How was the Bible used to justify slavery in the south?

Answer 1

First of all, The Bible nowhere condemns slavery explicitly and several Biblical figures like e.g. Abraham had slaves without this raising any negative comment in the text.

Secondly, in the story of Noah in the book Genesis, Noah cursed his grandson Canaan (and supposedly also Canaan's offspring) 'to be the lowest of the servants to his brethern'. Although the witer(s) of the book Genesis probably meant this only as an excuse for the Israelites to subject the original, indiginous people of Canaan (Palestine), later Jews, Arabs and Christians saw this as an excuse to enslave these supposed descendants. Why blacks? The black skin was seen by them as a sort of visible proof that THEY must be the descendants of the man who was sentenced to be a slave to others.

Answer 2

A:

Robert Bruce Mullin (A World History of Christianity, North America) says that slavery had existed in English-speaking America since 1619. Southerners saw the institution of slavery as their 'peculiar institution' and as a foundation for their distinctive way of life. Southern religious figures claimed not only that was slavery a positive good, but that it was a Christian institution.

The northern Protestants faced two difficult questions: How was slavery a sin? and Did the Bible ever condemn slavery as sinful in its very nature? A close reading of Scripture demonstrated that the biblical authors seemed to accept slavery as an institution and nowhere explicitly condemned it.

The Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge (1797-1878) insisted, "nothing is obligatory upon the conscience but what [the Bible] enjoins; nothing can be sin but what it condemns." With the outbreak of the American Civil War, southerners saw their cause as that of God.

Answer 3

don't have any answer to how did southerners use Christianity t justify th enslavement of blacks