TheWhiteMarten Wrote:Some Christians held slaves despite 2000 years of condemnation from the church, therefor Christianity was pro-slavery.
It's not "some" Christians but religious orders and clergy who had slaves.
TheWhiteMarten Wrote:A serf was granted certain rights and freedoms a slave is not; a serf is also not viewed as property of an individual but rather tied to the land, making them at a fundamental level *not* a slave.
Serfs were very oppressed people who constantly rebelled against the aristocrats, and when Martin Luther came up with Protestantism, they finally hoped for a break in oppression to come from the Church claiming that Jesus is on their side, only to be denounced by theologians who told them that the only mercy they'll get is when they died. After which something like 100 thousands of serfs were slaughtered.
And that is the only "freedom" that Christianity offered to slaves: when they died they will be free in heaven living with god, but till then they had to obey their owners and turn the other cheek when getting beaten.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
