SHOULD internalize shame. Europe's VERSION of chattel slavery and the consequent race relations leading up to current tensions are/were unique! 1. The are/were modern, which is a lot of what you're feeling in terms of their relevancy 2. The levels of violence, dehumanization, murder, humiliation, etc were all but totally unseen prior to their version (ofc other slave economies had these qualities but the white people's version of it was particularly eerie, blatant, and ramped up in so many ways with countless example after example) 3. The slavery itself was followed by/included genocide, apartheid, jim crow, police brutality, holocausting, prison labor slavery, biological warfare, redlining and race covenants, the list goes on for a long time. And while there is proof of the presence of a slave trade in Asia, africa, the middle east, india, russia, europe, and the americas; any honest person in hood faith not driven by white guilt can easily see they all still pale in comparison to the insane inhumane dishnest and sociopathic examples set by the deeds of the Europeans once THEY got their hands on any cross cultural slave trading. Nobody has been capable of the level of unusual ugliness
I feel that we can both understand slavery to have been a categorical evil participated in by the majority of socieities for the majority of history, and also not squirm away from the fact that the form of slavery that 'we Europeans' practiced played a vital part in our respective imperial projects, on top of being absolute and totalitarian in ways not wholly comparable with the forms of slavery back in Africa or in antiquity. We shouldn't take seriously people who insist upon a simple distinction of morally pure colonised and purely evil coloniser, but I think it's always worth it to try to have a conversation about these things, and sometimes it is out of a defensive attitude born of experience with people who refuse to accept any moral fault in European colonialism whatsoever.
Do not forget, the transatlantic slave trade did not enslave Africans. The kingdoms of Sonhali and Benin enslaved those people's it subdued in war, and sold them to the Europeans. Furthermore, the words "Britons never never never shall be slaves" was a celebration of the fact that Berbers and Arabs from the North African Barberry coast could no longer capture entire English fishing villages into slavery around the south and west coast of England. For many hundreds of years living near the coastline of England was a very risky business.
Slavery before the African slave trade was different, it wasn't the enforced enslavement of the innocent. At the very beginning of the African slave trade, the Pope condemned it as an unjust new type of slavery. And subsequent Popes repeatedly condemned the African slave trade.
What a wonderful, passionate voice. I hope you put it to many uses.
"Approximately 12 million Africans,"
That's *about one fourth* of the amount of slaves in the world *today.* Let that sink in.
When I write a tract to convince others to change their behaviour, I include motives I think my audience may have. They do not necessarily have any hold on me. The same could be true of the early anti-slave tract writers.
Benjamin Lay sounds like a great character. We could do with a few more like him today.
Superb! Thank you Professor!
Great lecture - thank you!
Brilliant lecture. Many Christians believe that the abolitionists had Biblical justification for their antislavery beliefs. Rather, the truth is those that were Christians had to ignore the Biblical justification for slavery. So today Christians who believe, and rightly so, that slavery is an evil must ignore those passages of their holy books that describe God commanding slavery, or they must make futile and ineffective excuses to explain away those passages. The fact that the god of the Hebrews commanded the enslavement of non-Hebrew peoples for perpetuity, the fact that Jesus believed that those laws were given by the god that he believed in, and the fact that St. Paul did not consider slavery an evil to be abolished, these facts stand as an indictment against the holy scriptures of Jews and Christians. That the god of the Christian Bible was more concerned that his people avoided eating shellfish rather than proclaiming the evil of chattel slavery demonstrates that the Bible was the invention and work of humans with their limited imaginations and their prejudices of the times.
Really... How about the Jews who ran the slave trade or the Muslims that sold slaves or the Atheistic Communists of the 20th Century who killed over 100 million people. I don't think there's a single section of humanity that doesn't have it's hands dirty. So... Maybe you should take a little closer look at history. And be glad you live in an era as privileged as ours.
If you bother to read the bible more carefully, you will find far more anti-slavery statements than there are pro-slavery statements. And there is also a vast difference between slavery as it was in Rome and slavery as it was in American, wherein the latter it far more resembled the way Romans treated prisoners of war than the way they treated slaves. Roman slaves had many rights that American slaves were never allowed.
Curiously enough, the Mosaic Law seems rather ambivalent about slavery, even going so far as to forbid the return of escaped slaves and to make kidnapping for the purpose of enslavement a capital offense.
You're absolutely right. Religion is a social scam.
