A review of a new book by Simon Schama about American culture makes the usual argument that religion, not Enlightenment values, was responsible for abolishing slavery and expanding civil rights for blacks:
The main weapon in both the fight against slavery and the struggle for civil rights was shame, which has always been a peculiarly effective part of religion’s arsenal. It wasn’t, after all, the appeal of Enlightenment ideas that shattered slavery or modern rationalism that ended segregation.
writes David Shribman in today’s Wall Street Journal (reviewing Schama’s The American Future).
No question that many abolitionists were motivated by their faith to fight slavery. But the argument that we can thank religion for the abolition of the slave trade runs up against the fact that the slave trade went on for centuries without protest from the Catholic or Anglican Church hierarchies. Southern Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterian Church, supported slavery, correctly citing Biblical injunctions that slaves should obey their masters and expect their rewards in heaven. Surely priests and ministers know as much about the requirements and implications of religious values as anyone else. There is nothing uniquely religious about “shame,” as Shribman claims. And it is unpersuasive to claim that enlightenment ideals of equal rights and universality had no influence on the abolition or civil rights movements. Darwin opposed slavery as a violation of the brotherhood of man.
The vitality of American religious life that Shribman and Schama celebrate resulted, by his own account (by now a ubiquitous conceit), from the separation of church and state. Such separation was a purely Enlightenment concept, created by 18th century rationalists to end the blood-letting that has been so frequent a consequence of totalizing religious conviction. The churches didn’t voluntarily come forth and say: “Never mind. We don’t really want our secular power after all.”
Some of the strongest supporters of slavery in the American South were protestant ministers, especially Presbyterians. Eugene Genovese, in his _The Southern Front_, argues that based on scripture, their arguments to justify slavery were superior to those of abolitionist ministers against slavery.
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The Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers concept of natural law was in fact the cause for abolition of slavery, the concept that all men had unalienable rights.
Judge Anthony Napolitano makes this case very clear. He writes that whilst the founding fathers upheld natural law for whites they upheld positive law for African Americans, he cites the infamous Dred Scott decision. Napolitano writes and I cannot concur more:
I have always myself found natural law preferable from positive law even though I understand the difficulty in defending the natural law position from a philosophical perspective. Natural law is unfortunately a metaphysical concept.
How would a Burkean conservative have responded to the suggestion that the institution of slavery, practiced since the days of the ancient Greeks (albeit not continuously in the same form), be abolished?
Personally, I think that particular experiment in radical liberalism turned out rather well. But some may disagree.
chris, it depends on what culture and when. slavery was a much more prominent feature of some traditional societies (islam, classical west, colonial societies after 1600) than others (china, medieval west).
there were many different groups who fought for and against slavery. claiming for the religious or anti-religious side is tiresome, there were many complex factors as with many historical dynamics….
(also it is conditional, religion seems to have played a greater role in the anti-slavery movement in england than in france, from what i know. in fact in france the anti-clericalists were likely to be the abolitionists)
“The fact that the slave trade went on for centuries without protest from the Catholic or Anglican Church hierarchies.”
As a matter of historical fact, this statement is simply incorrect.
As early as 1435, Pope Eugene IV with the bull Sicut Didum ordered Catholics in the newly colonized Canary Islands to free their slaves and desist from the practice of enslaving the natives under pain of excommunication.
Responding to the practice of slavery in the New World, Paul III decreed in Sublimis Deus: “Therefore, We, . . . noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men and are not only capable of the Christian faith, but, as has been made known to us, promptly hasten to the faith’ and wishing to provide suitable remedies for them, by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples-even though they are outside the faith-who shall hereafter come to the knowledge of Christians have not been deprived or should not be deprived of their liberty or of their possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void.”
This teaching was reiterated by Gregory XIV in 1591 and Urban VIII in 1639. In 1839, Gregory XVI issued the Apostolic Constitution In Supremo, which stated in part: “”The slave trade, although it has been somewhat diminished, is still carried on by numerous Christians. Therefore, desiring to remove such a great shame from all Christian peoples … and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery Indians, Blacks or other such peoples. Nor are they to lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not humans but rather mere animals, having been brought into slavery in no matter what way, are, without any distinction and contrary to the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and sometimes given over to the hardest labor… We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in Blacks under any pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in these Apostolic Letters.”
It is also worth noting that the industrial revolution is partially responsible for the end of slavery. A main reason why the American North was able to beat the South is their far superior industrial capacity (A larger population is the other reason). As per-capita GDP grows, the value of non-skilled labor declines as a percentage of the overall economy. Therefore, slavery (which almost always consists of unskilled labor) becomes less and less competitive as economies grow. If the civil war had occurred 40 years earlier, the North might not have won. If it had occurred 40 years later, it probably would not have lasted as long.
If anyone is saying “but the industrial revolution wouldn’t have happened without the Enlightenment”. I would not disagree with you.
Regarding the founding of our Nation and the eventual end to slavery, I don’t think either could have occured without the enfluence of both the Enlightenment and Religion. They each played critical roles.
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@Mike I The Pope game cuts both ways. From Wikipedia:
The fact is that there is no such thing as “religious values”, these are values that are derived from the broader society in which the prelate, or congregation, or sect are embedded.
When northern and southern Baptists split in 1845 over abolition, the difference in their theological interpretations was clearly an effect of their social values, not a cause. As Lincoln noted in his first inaugural address, the two sides “read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”
Christians were on both sides of the slavery struggle, and this was neither despite nor because of their religion, which simply provided the post hoc metaphors to justify their positions.
Exactly right. The industrial revolution played an enormous role in ending slavery. Following the invention of the cotton gin, slavery became more malignant in the United States as slaves were driven harder to keep up with industrialized output. This helped catalyze the abolition movement.
The industrial revolution was a cultural/civilizational destroyer. Couple that with the nuclear ‘enlightenment values”…and….TADAA! Modern Liberal Western Culture and everything that goes with it. I have no problem with this website not espousing religion but I guess you have to believe in some kind of nonsense…..I loves me some enlightenment values!