OK, now I have officially seen the Worst Thing Ever.

[lunadelcorvo]

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/slavery/southern_slavery_as_it_was.htm

This is a Christian Slavery Apologetic. No, really. This article is a diatribe about how slavery in the south wasn't all bad, only the parts that were not in conformity with 'biblical slavery,' and 'biblical slavery' is OK, and fine and good because the Bible says so.

I quote:

"Provided he owns them in conformity to Christ's laws for such situations, the Bible is clear that Christians may own slaves."

And

"Today if an abortionist sought membership at either of our churches, he would be refused unless he repented and abandoned his murderous practice. But if our churches had existed in the ante bellum South, and a godly slave owner sought membership, we could not refuse him without seeking to be holier than Christ. Such a desire would be wicked, and this wickedness was at the heart of the abolitionist dogma."

This nutjob claims that Southern slave owners vigorously opposed the slave trade as 'wicked,' but evinced no hypocrisy by owning slaves. After all, they were doing the poor slaves a favor by taking them into Christian homes...

"The slave trade was an abomination. The Bible condemns it, and all who believe the Bible are bound to do the same. Owning slaves is not an abomination. The Bible does not condemn it, and those who believe the Bible are bound to refrain in the same way. But if we were to look in history for Christians who reflected this biblical balance — i.e. a hatred of the slave trade and an acceptance of slavery in itself under certain conditions — we will find ourselves looking at the ante bellum South."

I mean, wow. Seriously?

Read the article - I can't begin to relate how mind-boggling it is. The level of mental contortion required to actually advance such a position is... well, it's bloody insane.

Comments

[donerleg.livejournal.com]

people have been using the bible to justify their crap for a long long time honey....

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

...which is why I routinely question its value as anything other than mythology. Things like this only reinforce my feeling that it's time we shelved this millenia-old work where it belongs, on the same shelf as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Hesiod's Theogony, and the Epic of Gligamesh - lovely literature to read, helpful in understanding history, but nothing we have any need or desire to live by...

To make it relevant, we are forced to either interpret, cherry-pick and selectively ignore bits an pieces of it, or else we end up stuck with outrageous positions like this one.