The Christian Church and Slavery

There have been many linguistic, cultural and anthropological studies about the origin of the Jesus narratives, but I am aware of none that explore how the teachings were shaped by the existence of the large populations of slaves in the ancient world other than to say that proportionally large numbers of slaves were certainly members of the early communities, and that the teachings were not abolitionist.

The Roman census system was reasonably accurate. Taxes were assessed by population, and the Empire’s finances depended on it. In the Augustan census of 28 BCE.. the number of Roman citizens-men, women, and children across the Empire was 4,063,000. To this number add about 2,000,000 slaves and some foreigners, making a total population of 5,500,000. Slaves were taxed so the numbers are almost certainly underreported, but still that calculates out to almost 30% of the population of the Empire were slaves at the time of Jesus. Other scholarly research puts the number of slaves lower, between 10 to 20% of the total population, but it is possible that as many as one in three persons were in bondage. 

The Roman Empire at this period of expansion was continually at war, and slaves were booty of war. The soldiers of defeated armies became prisoners who became slaves if they were not executed. Most I presume became gladiators. The civilian populations of defeated kingdoms were also subject to slavery. People from all walks of life, teachers, doctors, artisans and accountants became slaves as well as hairdressers, drivers and concubines. And according to the amount of freedom that their masters or owners allowed, these men, women and children might have become members of the Jesus congregations. We have no way of knowing how many, but what is certain is that there were many slaves in the early Christian congregations outside Jerusalem, particularly in the Roman port cities that Paul evangelized, but also in Rome as well. 

This word slave is found at least 127 times in 119 verses of the Greek versions of the New Testament. Doulos in Greek has only one accurate translation into English which is slave. It is often rendered "servant" by many translators, but it literally means to be owned by someone for a lifetime. Unsurprisingly Paul has the most to say about slavery. In Ephesians 6:5–8, Paul states "Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ". Similar statements regarding obedient slaves can be found in Colossians 3:22–24, 1 Timothy 6:1–2, and Titus 2:9–10.  In Romans 1:1, Paul calls himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."

In the Pauline texts, a constant ethical teaching comes through: be a good slave if you are a  slave and treat your slaves well if you are the master. Rise up and throw off your master’s oppression was left for the Exodus or it died in the Sinai desert. There are many echoes of the prophets in the sayings and stories about Jesus, but any prophetic condemnation of slavery is muted if it exists at all. This is the reason why Martin Luther King reached back into the Hebrew Bible to find a rallying point for the anti-segregation movement which he then coupled with the egalitarian teachings of the gospels. 

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The devil is in the details. My investigation of church teachings regarding slavery after Paul reveals a mixed record at best. Here is a summary of what I learned from articles on Wikipedia. I have only included information that could be found on at least two independent searches.

In the early years of Christianity, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, but the actual institution of slavery was rarely if ever criticized. In 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for urging that slaves liberate themselves; the canons of the Synod instead declared that anyone preaching abolitionism should be anathematised, and that slaves had a Christian obligation to submit to their masters. Augustine of Hippo renounced his early Manichean views. He argued that slavery did not belong to the natural state that Adam and Eve were born into, but that the institution of slavery was caused by human sin but allowed by God as a form of judgment. John Chrysostom argued that slaves should be resigned to their fate, that by obeying his or her master, a slave is obeying god. He also stated that slavery itself was the fruit of covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable greediness. 

In the 15th century, most Popes continued to legitimize slavery, at least as a result of war. In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which granted Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon and distributed them to the cardinals and Roman nobility. The Pope gave human beings, slaves, as gifts or Christmas presents! In 1639 Pope Urban VIII purchased slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta. On the other hand, a few Popes beginning in the 15th and 16th century denounced slavery as a crime, including Pius II, Paul III, and Eugene IV, but those voices were a minority. 

After the Council of Trent when Thomas Aquinas became the gold standard of Catholic moral teaching, the question about the legitimacy of holding slaves might have been settled. Look no further for its justification according to his Natural Law Theory in the Summa. He comments on this proposition from Aristotle: "It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right" (1255a2-3), and that men "should seek to be masters only over those who deserve to be slaves" (1334a3). This is Aquinas’s comment: “Therefore, all human beings who differ from others as much as the soul does from the body, and as human beings do from irrational animals, are, because of the eminence of reason in them and the deficiency in others, by nature masters of the others. In this regard, Solomon also says in Proverbs 11:29: ‘The stupid will serve the wise.’” (Commentary 1.3.10). 

