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Nonetheless, pro-slavery Europeans defined the "non-Israelites" of Leviticus 25:44-46 as non-Christians and later as non-white people. Watts suggested that they used the Bible's two-tier model to justify enslaving Africans and Native Americans while limiting white forced laborers to indentured servants and prisoners. [114]
It was seen as legitimate to enslave captives obtained through warfare, [23] but not through kidnapping [24] [25] for the purpose of enslaving them. Children could also be sold into debt bondage, [26] which was sometimes ordered by a court of law. [27] [28] [29] The Bible does set minimum rules for the conditions under which slaves were to be kept.
Various interpretations of Christianity were also used to justify slavery. [76] For example, some people believed that slavery was a punishment that was reserved for sinners. [76] Some other Christian organizations were slaveholders.
The Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands, sometimes referred to as the slave bible, is an abbreviated version of the Bible specifically made for teaching a pro-slavery version of Christianity to enslaved people in the British West Indies.
Chattel slavery continued on the fringes of Christendom, and revived in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, enslaving Muslims. As in other societies, new slaves were continually needed. The Reconquista wars provided Spain and Portugal with many captives, they still had significant numbers of slaves as the Age of Discovery began.
Arguments in favor of slavery include deference to the Bible and thus to God, some people being natural slaves in need of supervision, slaves often being better off than the poorest non-slaves, practical social benefit for the society as a whole, and slavery being a time-proven practice by multiple great civilizations.
Paul, the author of several letters that are part of the New Testament, requests the manumission of a slave named Onesimus in his letter to Philemon, [3] writing "Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother" (Philemon 15-16).
The royal anti-slavery crusade did not end the enslavement of Indigenous people in Spain's American possessions, but, in addition to resulting in the freeing of thousands of enslaved people, it ended the involvement and facilitation by government officials of enslaving by the Spanish; purchase of slaves remained possible but only from ...