Over the past 160 years in the West, we have experienced something rare in the history of the world: Chattel slavery has not only been formally abolished but has become culturally abhorrent. When Americans think of slavery, we think of Africans being sold by their kinsmen to people in the West and that slavery was only of those who had dark skin. But light-skinned eastern European Slavs were enslaved by Muslims. The Irish were slaves in the 1600s in Western lands. Slavery reaches back to the time before Abraham, who himself owned slaves. Even today, throughout the world, it is estimated that somewhere around 40 million people are enslaved. The twentieth and twenty-first-century Christian West is an anomaly in the world.

Because of our relatively sheltered place in history, many Christians are embarrassed about what the Scriptures say and do not say about slavery. We expect there to be an absolute prohibition of slavery throughout Scripture and especially in the New Testament, but there isn’t. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Paul and Peter direct slaves to obey their masters, and masters are not commanded to free their slaves. The relationship between master and slave is regulated but not eliminated.

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