@@rosemaryphorson8064 But it still seems to be true that it was the religious people who opposed slavery most actively. Quote the Bible to the contrary, there is a lot in the spirit of Jesus' teaching that inspired the freedom fighters, including even the terroristJohn Brown.
Interesting lecture, thanks for uploading
Slavery was considered normal, acceptable, a 'necessary evil' throughout human history. The fact that our civilisation actually reached a point where it recognised, and acted upon, the realisation of the evil of slavery is something I am very proud of. So many people are trying to take Britain and the West down, as if we invented slavery, when in fact to make the moral leap that we did is perhaps the most profoundly moral act in the whole of human history. People who try to pin it all on Britain should be ASHAMED of themselves
Im not ashamed, and I don't believe i SHOULD internalize shame. Europe's VERSION of chattel slavery and the consequent race relations leading up to current tensions are/were unique! 1. The are/were modern, which is a lot of what you're feeling in terms of their relevancy 2. The levels of violence, dehumanization, murder, humiliation, etc were all but totally unseen prior to their version (ofc other slave economies had these qualities but the white people's version of it was particularly eerie, blatant, and ramped up in so many ways with countless example after example) 3. The slavery itself was followed by/included genocide, apartheid, jim crow, police brutality, holocausting, prison labor slavery, biological warfare, redlining and race covenants, the list goes on for a long time. And while there is proof of the presence of a slave trade in Asia, africa, the middle east, india, russia, europe, and the americas; any honest person in hood faith not driven by white guilt can easily see they all still pale in comparison to the insane inhumane dishnest and sociopathic examples set by the deeds of the Europeans once THEY got their hands on any cross cultural slave trading. Nobody has been capable of the level of unusual ugliness
Slavery is an economic system backed by religion, politics, and the police forces/military.
I feel that we can both understand slavery to have been a categorical evil participated in by the majority of socieities for the majority of history, and also not squirm away from the fact that the form of slavery that 'we Europeans' practiced played a vital part in our respective imperial projects, on top of being absolute and totalitarian in ways not wholly comparable with the forms of slavery back in Africa or in antiquity. We shouldn't take seriously people who insist upon a simple distinction of morally pure colonised and purely evil coloniser, but I think it's always worth it to try to have a conversation about these things, and sometimes it is out of a defensive attitude born of experience with people who refuse to accept any moral fault in European colonialism whatsoever.
Very interesting lecture.
Great lecture
So in many cases they knew it was wrong, and nonetheless explicitly went against their own religion in order to serve the god of Mammon.
Do not forget, the transatlantic slave trade did not enslave Africans.
The kingdoms of Sonhali and Benin enslaved those people's it subdued in war, and sold them to the Europeans.
Furthermore, the words "Britons never never never shall be slaves" was a celebration of the fact that Berbers and Arabs from the North African Barberry coast could no longer capture entire English fishing villages into slavery around the south and west coast of England.
For many hundreds of years living near the coastline of England was a very risky business.
If Professor Ryrie thinks that all American Protestants are against slavery he really needs to take look at modern preachers in the USA.
Interesting. What modern protestant preachers do you know of that are NOT against slavery...Not arguing just asking for facts
Slavery before the African slave trade was different, it wasn't the enforced enslavement of the innocent. At the very beginning of the African slave trade, the Pope condemned it as an unjust new type of slavery. And subsequent Popes repeatedly condemned the African slave trade.
LOL....Christians and their selective morality, gotta love'm.
Too few , too late !
The Islamic/Arab slave trade was a bigger crime in time, numbers, and fatality.
Prove it guilty guy
And in terms of castrations 😢
Opponents of abortion lack explicit biblical grounding? Have you ever heard Tho shalt not kill ?
Did you read Numbers 5:11-31? While that describes a procedure that may well be ineffective, it's certainly intended to be abortion.
only 12 million?
God, this sounds so much like being a vegan talking to non-vegan "animal-lovers" today.
Anti-abortionism has no textual basis???
Scripture can be used as a basis for about anything you want to justify or forbid.
appatently by listening to god lives underwater if the thumbnail is to be beleived!
You still haven't learned it. You've just accepted it under another name, Authority.
A biased account lacking context and depth in its early tracts.
a lecture on slavery sponsored by the city of london corp.
-no comment-
Lincoln wanted to ship blanks back to Africa. Blacks were indigenous to America before Columbus. See "Black Foot" tribe.
This was a thought for a period of time that he toyed with among other ideas, he changed his mind on this.
Slavery is not wrong. American and European slavery is.
How are you enjoying your slave life these days?
No they were worse, but slavery is wrong you are an idiot