CHRISTIANITY, WORLD RELIGIONS AND SLAVERY

We have dwelt almost extensively on slavery as a topic of the opening chapter but relating slavery to world religions and institutions would be a worthy follow up to the previous chapter on the central theme - slavery and slave trade.

It is obvious that every religion on the face value preaches sanctity or inviolability of human person as no one is expected to subjugate another or put human a situation of servitude. The gushiness of slavery can never be over emphasized yet generations after generations condemned it in the open and practiced it when in a position to nail it coffin finally, especially religious institutions. No religion openly supported slavery, especially Christian religion but everybody could read how it supported the heinous crime of slavery tacitly - through action and inaction of the institutions of Christianity.

In this effort of reviewing impact of religion on the institution of slave in middle age, pre and post middle age Europe and beyond, it is expedient to mention certain religions and civilizations that would make worthy case studies. In doing this, I would limit these treaties to world major religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. In doing this also recourse should be had on the religion less civilizations we should classify as Atheism. We should be mindful of the fact that the world has all along been polarized between the Theism and Atheism. The theists behave in the existence of God while the Atheists don't. In between the two are those who are not sure whether God exists or not - known and called the Agnostic.

The above mentioned could be seen in either Europe or Asian continents. African traditional religion behaved and still believes in the existence of one supreme God - the Omnipotent, Omnipresence and Omniscience without whom nothing created was actually created. This was a race taunted as not being created in the image and likeness of God by the slave - mongering medieval Christian morality shifted from enslaving fellow Christians of Europe to the enslavement of Africans - black men and women of the era. I would start with slavery in Hinduism.

Slavery in Hinduism: Hindus religion is one of the earliest religions known to mankind. It is a religion that frowns at violence and inhumanity but slavery thrived under Hinduism. Slave gifts were accepted by the leaders, yet in letters the religion forbade the institutions. The institutions of slavery thrive within the Indian Hindu enclave for some obvious reasons which ranged hostage taking after wars, personal submission as a result of poverty religious obligation of subservience to superiors, need for farm and factory hands in an Indian Hindu society where there was a yawning gap between the rich and the poor. The idea of slavery in a Hindu Indian society of later years or end of middle age was reinforced by the introduction of black slaves from Africa by the Portuguese who also bought Indian slaves and sent to the West Indies and Europe.

Hinduism could not pretend to know slavery for centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese that bought the first black slaves to the subcontinent of India. Slavery was a practice indigenous to the early Hindus as Hindus faithful practiced local slavery thousands of years before the Portuguese brought the first African slaves to India. Prior to the episode, debts were being settled with slaves as those who could not redeem their indebtedness submitted themselves for slavery. War captives were also enslaved orally under the Hindu Indian dispensation. The poor also willingly submitted themselves to slavery in the houses of the rich so that they would be taken care of. The bottom line in Hindu religion was that you should not buy slaves with money but you must accept the gift of slaves and voluntary submission to enslavement being born to a slave woman made one a slave and judicial pronouncement. The Hindu belief that a sinner would come back in his next world to suffer as a part of retributive justice made the enslave Hindu or his master to behave that the person's enslavement or suffering was in obedience to the law of karma which presupposed he must pay in this whether sins of his or her former life in the past life.

The ancient Hindu belief and practice made Hindu slaves to see his or her suffering as a purification process without which he or she must be repeating his journey to this earth in this ground, slaves were not sympathized with. The unfeeling disposition of masters of slaves towards them makes a double speak of the non violent belief towards another in Hinduism.

The idea of taking slaves of war captives negated this non violent belief ad nothing is as violent as war itself and capitalizing on such violence to enslave was a complete vitiation of the main tenet of Hinduism as it relates to the institution of slavery. Buying slaves and taking hostage of victims of war which in the main violated the personhood of the slaves slavery, undeniably was a medieval Hindu practice.

