Answering Atheist Arguments: "The Bible is a Radically Pro-Slavery Document!" - Dan Savage

The Reason Rally has inspired me to write a new section on my blog. Every Tuesday I plan on looking at a common atheist argument and responding to it in a quick summary to show why it doesn’t work in the argument against Christianity or the belief in God. Atheists, especially the ones I met at the Reason Rally, use a lot of strong and angry rhetoric. Quite often it is just to score a rhetorical point, but can be easily refuted. These are not arguments for Christianity; these are just simple refutations of common arguments against Jesus or the belief in God.

Dan Savage, syndicated columnist and self-proclaimed “anti-bullying” advocate , has provided me with today’s Atheist Argument.  It’s worth pointing out that his effort to curb bullying, by bullying high school students with 3 minute rant against Christianity is a great example of a core teaching of Christianity.  No matter how low we set our ethical standard, we still are utterly incapable of following it.  There is something terribly wrong with all of us.  In this case all he had to do was not bully the young people he was hired to talk to about not bullying to.  He couldn’t even last 20 minutes.

“as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one.”  - Romans 3:10

But that is not what I want to address.  In his little tirade, he used a common tactic to undermine the credibility of the Bible.  This tactic is popular with atheists because its easy to state.  It is also easy to refute.  Here are his words:

“The Bible is a radically pro slavery document….The Bible took the easiest moral question humanity has ever faced, and got it wrong.  What are the chances that it has something as complicated as human sexuality wrong?  100%.”

The argument is that the Bible is pro slavery, so we cannot trust it at all.  But is the Bible pro-slavery?  He would like to think so.  As evidence he refers to old American southerners, using the Bible to defend the practice.  He also refers to the book of Philemon, a letter from Paul, written to a Christian “master” about a slave.

The first evidence attempts to create a false dichotomy.  The idea he wants us to follow is the southern Christians were all pro-slavery until heroic secularists came and saved the day, putting an end to slavery.  This is a cute story but it is false.  The facts are that almost across the board it was Christians responsible for abolitionist movements.  The pro-slavery southerners were misusing the Bible to promote their agenda, ironically in the same exact way that Dan Savage is.  In our story, Dan is the Southerner, using the Bible to promote something that helps him, not necessarily what it actually says.

The fact is that the Bible in no way promotes slavery as it was practiced in the American South.  This is a case of modern readers accidently adding their cultural biases when reading the text.  We think slavery and we immediately think racism, kidnapping, brutal treatment and slavery for life, all for the benefit of the slave owners.

Slavery in the old and new testaments was not like this.  Firstly, when a person became a slave, it was often times a voluntary move.  Someone would become poor and be unable to pay their debts.  In order to pay debts back, they would become servants and work for their debtors for a set period of time.  It was more similar to modern day employment than to modern day slavery.  Really, it was indentured servant hood.   Second, race did not play a factor at all.  In fact, much of the law concerning “slavery” in Israel was talking about people of the same race.  Third, the conditions that the “slaves” lived in were often times indistinguishable from that of a free person.  Their wages were the same, the living quarters were the same, their food was the same etc.   Lastly, when the period slaves were to work (usually 6 years) was over, often times they would choose to stay with their employers.  If they chose not to, the  “masters” were to give them liberal amounts of stuff to get started out on their own (cattle, equipment, wine etc.).  Slavery in the Bible was more analogous to employment today than anything else.  It was often engaged in for the benefit of the servant, not the other way around.

This description of slavery in the time Paul wrote should make it clear by now that Southerners in the time of American slavery were ignorant in using the Bible to defend what they were doing. They should have known better.  They were accidently or purposely misusing the Bible to fit their agenda.

Are the atheists that use this argument accidently misinterpreting scripture, or do they have an agenda?  My judgment of Dan Savage is that he probably doesn’t know what scripture teaches on slavery, but he probably doesn’t care either.   He has a sound bite that sounds good and he has an agenda.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not to him.  This kind of rhetoric may get raucous applause from those who share his agenda, but if we know what the Bible teaches we can respond to it.