Reading The Good Book has reminded me about the issue of slavery. One of the more frequent complaints atheists and others make against Christianity is that the Bible, and particularly Paul, seems to support the ownership of slaves. After all, doesn't Paul say "slaves, obey your masters"? The New Atheists say many silly and ill-informed things about Christianity, but this is not one of them. They are raising a serious issue, so I thought it was worth a serious answer. I'm afraid the result will be a rather long post which for the sake of the blog format I will post in two parts (Part 2 is here ). Even then I will only just scrape the surface. Lest you think this is a dry exercise in ancient history bear in mind that human rights organisations estimate 27 million people are currently enslaved around the world and somewhere between 300 and 1,000 women are trafficked into Australia every year, mostly to work in the underground sex trade. I'll get back to
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson