Comment on Anon does some genealogy
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 days agoBefore Messianic times, the likes of Philo of Alexandria rejected slavery. And even in the early Messianic times (from a secular standpoint, this is when Christianity became a thing) there were abolitionists such as St Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth century bishop.
Protestants were denouncing slavery in the 1700s, such as John Wesley and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade being formed in the late 1700s by Quakers - which was originally a Christian denomination.
There’s a 40~ minute documentary on the subject available here: youtu.be/kA0-21H1TtU
Estiar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
All of these claims could be true, but even so, it does not mean that the Bible rejects slavery or that the church has rejected slavery historically. Many of the churches in the American south explicitly endorse slavery before the civil war. Not only due to biblical scripture but in order to preserve their hierarchical society.
There are a number of lgbtq affirming churches today in America. Some are splitting up over this issue. I can point to verses in the Bible such as when Jesus tells people to become eunuchs or when Paul says “there is is neither Jew nor gentile nor male nor female” and say that the Bible allows lgbtq people to live normally. But if in 50 years, lgbtq people are accepted by the church, and I said that it was always that way, that would be intellectually dishonest. The tradition of eunuchs that people would point out in history was condemned by the council of Nicaea around 500 AD and marginalization would continue and has continued today. I’d be intellectually dishonest if I said that the church had always respected lgbtq people.
Likewise, it’s the same with slavery. It wasn’t condemned and it was supported by scriptures and the people who practice Christianity. Christian countries would conquer land and take slaves. It’s intellectually dishonest to say that the church has always condemned slavery or that it was the majority position until recently.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 days ago
You’re right that the southern baptist convention happened and had doctrine over slavery - which they have repented and apologised for. The mainstream Catholic Protestant churches generally haven’t been in favour of it as far as I know.
The LGBTQ issue is different - The Bible full on anathematises homosexuality, for example in 1 Corinthians 6:9, or Romans 1, stating that they “will not inherit the Kingdom of heaven” and categorises them with adulterers, idolaters, greedy, thieves, etc. St Paul asks Philemon to free Onesimus and doesn’t - so such a condemnation was never issued against abolitionists.
Again, the transgender issue isn’t full-on anathematised, except for perhaps an old law on cross-dressing which doesn’t really hold much water due to it being OT in it’s context. So I wouldn’t say that such a thing would not be accepted, I think I’ll depend on how much scientific and societal study of the subject will continue to evolve. I don’t even know if it’s possible to categorise an asexual/chaste transgender person as sinful (the reason I put that qualifier in would be if we can’t know whether or not a trans woman is a woman theologically speaking, then her engaging with a man could be homosexuality, but likewise if she is, then her engaging with a woman can be of the same). I wouldn’t really consider them to be living a life of sin as it’s not specifically addressed nor condemned.
When Jesus was talking about Eunuchs, it was moreso celibacy than literally cutting off your genitals. And He doesn’t command people to, he moreso asks for respect for those who do. This was after He was talking about marriage.
Estiar@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I have an academic article for you! DOI 10.1177/0142064X05057772
In 2005, J David Hester challenge the more than 1500-year-old assumption that eunuchs did not actually mean eunichs, and instead simply meant celibate priests. In fact, eunuchs were not celibate at all. To make a long article short, ancient gender systems were different than our modern understanding of gender. However, the church revised even their understanding of gender to erase the classical understanding of a eunuch. In the ancient world, the inability to procreate was the idea of the inability to have sex. Therefore, eunuchs could not have sex, and if one became a eunuch, they rejected sex. Of course, people in the ancient world were not quite thrilled to see people have pleasure and not have sex. It undermined social order of the time where men dominated all of discourse. They were reviled for their rejection of marriage and sex. They were able to tie the institutions of public male life and private female life together and were quite powerful. It’s quite queer, and Jesus would have known the implications of urging people to be eunuchs. In fact, people would have taunted him and his unmarried disciples and called him a eunuch. This led to an order of Christian eunuchs who did live like these other eunuchs. It was a few centuries later at the council of nicaea where it was actually decided to renegotiate what the word “eunuchs” meant in Matthew 19. They drew upon stoic philosophy and changed it into a male-dominated celibate priesthood. After all, eunuchs were a threat to the male-dominated world and men could claim that title of the most devoted. They were attacked by figures like St. Augustine who said that their nature was contrary to nature.
Regarding homosexuality itself, though, we’ve renegotiated how sex and gender work throughout the ages. According to Dan McClellan’s book The Bible Says So, the term that we commonly see as homosexual in the the new testament, malakoi does not refer to a homosexual, but only refers to those who are the “bottom” in sex. A man could even be ‘gay’ if he took the bottom role in sex with his own wife. To put it in modern terms, femboys will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. With regards to the Hebrew Bible, (or the Old testament,) it’s largely the same dynamic. Within the book Leviticus, they believe that it is an abomination before God and therefore their holy people should not engage in such acts else they will be literally vomited out of the land. It was still worse to be a bottom, but for the land to not reject the people, they wanted to put both parties to death. The punishment is more severe here than rape or incest.
So the thing about lgbtq people in the Bible is that we’re trying to apply ancient social constructs to our own social constructs that we have 2,000 years later. They certainly aren’t one-to-one. I don’t believe that the Bible is always true, especially since it contradicts itself quite a lot. I believe it is primarily a book written by mankind and therefore reflects those same errors and biases. Likewise, the church perpetuates those same biases and even inserts more biases.
FerretyFever0@fedia.io 6 days ago
Oh, they said sorry. Isn't that nice of them. They still did it at the time. There were plenty of verses for them to pull support from.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 days ago
I’m not going to defend the Southern Baptist Convention, lol. But it is worth noting that slavery had existed since civilisations have existed - likely before the first words of The Torah were ever penned. Despite it taking almost two millenia, Christianity was the force that generally stopped it around the time it gained the most influence, as well as the global reach of colonial empires, even if they were just acting to appease the voters back home - although it still exists underground.
It’s quite silly to blame someone for partaking in a practice they didn’t start, but eventually stopped.
If anything, you could probably argue that if Christianity didn’t have the influence that it had, there’ll still be slaves in our society today.