And to this day the Christian marriage ceremony demands of woman that she promise to love, honor, and obey her husband.
The Bible Sanctions Slavery.
What driveling idiots we mortals have been to suppose for a moment that a good being, a heavenly father, would let one part of his family hold the other in slavery!
Moreover of the children of the strangers, that do sojourn, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land, and they shall be your possession.
And ye shall take as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever, but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor. ([Lev. 25 : 45, 46].)
If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him; if his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out by himself. ([Ex. 21 : 2–4].)
The New Testament Sanctions Slavery.
Servants, obey in all things your master according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. ([Col. 3 : 22].)
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. ([1 Peter 2 : 18].)
In addition to these positive indorsements of slaveholding, it should be remembered that Jesus never condemned it, and it was not difficult, therefore, for the church also to indorse and support it.