Slavery in Buddhism: Buddhism as an Indian religion is and was similar to Hinduism as both were conterminous. People became slaves on the account of their being captured in war, parents giving out or selling their children in line with the pronouncement of the law etc admitting the fact of a human being not allowed to sell another human which Hindu proponents denied. It is trite law under Hinduism as much as in Buddhism that even parents were legally allowed to sell their children. Denying this fact is the height of religious hypocrisy which Buddhism exposed as practiced in ancient India both by Hinduism and Buddhism. Slavery was an integral ancient Indian Hindu and Buddhist religious enslaves of pre and post medieval period.

A slave master was at liberty to use his female slave sexually as part of her slave obligation and the Hindu and Buddhist laws respectively allowed it but present civilization may have tinkered this practice. The running was one of the most dastardly religious evils associated with ancient Hindu and Buddhist religious practices which evil reared its ugly head in other religious practices of the time. A slave master in this evil practice, if he was a Hindu of Buddhists risked the chance of being purified in Karma to meet up with the essence of the practice of not coming back as many times as possible. As Buddha complete his cycle as the first human to attain such spiritual height, it behaved any adherent to do good to be purified and complete his life cycle.

For the purpose of this work, the known difference between Hinduism and Buddhism can be subsumed in the fact that their slave holding laws are and were the same during the medieval period that is currently in issue. Any other difference between the two religions seriously could not be counted here. Buddha successfully founded a religion whose tenets on slaveholding replicated Hindu slavery laws on slavery and slave holding in ancient India, being originally a Hindu himself.

Slavery in Islam: Islam religions founded by Prophet Mohammed. It is one of the religions that has root in Abraham, in this case Ibraham like Judaism and Christianity. It tended to support the institution of slavery but with a present outlook of a defender of the oppressed, the deprived and the enslaved. Several portions of the Quran portray emancipator disposition in favour of the slaves which no doubt shows that slavery was legal in Islam and the present stand reformations emancipator and cultivating not hypocritical ad been in some quarters.

The excuse given by the religions for its sympathy for the institutions and its practitioners was that it was the way of life of the society in the 7th century when Islam was founded, showing it neither condemned or abolished it until the global outcry against the practice between the 18th and 19th centuries.

Arab traders were the Muslims at the centre of slave trade. Considering the position of Arabs in the religion and what Islam should lose if the Arabs decided to withdraw from Islam and focus on slave trade and slavery, the leaders of Islam threaded with caution until the practice received a global condemnation. Pro slave legislations followed immediately as contained in the respective Muslim law codes called Fatawa in 1658 and 1707 and continues to evolves such slaves in Islamic jurisdiction, through market overt, personal submission etc based on the peculiar circumstance of the enslaved as most slaves were acquired through hostage taking in wars. Islam is erroneously known as the religion of war while the practitioners call it a religion of peace. In some cases, hostage taking could not be ascribed to war but terrorism with ISIS and Boko Haram hostage taking not because of war but baseless and unprovoked terrorizing - a situation whereby some youths protest against Western Education in a world that all road leads to that. The Ottoman Empire, Moors of Berber decent in 711AD. The conquest of constamnopole by the Ottoman Empire and the conquest of part of Spain by the Moorish Empire flourished the Muslim or Islamic involvement in medieval slave trade.

Many Islamic traders emerged during the Middle Age mostly the Saudi Arabian or the Arabians ad they were called. The war mongering empires of the Arab world especially the Ottoman and the Moorish empires fed the Arab traders with slaves who were part of their booties of war. They led companies and expected took hostages they sold to Arab slave merchants who shuttled between the Arabian regions, North Africa, Europe and in some cases Asia. Slavery thrived amongst Islamic kingdoms, empires and nations before the captors began to become captives at the point of modern civilizations and technology.