Thomas, who is not feminist by any stretch of the imagination, uses slavery to justify the subjection of women, and asserts that it is without sin: “Subjection is twofold. One is servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit, and this kind of subjection began after sin. There is another kind of subjection, which is called economic or civil, whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their own benefit and good; and this kind of subjection existed even before sin.” (I, q.92, a.1, arg.2). 

If you are an abolitionist, there is little evidence of opposition to the institution of slavery in church history or the councils. You’ll have to look elsewhere for an argument to support your case. Slavery in different forms was allowed to exist within Christian moral teaching and practice for over 18 centuries, and with few exceptions, it was simply treated as part of the organization of human society. Something radically changed however with the massive and brutal exploitation of African populations to provide laborers for sugar and cotton plantations at the beginning of the industrial age.

No More a Slave

A Jesuit friend who teaches in Nepal mentioned almost casually in conversation that the young father who lives below his flat in Kathmandu with his newborn son had been a slave. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn't speaking metaphorically. He wasn’t lying. As hard as it is for most of my Western friends to grasp, slavery still exists. We might think of the sex trade which has been documented and exposed in the international press, but people other than women and girls are still treated as physical property which can be bought and sold. The practice might be far more widespread than we imagine. 

Slavery is officially banned in all countries in the world; indentured servitude in India ended in 1920, but people have found ways around it. They always do. If there are statutes for example prohibiting harsh treatment or even execution of servants, they might be variants of English colonial law governing indentured persons or provisions in the Sharia. However I doubt that most cases of involuntary servitude are even apparent. A hidden network of illegal or semi-legal arrangements has its own set of rules.

In my 6th year teaching English in northern India, I tutored a young man who was completing his secondary education at the Tibetan Children's Village, a school run by the Tibetan Government in Exile. My student, Bama, was almost 21. Most of his fellow students were 8-10 years younger. I was charged with helping him bring his English up to 10th or 12th standard so that he could graduate and go onto College in India. Bama was a very dedicated, bright student. It was a worthwhile investment. 

He told me that the monks called Bama because of the high esteem that they had for Barack Obama, and it was close to the English transliteration of his Nepalese name. He was descended from a class of Tibetan warriors that the Kings of Nepal at one point hired or captured on the tundra to be their royal guards, their Swiss Guard. He was ethnically Tibetan, and spoke Tibetan as well as Nepali, Hindi and English. 

As I did with all my beginning students, I asked him to tell me his story. He said matter of factly that he had been the property of an Indian family who lived close to the border with Nepal. I was shocked. We took out the Tibetan-English dictionary, and checked the exact meaning of property. Yes, Bama said, they owned him in the same way that they owned their house, cars or businesses. They were a prosperous merchant family who treated him well, but he was their slave and had been since he was a young boy. 

When the family moved South to a small town outside Sera Jey Monastery near Mysore to start a restaurant, he was taken along as the dishwasher. He made friends with some monks who came to the restaurant regularly for Sunday brunch. His Tibetan is quite good. I know one was a rinpoche because I took his address to send money to pay for further English lessons. These monks decided to buy him out of slavery, and begin his formal education. He was 15 or 16 at the time. I have no idea the actual cost of his freedom, but I do know it was expensive. I imagine that some of the monks approached someone in the Indian family who owned Bama and began a negotiation. The monks dug deep into their reserves.

Not only did his status change when the monks adopted him--he was no longer part of a clandestine world of cheap labor, there were now opportunities that had been closed off. He learned to read and write quickly. A whole world opened up and he was grateful. I should note that there was no expectation on their part that Bama shave his head and begin monastic training though I’m sure he would have been welcomed. It was a free gift.

After the major earthquake in Nepal in April of 2015, the Dalai Lama became very concerned about Chinese influence in post quake relief, and he wanted to get as many monks of Tibetan origin as possible out of Nepal. Bama still carried a Nepalese passport. He returned to Nepal and smuggled a group of 7 or 8 monks across the border into India. They didn't carry any passports but couldn’t use the border crossing designated for refugees from Tibet because of some bureaucratic technicality. He told me that this was one time he wore a monk’s robes, but he was not going to make it permanent. It was part of his returning the favor of finding his freedom. Bama had not heard had not heard MLK say, “no one is free until we are all free,” but he understood the maxim and lived it.

That is a real story of manumission that even includes an underground railroad, and it happened just a few years ago. But I have to admit that I found it unsettling. I had assumed that after our American Civil War and Eleanor Roosevelt’s inclusion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the UN Charter, the question had been settled. But slavery has been around for as long as humankind has been defining civilized behavior. How could I be so naive?

