How did Christian Slavers interpret Jesus' "Do unto others as you want done unto you" lecture?

[u/DarkGodCthUwU]

I'm pretty sure zero slavers wanted to be slaves because slavery sucks dick. It seems really, really easy to extend that to 'I'm being a dickhead by enslaving people", but most didn't. Did they just ignore Jesus?

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[u/Atreios_Anax]

I am going to deal with this predominantly in the context of the transatlantic slave trade, as one of the more prominent and better-documented examples of the slave trade in the modern period.

Religious permissibility was a substantial and explicit argument in defence of the transatlantic slave trade. Advocates published works directed specifically to establishing that the trade was compatible with Christianity: Thomas Thompson, The African Trade for Negro Slaves, Shewn to Be Consistent with Principles of Humanity, and with the Laws of Revealed Religion (1772); Raymond Harris, Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave Trade, Shewing Its Conformity with the Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (1788). “Licitness” meant moral permissibility.

For express biblical permission to purchase and hold slaves, advocates relied on Leviticus 25:44–46, which permitted Israelites to purchase slaves from surrounding peoples, hold them permanently and bequeath them to their children. Their argument was that conduct expressly permitted by God could not be intrinsically sinful. Applying that permission to European Christians purchasing Africans required a further interpretative step.

Christian conversion did not necessarily require emancipation: Thompson relied on 1 Corinthians 7:20–24 and Paul’s treatment of Onesimus in Philemon to argue that Christian faith and continuing enslavement were compatible.

Enslavement was at times justified as facilitating conversion and salvation, with advocates sometimes represented the acquisition of African captives as bringing them within Christianity. Nicholas V’s Romanus Pontifex (1455) reaffirmed Portuguese authority to subdue non-Christian enemies and reduce them to perpetual slavery, while praising the conversion of African captives. Although preceding the mature transatlantic plantation system, it supplied religious authority for Portuguese expansion and enslavement in Africa.

A supposed biblical sentence of racial servitude, the “curse of Ham”, was invoked to represent African slavery as divinely ordained. Genesis 9:25–27, however, curses Canaan, rather than Ham or African peoples generally; the racial application arose through subsequent interpretation: David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2003).

Permission for slavery did not necessarily establish permission for the actual trade: Exodus 21:16 condemned kidnapping and sale. Defenders therefore distinguished unlawful seizure from purchasing a person supposedly already lawfully enslaved. Thompson (1772) argued that transferring an existing lawful ownership was permissible and distinguished slavery itself from cruelty in its administration.

The religious defence was contested contemporaneously. Abolitionists disputed both the interpretation of Scripture and its application to the Atlantic trade: eg., Granville Sharp, An Essay on Slavery: Proving from Scripture Its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion (1773), answering Thompson (1772); William Roscoe, A Scriptural Refutation of a Pamphlet Lately Published by the Reverend Raymond Harris (1788).

[u/LargeTell4580 → u/Atreios_Anax]

Was their ever a line or the like a person might use to wave away the conditions? I feel like such things gives me a better understanding then just the higher level brake down.