As the scampering for slaves by the Europeans through the African shores in the South through the Atlantic, the Arabs were making their incursions through the Sahara Dessert. While the Europeans capture and export to Europe and America, the Arabs who invaded through the Sahara Desert took their victims through the Sahara to the North Africa and later to Saudi Arabia and European slave markets. It is correct and self evident to assert that while the Trans-Atlantic European evil mission was going on, with its deadly middle passage, the Arab slave caravans were moving Northwards through the Sahara Desert to North Africa, Arabia and Europe, all simultaneously for which ancient black nations could not fight their assailants enough. It wasn't that African Kings were so weak but because their fighting strength was divided and disputed. This was the story of Islam, slavery and slave trade of the medieval era.

Slavery in Judaism: Judaism, like most religions could not deny the existence of slavery or its practice. Slavery seemed inseparable from the religion of Judaism as slavery was part of the block laying stage. A lot was written or said in Judaism to show its abhorrence of the practice of man selling a fellow man. Slavery was associated with inhumanity as humanity was debased when one place another under servitude and deplorable condition because he was the master and other his slave. From the foundational stage, this anomaly was not stressed especially when father Abraham who founded the religion was a slave holder. In the story of Abraham, his wife Rebecca and Hagar - their slave woman is evidential. What ensued when Rebecca maltreated and drove her away into the desert without a destination to suffer speaks volumes of how Judaism which Abraham founded regarded a slave. The fact that Abraham had compassion on her was not enough. To also show that it seemed a divine conspiracy God when he asked Abraham to listen to his wife and throw away Hagar and her son Ishmael not withstanding that the child was Abrahams own blood. The full story is that when Abraham and his wife Sarah could not conceive and they were already old, Rebecca told her husband to go into his maid Hagar so that she could give her (Sarah) a son. This was how Hagar - the slave woman gave birth to Ishmael. God Himself said He would not fulfill his covenant of making him father of all nations through fruit of a slave woman but a son he could call his own - through his own wife. This was how Ishmael was born through the obedience of Abrahams slave woman, Hagar. Through no fault of hers yet she was suffered for being a slave woman. At the end of the day, God actualized his covenant with Abraham and Sarah conceived a very old age and gave birth to Isaac. Though God later helped Hagar and her son, she had taken the pang and had drunk the bitter water of a slave.

It could not be reasoned that God hates the slaves or particularly hated Hagar, but it was so to demonstrate the respect with which he clothed the institution of marriage and the need for husbands to obey their wives. It demonstrated the need for spouse obedience not disregard and diadem to the so called slaves. Each time the children of God went astray by way of idolatry, God punished them by sending them into slave in foreign lands, if God used slavery in the hands of enemies to punish His chosen people, it follows that God knew slavery as evil and possessing evil mark or stigma. Slavery stigmatizes enslave the present world where there seems to be liberty, though in most cases as paper tiger to justify the fact there is yet liberty which had for so long been expected and continues to be a mirage. There was slavery from the foundation of Judaism and the Jews hoped and still hope for a messiah.

Slavery in Christianity: Christianity met slavery as an order of the day from its foundation. The scriptures speak volumes of slavery in ancient Jewish culture and also report the Israelites as been enslaved from one time to the other. The children of Israel were in Egypt under the excruciating weight of slavery. The book of Genesis, precisely chapter 37 and 39, reports the children of Jacobs as having sold their brothers out of envy, and when famine hit them they traced him to Egypt where he was then a governor. They sojourned with him but he died, the Pharaoh who never knew Joseph enslaved them. The scripture also has it that Abraham was a slaver himself. The story of Abraham's (Sarah) maid and slave - Hagar as recorded in Gen. 16:1-16 and 21:21" an instant case of Abraham's slaveholding.

Judaism as the religion founded by Abraham did not frown at it as a taboo rather it advocated their submissiveness to their masters. Christ the son of God came and abolished slavery by pronouncing that everybody is equal before his father - no slaves, no freeborn in the presence of God; neither is there Jews and the Gentiles according to the scriptures. It was the Jewish understanding that if one was not a Jew, he was a Gentile. Jews segregated against the non Jews they called the Gentiles of the time Jesus Christ was born and his mission was a turning point in the Jews perception of non Jews.