Reforming the Roman Curia is like trying to teach an elephant ballet

Reforming the Roman Curia may be harder than teaching an elephant ballet, 

Or why I love my ex.

According to Canon Law, I am an ex-Jesuit. In 1975, after almost 10 years in the Jesuits, I formally asked to be released from religious vows. Someone in an office in Rome eventually read my appeal and granted my request. I went into the office of my religious superior, a man I didn’t know well. We both knew we were gay but our chosen paths were so different that there was immediate animosity. After some awkward conversation, he and I put our signatures at the bottom of two papers. Both my promises to God in the context of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and their legal and moral obligations towards me were rescinded. No money was exchanged. It took about 10 minutes. The whole process, however, from my exclaustration and the 19th Annotation retreat that my director asked me to undertake, through to the point that I mustered the courage to make a clear decision took more than a year.

Today I’m glad that I followed this formal path. In retrospect it might have been simpler just to walk out the door and not look back. It was not easy. It was emotional and gut wrenching. Eventually I came to discard other traditional religious trappings, fully severing my ties to the Catholic Church. I rejected some beliefs outright, for example the "intrinsically disordered nature" of same sex orientation, while others I quietly set aside, but in the end like a married couple who achieve an amicable separation, our divorce was clean. I cherish the years that I was a Jesuit. There is no resentment. Thankfully, I still maintain a deep affection for my ex although we live very separate lives.

I entered the Jesuits less than a year after Paul VI closed the Second Vatican Council. Hopes were high. Most young Jesuits at the time were buoyed by the promise that the Church would shed its medieval trappings and present the Gospel to a world in need. But particularly with the election of John Paul II, the retrenchment within the hierarchy stifled my enthusiasm. Choked might be more accurate. Ratzinger shared Wojtyła’s conviction that Vatican 2 was a radical departure from tradition, too radical. Although they both had to admit that the Council was the work of the Holy Spirit--it was after all a church council--under the guise of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, they reigned in the spirit of reform. Hardliners sifted through the documents to see which ones they had to live with. They drew a line in the sand with regards to Liberation Theology for example, and began to carve out exemptions for the Tridentine Mass. Benedict even dusted off the Papal throne and took the red slippers out of the closet. 

From my outsider position I saw a recalcitrant Curia unwilling to give up power, money and control, but after almost five decades of trying to bolster up a crumbling European style monarchy on life support, it became clear the form of government was so antiquated and corrupt that it would be wiped away unless real reform was given a chance. Enter the first Pope from the New World and the first Jesuit Pope. He has had a formidable task given the landmines that centuries of absolute rule have left planted to defend itself from all criticism. 

An ex-Jesuit friend commented on the current state of the leadership of Francis, including the backlash that began to surface the moment he paid his own hotel bill after being elected. “Dragging along the Curia, the Bishops, and all the ‘people of God’ will take many years.” Dragging is not usually a word associated with “metanoia,” conversion or change of heart, one of the favored words in post Vatican 2 theology, but for me points to the heart of the matter.

Reforming the Curia is like teaching an elephant ballet. Patient training may yield some behavior modification but it won’t be dancing. It’s also extremely difficult. The elephant will demand more treats to learn the act. Or more harsh discipline, or coercion. In human terms that usually means money and power. Deprive the beast and you might cause a deadly rampage. That is what the likes of the gay Australian Cardinal and Benedict’s Platonic boyfriend seemed to be threatening. Time to get back to that old time religion where the elephants perform as they were trained, the people applaud and hand over cash--or else.

A few days ago a fellow Buddhist, a gay Californian who is also here in Asia right now with his husband said to me with regard to the American political scene, “Where are the new leaders? Where are the JFK’s or the MLK”s? It seems that we are only seeing reactionary people seeking the limelight and a few others standing up to them, brilliantly and strongly, but no one is actually inspiring a generation with the same power as “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?” Surveying the official face of the Roman Church until Francis, I say the same thing.

I see Francis limping along in full view, looking tired but not giving in, listening, speaking carefully and then going home to cafeteria meals in a communal residence. Sure he’s pope. The food is good and the health care top notch, but gone are the high flying days of fancy Kielbasa cooked in a palace by an adoring staff for a table of favored quests on a closely held list. Francis may have the kind of leadership required, generous and humble but he's not really cut out for elephant training. The circus will look entirely different. The results may also take many years. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it will take more than a day to rebuild, if we can keep the dancing elephants calm. 

