Life on Planet Earth on Slavery

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The Most Popular Argument for Slavery

Author

Keywords

Slavery

I read that Thornton Stringfellow, pastor of the Stevensburg Baptist Church in Virginia, had made one of the most popular arguments for slavery when Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century were decidin...

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The American Church’s Approval of Slavery

Author

Cornel West

Keywords

Slavery

While we would like to imagine that historically speaking, the church in America spoke out against slavery, what actually transpired occured more along the lines of geography, rather than theology: W...

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Author

Rodney Stark

Keywords

Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of me...

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An Account of Modern-Day Slavery

Author

Eric Mason

Keywords

In his excellent book, Woke Church , Eric Mason shares a personal account of watching people being sold into slavery in real-time with his family: “CNN released an exclusive report in October 201...

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For years, Bible scholars have danced around

Author

Bryan C. Loritts

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 21:16 , Deuteronomy 15:12-15, Isaiah 58:6, Philemon 1:8-16 , Galatians 3:28, Psalm 146:7

For years, Bible scholars have danced around the matter by saying slavery in Rome was far different from slavery in the first few centuries of American history. No doubt their observations carry a mea...

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Modern-day Slaves

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Perhaps no statistic reminds us more graphically of the distortion of power in our world than this: there are twenty-one million slaves in the world today. They labor as brick makers, coffee harvester...

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The Standard Operating System

Author

Bryan C. Loritts

Keywords

This historical context unveils the truth that evangelicalism and white evangelicalism happen to be at least four-hundred-or-so-year-old conjoined twins who have never been separated in their lives. T...

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Seared into Her Conscience

Author

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Keywords

Slavery

Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a slaveholder and judge in Charleston, South Carolina, was five years old in 1797 when the sight of an enslaved person being whipped seared her conscience. Like many whit...

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Pro or Anti-Slavery?

Author

Matthew Sleeth

Keywords

Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, President Lincoln was purported to have said that it was nice to meet the woman who started the Civil War. Stowe’s father was among...

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The Narrative of Racial Difference

Author

Bryan Stevenson

Keywords

In this excerpt by Bryan Stevenson, the civil rights attorney and author of Just Mercy, explains the origins of racial identity and difference, necessitated by a slave-based (American Christian) socie...

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Adapted from Deuteronomy 7:6-11

Author

Dustin Ray

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 7:6-11

Pastor: For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was no...

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The Story of Amazing Grace

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

John Newton authored one of the most beloved hymns for English-speaking black Christians in the world, yet he spent his early life transporting African slaves to the New World. He was born in 1725, w...

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A Matter of Life and Death

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Ideas are a matter of life and death. Take slavery, for example, which deems some peoples as inferior to others and regards people as objects to be used. Eugenics similarly witnesses to a whole set of...

liturgy

Adapted from Numbers 23:19-22

Author

Dustin Ray

Keywords

Scripture

Numbers 23:19-22

Leader: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. All: Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Leader: The LORD...

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Gratitude: It Makes Everything Taste Better

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 22:7-11, 1 Samuel 8:10 , Mark 16:9-20, Psalm 60:, 1 Kings 17:8-16, Daniel 6:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Luke 17:11-19, Luke 17:11-19, Psalm 136:1

Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. (1893–1952) was an American journalist, playwright, editor, and writer. Like many Southerners of means, he was cared for as a boy by a nurse who had been born into slavery. ...

liturgy

Let us pray. Almighty, powerful,

Author

Jacob Traeger

Keywords

Let us pray. Almighty, powerful, creator God So often we think we know best. We confess to you our sin alongside the sin of all humanity. We have tried to master creation rather than care for it. We ...

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God, you call us to prayer. Throughout

Author

Ellen R. Dawson

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 2:23-25, 1 Samuel 1:10-11, 1 Kings 3:9-12, Acts 4:29-31, Luke 7:37-38, Exodus 3:7-10, Esther 4:16

God, you call us to prayer. Throughout the Scriptures, we read about your people praying. The Israelites cried out for you to rescue them from slavery. You sent them Moses. Hannah wept, asking you t...

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Using Christianity as a Means of Social Control

Author

Eugene Genovese

Keywords

A great burst of proselytizing among slaves followed the Nat Turner revolt. Whereas previously many slaveholders had feared slaves with religion—and the example of Turner himself confirmed their fears...

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The Expediency of White Supremacism

Author

Ken Wytsma

Keywords

In order to justify colonialism, an idea like white supremacy was needed. The concept that whites were chosen by God and superior to people of color, who were less intelligent, less deserving, and sav...

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Author

William Wilberforce

Keywords

Scripture

Amos 5:24, Jeremiah 22:3, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17, Isaiah 58:6

Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been s...

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Losing Your Name

Author

Bonnie Greer

Keywords

The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...

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Differences in Economics from the Ancient World to Ours

Author

Ben Witherington III

Keywords

At this point in the discussion some will remark that the Old Testament says a good deal about being prosperous and even occasionally speaks about wealth, but not about money per se. That is the case ...

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The Gospel Torn in Two

Author

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Keywords

Slavery

A few weeks after our Christmas at the DPAC, I visited Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church, a quaint chapel one town over from Durham in Hillsborough, North Carolina. This place was never a megachurch, b...

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Paul and Onesimus

Author

Melinda Joy Mingo

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 15:7, Matthew 18:21-22, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Romans 12:10, Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:13

One of my favorite Bible illustrations of someone willing to go against the norms of society to befriend another based on love and forgiveness is found in the New Testament book of Philemon. It is a m...

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Thinking Biblically about Work and Ownership

Author

Ben Witherington III

Keywords

In modern Western culture we place a high value on work, which is fine, but one of the philosophical assumptions that can come with such values is that we assume that we own what we earn or buy. From ...

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The Sabbath for the Descendants of Slaves

Author

Cole Arthur Riley

Keywords

People think the sabbath is antiquated; I think it will save us for ourselves… When we rest, we do so in memory of rest denied. We receive what has been withheld from ourselves and our ancestors. And...

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Elephants Chains’ and Self-Limiting Beliefs

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Have you ever wondered how people keep elephants, whether at a circus or as means of transport throughout Asia, from throwing off their shackles and marching to their own tune? A single metal chain is...

liturgy

Galatians 4:4-7

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 4:4-7

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you a...

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The Unfulfilled Atheist

Author

Brian Loritts

Keywords

Some years ago, I was approached by a young man in our church who described himself as an “unfulfilled atheist.” He wanted to know why he should consider Christianity. I responded to him by asking him...

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Spirituals and Suffering

Author

Luke A. Powery

Keywords

There is no lack of pain and suffering in the world. Look around. Read the newspaper. Click on the Internet. Scroll Facebook or read a tweet. Suffering is always present like the paparazzi. It seems t...

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