St. Paul also placed a direct command on Philemon to free a slave, Onesimus, in Philemon 1:15-17.
And those are just a couple of examples. Despite the fact that slavery was just part of the landscape everywhere in the ancient world, the Bible still speaks against it (and was the first authority to do so.)
And you realize, of course, (1) that slavery is still rife throughout most of the world, and (2) that it was the Christians who freed the slaves in England and in America, and spread this concept through the world?
I disagree that the Bible speaks out against slavery. I have never seen any scriptures that specifically condemn slavery as an institution. I don’t read Galatians 3:28 as a condemnation of slavery; I read that verse to mean that God doesn’t care about your role on Earth, for we are all saved through Christ.
There are plenty of verses that accept slavery, explaining how slaves and masters are to treat each other (Deuteronomy 15:12-15; Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 4:1; I Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:9-10.) Even Jesus said, “And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” Luke 12:47.
The Bible doesn’t condone slavery in the sense that it tells us we need to go out and enslave each other in order to be righteous. It does, however, fail to condemn the practice of owning another human being and depriving them of their own freedom and autonomy, a practice I view as unquestionably wrong.
Finally, a minor point of language. When you say, “’THE Christians’ (as opposed to simply ‘Christians’) freed the slaves,” it impliedly suggests that all Christians banded together in opposition to slavery, while slavery proponents were non-Christian. That’s just not true. Most slave owners in the US were also Christians, claiming that slavery was divinely created and sanctioned. I just don’t think abolition was due to some fundamental tenet of Christian theology, so much as it was an inevitable result of the 18th century Enlightenment.