The fight against slavery has passed through many controversial phases in the history of Christianity. It has been said on good authority (United Nations) that there are more slaves in the world today than at anytime in history. Although the biblical writings made no direct attack upon the ancient world's institution of slavery, its abolition in the Pauline community with Christ was a clear judgment —“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)—the good Earth suffers from the Christian community's failure to overcome slavery and all forms of oppression.

With the discovery of the New World, the institution of slavery grew to proportions greater than had been previously conceived. The widespread Christian belief (of the Spanish conquistadors) that the New World’s inhabitants were not really human in the full sense of the word and therefore could be made slaves in good conscience added to the problem. The attempt of Christian Missionaries, such as Bartolommeo de Las Cases in 16th-century Peru, to counter the inhuman system of slavery in the colonial economic systems finally introduced the great fundamental debate concerning the question of basic human rights.

To their credit, in an application of the general principles of human rights to slaves by the Spanish and Portuguese theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, the problem of what would Jesus do became one of conscience. However, the sycophants and toadies still interpreted away responsibilities by conservative sophistries. They framed distortions of language that made slavery not at all contrary to the human rights.

Puritanism, however, fought against slavery as an institution. A German Pietists, who became acquainted with slavery on the island of Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands, used his influence on the King of Denmark for the human rights of the slaves. The Methodist and Baptist churches advocated abolition of slavery in the United States in the decisive years preceding the foundation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston in 1832. In regard to the fight against the slave trade in England and in The Netherlands, the trade and shipping companies were dominated by the participation of Christians who engaged in the profitable slave trade. The free churches were very active in their opposition. One should never underestimate the power of hymns such as – Amazing Grace- which appealed to the conscience of the Christian traders.

Still, overcoming the institution of slavery did not end serious racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist pastor and Nobel laureate, led the struggle for civil rights in the United States until his assassination in 1968. In South Africa in the 1980s, Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop and Nobel laureate, exemplified a continuing Christian struggle for human rights. Though the price of liberty may be eternal vigilance against tyranny over the rights of man, there are many evangelical Christians in the USA, and elsewhere, who are doing nothing about the burgeoning international slave trade. Worse, they are working hard to end the USA’s membership in the United Nations.

The fight against slavery ought to be the ultimate model case in the way active fights by the Christian churches and fellowships against the numerous other attempts of the hypocrites to desecrate Christian understanding of the nature of humanity.

To those Christians who understand Jesus teachings, they see every human being as a neighbor, created in God's image, and redeemed by Christ. The struggles against the persecution of the Jews, the genocides in Rwanda and the Sudan, all designed to eliminate members of human society are crimes against humanity. They can not be characterized as mere political or racist ideological differences. They are crimes against humanity. It shocks the conscience of the spiritual but not religious that American churches oppose the administration of justice by the International Criminal Court on specious sovereignty grounds. The USA is either for convicting those who have done crimes against humanity or they are not supporting their own religious convictions

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