[nautilius]

> You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement.

Ah, so there were Christians who opposed it, which makes that the central tenet in Christianity. But there were also those Christians who practiced it - does that now make slavery a central tenet in Christianity instead?

You can't just cherrypick what you find most flattering for your group and then round it off with 'but the Arabs'.

Italians are still a protected minority in New Jersey, and Hispanics are still a protected minority throughout the US. Natives were forcibly Christianized and then killed or deported to barren lands no one wanted.

[jezclaremurugan]

I think we need to factor in "Correlation is not causality" and the presence of confounding variables.

Slave abolitionists explicitly mentioned where they derived their morals from - clearly establishing causality.

Could there be something else common among slave practitioners apart from religion - like common materialistic greed and superior firepower to overpower and dominate others?

[nautilius]

> Could there be something else common among slave practitioners apart from religion

Cherry picking again, are we? So now we are looking for an alternative explanation - but only on the evil side. The existence of Christians who opposed slavery does not prove that it is in any way central to Christianity, or exclusive to Christianity. That's not how logic works.

How about spinning it the other way around? Giving man 'dominion' over everything that creeps on earth, throw in a bit of manifest destiny and some appropriate bible quotes - voilà! A perfectly fine Christian justification for why slavery is the Christian way to do things. https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-33/wh... https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/ etc.

On the other hand, the humanist Enlightenment in France led to the French revolution, led in turn to laicist France granting citizenship to former slaves in 1792 on non-religious grounds.

So yeah, there was something else among both abolitionists and slave holders, which is my whole point.

[rayiner]

Abolition among white Americans arose expressly as a religious movement. They weren’t just Christians who happened to oppose it, but an opposition expressly rooted in Christian theology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers_in_the_abolition_movem...

Supporters of slavery, by contrast, often invoked the language of science and progress and condemned abolitionists as religious zealots. The famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, given by the VP of the Confederacy:

> This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.

Think about this logically. Imagine you’re a white European looking around at the world in 1776. There is no systematic archeology, there is no science of genetics. What would cause you to look around at the civilization and technology Europeans had developed, compared to what Africans or Asians has developed, and conclude that all people were equal? Back then it was a moral premise you had to accept on faith without the support of science.

Consider Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about the Creator endowing all men with alienable rights. Even though he was probably a deist, he expressly incorporated Christian morality into his worldview (e.g. the Jefferson Bible).

Or consider German Americans, one of Lincoln’s core constituencies that pushed him toward emancipation. These were recent immigrants to the Midwest who had no historical beef with the south. Yet, per capita, states like Iowa contributed the most soldiers to fight and die for the union. Do you think they were driven by abstract enlightenment principles of equality and justice?

It’s widely accepted today that the Civil War was about slavery. That has a remarkable implication. 360,000 union soldiers died to end slavery in the south. Can you name another example of one ethnic group incurring that kind of casualties to fight for the freedom of a different ethnic group? Maybe there are other examples but I’m unaware of any.

[t-3]

> It’s widely accepted today that the Civil War was about slavery.

That's a bit too simplified. The South fought primarily because they wanted to keep slavery and thought Lincoln would abolish it, but the North fought primarily to prevent secession, and ending slavery was just a convenient tool they could use to help win the war. The "good north vs evil south" narrative is too often used as a political cudgel, and doesn't really accurately reflect the on-the-ground reality.

[nautilius]

I am really tired of the cherry picking in this thread.

That there were Christians who opposed slavery does not mean it's central or exclusive to Christianity. Christians also justified slavery with the bible. https://time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/

That there were slave holders who justified their view in science does not mean that it's central or exclusive to atheists (see citizenship rights for slaves in the laicist French revolution)

>Consider Thomas Jefferson,

I'll consider Thomas Jefferson who readily incorporated slavery in his business while formulating his Jefferson Bible.

>Or consider German Americans

Maybe recent immigrants were driven by a desire to contribute to their new home?

>Maybe there are other examples but I’m unaware of any.

Unclear how superficial or cynical this is meant. WWII could come to mind.

Really, yours is the first account I read of the Civil War as a religious crusade of the Christian North to finally bring god to the heretics of the South.