Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > If you're going to give religion credit for the anti-slavery movement, > you have to blame it for the slavers as well. Which just shows what > others in this thread have said: religion is often used to justify > whatever behaviour/belief the individual wants to justify.
You've missed the assymetry. There were both Christian and non-Christian slaveowners. But the abolitionist movement was almost entirely a religious movement. There were plenty of enlightened seculars in the nineteenth century, and they regarded abolitionism as a dangerous "enthusiasm"; a lawless and anarchistic force which could destroy America. For enlightened seculars, the problem with slavery was that it made it harder for white people to get along with eachother. By contrast, for the religious abolitionists, the problem with slavery was that it was fundamentally unjust and indecent to the slaves. And in that was all the difference. Indeed, even Abraham Lincoln, an enlightened secular if ever there was one, was far more interested in preserving the nation than securing justice for the slaves. Thomas