On the Pentecost day in the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descended on the Jews and the Gentiles alike to confirm the fact that the veil of demarcation had been torn and the things that used not to happen started happening. The mission of Christ was to reconcile man to God and provide level playing field humanity. The scripture clearly stated that we can only be for enslaved to sin and if anyone believes, he is redeemed from that sin and its bondage and sorrow. From inception, Christianity abhors slavery, hence the scripture "don't be equally yoked with the unbelievers" this scripture shows that unbelief enslaves a man. It shows that it is the unbelievers that suffer from the yoke of slavery.

The yoked animals are such like the Oxen that have something that join them on the necks suck used for farming. Slaves could be likened to such labour and burden animals not for human beings and believers who were redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. The bible is replete with scriptures that condemn slavery, especially the repurchased, who were deemed redeemed by the Pascal role of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The role of Christianity in medieval Europe vis avis slavery and slave trade left a lot to be desired as the church seemed veered out of the norms of the religions which were predicated on bound moral cleavages and inviolability of human person by another, as it avoided stepping on toes of the practitioners of the ignoble business of the medieval Europe. Christianity gave an official support to slavery and slave trade when Pope Gelasius permitted the Jews to import non Christian's slaves to Italy when a Jewish friend of the Pope and a Jewish merchant made such request in 492AD

Also between 6th and 7th centuries Pope Gregory the Great issued a ban on importing of slave or keeping slaves in Italy by the Jews who were the major slave merchants of the time that could move between Christian and Muslim areas between 9th and 10th centuries. These Jewish merchants castrated their slaves so that they could sell them at higher prices. The Vikings avoided Christian slaves as they terrorized Europe for slaves in keeping with the Papal order against the enslavement of Christians, instead they concentrated on slaves.

Venice which was the epicenter of slaves trade equally adhered to the order of non enslavement of Christians as the venecian slave merchants crisscross Europe and Aisa. In keeping with the Christian spirit against the evil trade, Williams the conqueror of England banned the exportations of slaves from England and limited the participation of England in slavery.

At about 1240, Christians held crusades in Muslim states, captured and sold them as slaves in Marseilles France. Knights of Malta also staged attacks on Muslim settlement, took them hostages as Port of Malta became notable slave port and centre within the area of Europe. Pope Benedict XIV also banned the sale of slaves to Egyptian states in 1741, just as Pope Zacchary banned the sale of Christian slaves to Muslims from the year 741.

Pascal order to stop selling slaves to Egypt was repeated in 1317, 1323, 1329, 1338 and 1425. The repetition of this order shows that they were not obeyed strictly. The reason for the issuance of the order was that the slaves sold to Egyptian states might join Egypt in battles against their former Christian masters. The above was the effort of Christianity to curtail slavery and slave trade in the medieval Europe. In furtherance of this a group of humanitarians came together in the spirit of Christianity to fight against slavery and slave trade. They were called the abolitionist. Another group of Christians also called the society of friends. They approached Abolitionism radically and were persecuted in England and most of them relocated to United States of America.

We've seen how Christianity supported slavery and slave trade and how Christianity fought against slave trade. We've also seen how Christianity aided the white man, especially in Europe to enslave the black man. Christianity could hardly be exculpated in the conspiracy of the world in colonizing Africa.

Berlin conference of 1884 and 1885 and the subsequent treaty saw the black man bearing further subjugated in form of sharing of Africa amongst European nations for colonization. Christianity could definitely could not be exculpated from the evils of slavery and colonizing.

Christianity could be said to have done well for humanity except some hiccups here and there, especially where it condemned the black man. The church was everywhere fighting slavery and colonialism - in some cases approbating and reprobating, doing a double speak on issues that concerned the actual freedom of the black man from slavery and colonization.