I am and will continue to be an outsider. I may have given up my right to vote, but I can still love and support Francis and what he stands for. I am not alone. I will continue to express my views as clearly and forcefully as I can. It is the right thing to do. 

My Brush with Hollywood Stardom

This is of course a massive exaggeration. I had been visiting in Silver Lake with my friend Jack Pelton but he had to go to Portland to be with his nephew who was undergoing a very painful surgery for a young man, and there I was. Jack’s company rented revolving stages for movie shoots, and he’d sold one to a production outfit at Universal Studios where I had my encounter with the incredibly huge and expensive technical side of the film industry. It was my entrance to a real Hollywood sound stage.

Let me backup a minute. It had to be sometime in 1993. Michael Jackson had just been publicly accused of having sexual relations with underaged boys. Overnight he’d become poison, but he was also a huge star. Francis Ford Coppola’s 3D Imax movie, Dr. EO had been playing to full houses in Disney’s Epcot Center for almost a decade. A massive hit and huge money maker. But what to do when rumors and fierce public opinion emerged, and you have a sex offender of the most heinous sort cavorting in iMax 3D making no bones about wiggling his pelvis? You rush out a replacement as fast as you can.

1,000 × 605

Enter “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” or honey I blew up the kids. There were two versions. Sure to be another fantastic hit though I find the whole premise macabre--a nutty professor is working on a wonky machine in his attic and accidentally shrinks his kids to a miniscule size where ants prey on them in the front lawn, and rats accidentally fed into a copy machine chase them till everybody is scared shitless. In real life the wonky film technology has been perfected to make ants and rats jump off the screen and scare the be-Jesus out of ordinary middleclass white Americans venturing out of suburbia for a day of relaxation and adventure in the wholesome way Walt promised. It’s Hollywood so what the hell. We are all about avoiding any real conversation about child abuse so confront the topic head on, shrink and torture a few cute white kids due to the half-brained idiocy of one of their parents. Makes perfect sense, and I get a gig working the shoot.

The call was 6:30 AM. I had to stop and get something for the revolving stage, I think it was a full set of new Phillips Head screwdrivers so that Jack’s computer guy could fix whatever crisis came his way and keep the producers happy. I set out for Baller Hardware which opened at 5 A.M.. A good omen for the day--rushing to the tool section, I literally almost bump into Martina Navratilova in Fasteners. Forgetting the unwritten rule to avoid making a big deal about running into one of your favorite gay celebrities equipping herself for a day of DIY at her Hollywood mansion at five thirty in the morning, I smile broadly and wave hi. She waves back with an equally bright smile. This is Hollywood, real star encounters, and she is as wonderful in real life as I imagined.

I get to the Universal lot, find parking and make the call. Now this is going to take a bit more explanation, Jack has pulled some strings and I am actually going to make a few hundred dollars that day. I will be tending rats. Really. I will be a Rat Wrangler. In Hollywood lingo a “wrangler" is the person who tends to animals on the set. In rodeos the wrangler coaxed bulls into the pen before the cowboy or cowgirl rode them bareback till they were thrown off. On a movie set they kept the horses calm until the Lone Ranger and Tonto needed to ride off into the sunset or gallop to a gun fight. Hollywood code stipulates that there can be no more than 5 animals per wrangler. So for the scene that we were filming, a hundred or so rats exploding out of the copy machine, there were about 20 wranglers sitting on hard folding chairs, each tending five white rats in cages until the director said lights, action, release the rats.

This took a while. Rats, even clean and groomed Hollywood rats do not respond well to commands. I think it was 12 hours for them to cleanly fall out of the carefully engineered copy machine with some clear plastic tubes against the blue background which would accommodate some kids who are confused and scared shitless. I don’t remember much. I wish I’d brought a book but alas there was no book section at Smart and Final Hardware. No talking allowed, but the catered food for the crew was fabulous. I mean really spectacular. No greasy food truck. Bagels and lox till 9, sandwiches and salad for lunch and a full course dinner. The pay was more than I made for any day in that whole decade. I think close to 40 bucks an hour for sitting with a small metal cage at my side. My only real complaint was the fold up metal chair.

When Michael died in 2009, Disney returned a remastered Dr. EO to the screens at Epcot. Better to cash in for big bucks. The attention span for accusations of sex abuse is about 10 years so he’d served his time. Time to rid the world of fanciful child abuse by shrinking kids for white rats to threaten them.

I found a short clip of my day's work on YouTube. https://youtu.be/rRdzBtE2mQU, The bit with the white rats and copy machine starts at 2:30. One full day for a split second. That's Hollywood.