Quote Originally Posted by steelish View Post
People were not enslaved because of their nationality or the color of their skin.
And yet, one verse I quoted above seems to say just that:
Leviticus 25:44 "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids."
That sounds like ethnic slavery to me.

And let's not forget Deuteronomy:
20:10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
20:11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
20:12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
20:13 And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
20:14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

So it sounds OK to enslave your enemies, if they surrender, or kill the men and enslave the women and children if they resist.

In Bible times, slavery was more a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.
This sounds like typical apologetics. "They LIKED being slaves! They WANTED to be slaves. So that made it all right!"

The key issue is that the slavery the Bible allowed for in no way resembled the racial slavery that plagued our world in the past few centuries.
Slavery is slavery. No matter what kind of ribbons and bows you try to dress it up with.

And the religious arguments for and against slavery are nothing new.
The first edition of Domestic Slavery was published in 1846. It is a monograph compilation of correspondence, presented initially in serial format, between two significant Baptist leaders, Francis Wayland and Richard Fuller. Wayland, president of Brown University, argued against the biblical validity of slavery, and Fuller, Baptist pastor and South Carolina native, argued that slavery was indeed biblically valid.

As with most of the Bible, it is so filled with contradictions and vague assertions that anyone can "prove" anything they wish simply by cherry-picking those verses which agree with their point. As I have done myself.