Christianity was seen prevaricating when the issue of the black man being a part of human beings that were created in the image and likeness of God. The ancient Christianity, before and in the 19th century had no answer to that questions, yet we battle to be counted in heaven. The baptized Christians were later in the odds to be treated as brethren either pretentiously or in reality; there was a silvering in the sky.

The claim that Christianity laid the foundation for the replacement of slavery in Europe of Europeans with the enslavement of Africans by European slave merchants was investigated and found to be true. We shall dwell further on this issue to get down to the nitty-gritty of it to blame whom to blame and defend whom to defend. The church definitely has an apology to give as much as the entire world owes the black man reparation for the injustice of slavery, slave trade and colonialism.

The legislative details of the involvement of the church in the enslavement of African could be X-rayed in the forthcoming chapter devoted to the subject matter.

Slavery in the contemporary world: Slavery was said to have been abolished but careful observation of what is going on in the world of today shows that there is still slavery with us till today. Though slavery has been abolished in the entire world through global instruments and institutions even as they were localized as constitutional issues in different nations of the world, it presently flourishes to the shame of world leaders and organizations like United Nations and its organs.

Right from the year 1833 that it was abolished in British colonies and 1863 that Abraham Lincoln liberated everybody in United States of America, everyone became a freeborn irrespective of color or race. Seeing that slavery persists, the countries of the world met to establish global understanding towards the eradication of slavery in our modern and most recent societies. Slavery still exists in different forms in our daily activities which must be stamped out. We see fellow human being in our thoughts and actions that impact on our immediate societies negatively. Modern day slavery range from human trafficking, forced labour, servitude, child labour etc.

United Nations 1926 slavery convention defined slavery as "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all the power of attacking to the right of ownership are exercised". The League of Nations 1926 slavery convention was followed up in 1956 of another United Nations slavery convention strictly set out to abolish slavery and anything that had the toga of it. This was a treaty known as the United Nations supplementary convention of 1956 aimed at the abolition of slavery, slave trade, institutions and practices similar to slavery. This was adopted and signed by the attendee nations.

Amendment to this convention was done by day way of protocols done at UN headquarters in New Yoke in 1953 which bases the supplementary slavery convention was arrived at. United Nations High Commission for Human Rights and Slavery Acts emerged to handle the issues of slavery and rights abuses. The emerged International Labour Organizations to guard against forced labour, servitude etc. United Nations Actions Against Slavery was a follow up. All these United Nations laws were localized in the constitutions of member states but they face enforcement problems. The violating individuals, groups and organizations usually evolve evasive mechanisms which governments grapple with. The issue of Boko Haram and ISIS are instances where those held hostage helplessly wallow in servitude in their respective hostage camps. The issue of the young school girls abducted by members of Boko Haram for years could not be rescued. They were within the range of thirteen and were forced to become premature mothers. The Chibok girls definitely have grown into madams and mothers at an age their parents still pampered and nursed or guarded their virginity.

The girls of poor backgrounds sent out by their masters and mistresses into prostitution are another set of slaves. Some were sent overseas for prostitution in the guise of securing jobs as house helps for them. Children of school age who are on the road hawking wares present a pitiable sight in our societies.

Modern slavery has different dimensions sometimes with a thin line between them and mere servant or house help. The bottom line is the attitude towards them that denies them the choice to reason otherwise. In some areas in Africa, some are still enslaved to deities. These slaves are seen moving within the groves of the deities while others are left to wander in the deserts in a hermitic lifestyle. In the modern age of civilization, there are sign posts of slavery even amongst the nations of the world that preach against it. In Europe and America, the off springs of the slave masters show that trait while the off springs of the former slaves still have that bitterness which psychologically is a demonstration of the oppressed mentality which the world must address if slavery would be a thing of the past.