Posted on 12/12/2004 12:21:53 PM PST by mac_truck
Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures." Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.
Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.
"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective," he said.
'SOUTHERN SLAVERY, AS IT WAS' Here are some excerpts from the booklet:
* "To say the least, it is strange that the thing the Bible condemns (slave-trading) brings very little opprobrium upon the North, yet that which the Bible allows (slave-ownership) has brought down all manner of condemnation upon the South." (page 22)
* "As we have already mentioned, the 'peculiar institution' of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories." (page 22)
* "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." (page 24)
* "Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." (page 25)
(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...
I try to be careful when searching. I use firefox now. That seems to help.
LOL. Good one.
I don't believe in birth control. I don't get the question about ancestors. My parents are immigrants.
What is loving? Nurturing? Kindness? Generosity? Compassion? Financial gifts? Material gifts? Sharing the Good News?
I'll make sure I put in the words, 'African slavery'.
Do they have weird bondage stuff in Africa? LOL
I don't wanna know LOL
That's their own business. What does that have to do with slavery where a person has zero rights.
Now I'm afraid to search 'African Slavery'. I might come up with an African version of what I just cleaned up on my 'puter
amen
Agreed.
I just googled it. I didn't get anything bad. Just use your judgment. I usually look at the url first before I click.
The ancestors question was a way for me to, whatever answer rdb3 gave, condemn his ancestors as evil.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of people get off on condemning average people in the past. I guess it makes them feel superior about themselves today. Maybe I have a higher threshold for tossing out "evil" when describing people.
Therefore, it is not an issue about living conditions, treatment on-the-job, nor the security or lack-of security in that life style.
You see, it is critically important for kids to learn to reach their own conclusions while they are still under the moral supervision of adults. If you force feed them your opinions of right and wrong, they go off to college completely vulnerable to whatever brainwashing they are exposed to in liberal classrooms.
"I don't disagree with your premise, but would simply point out that American slavery is a lot more recent and relavant to our current society than the slavery from ancient Greece or Rome."
When we evaluate the moral status of the American slaveholder, are we not making a judgment about what he could have and should have known?
We can't hold anybody responsible for what he could not have known, and it's only slightly less difficult to hold somebody responsible unless we can say he should have known.
It is very relevant, then, to point out that slavery was nearly ubiquitous throughout human history. The notion that slavery is morally wrong didn't really catch on until the 19th century. England didn't outlaw slavery in her colonies until the 1830s. There's probably no living human that doesn't have ancestors who were slaves.
For all of history, throughout the world, slavery was as much a part of life as the weather, and nobody thought about abolishing it any more than they did abolishing the weather.
Gradually, though, the perception that slavery is a moral evil began to grow. It caught on here, it caught on there, but slowly. The first slaves in North America, excepting the Indians, who practiced slavery, were white. The first slave market was in New York.
Now, when it got to be about 1850, and slavery was clearly on the way out in the Western World, you might want to say to the Southern slaveowner, "Hey, catch up. Get a clue." But he is not practicing an atrocity of his own invention, nor one unique to himself. He's been slow to change, but he's doing what has always been done, since the dawn of history.
Even so, there was movement in the right direction. Before the war, a motion to end slavery was defeated by the Virginia legislature by only one vote. Many leading figures, including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, were known to advocate abolition.
One reason that John "Ossawatomi" Brown had trouble getting funding from his northern sympathizers was the widely held perception that the edifice of slavery would collapse under its own weight within a decade.
It is and always will be an indefensible evil.
understood... I don't knH
"What is loving? Nurturing? Kindness? Generosity? Compassion? Financial gifts? Material gifts? Sharing the Good News?"
I wouldn't claim perfect knowledge of that, but I would go so far as to assert that it doesn't include enslaving your neighbor.
What I meant to say was I understand and I wouldn't be so quick to call people evil. I don't know the people who owned slaves and don't think everyone who did so was 'evil'.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.