Declaration of Independence, says “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” but the creator in question is the one of Deism, not Christianity.
In the Bible there is no such concept as the idea of unalienable rights (and certainly not in the Ten Commandments, the gospels, or the epistles). Rather, the idea of “unalienable rights” derives from the Stoics and their subsequent influence on pagan Roman legal theory.
The New Testament in fact denies equal rights: Paul himself is made to say (in 1 Corinthians 14:33–35) that women, even baptized Christian women, do not have rights equal to men, and again (in 1 Timothy 2:11–15) he is made to be even more explicit:
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided she continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
In the Bible there is no such concept as the idea of unalienable rights (and certainly not in the Ten Commandments, the gospels, or the epistles). Rather, the idea of “unalienable rights” derives from the Stoics and their subsequent influence on pagan Roman legal theory.
The New Testament in fact denies equal rights: Paul himself is made to say (in 1 Corinthians 14:33–35) that women, even baptized Christian women, do not have rights equal to men, and again (in 1 Timothy 2:11–15) he is made to be even more explicit:
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided she continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
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"