Under what conditions could slavery be morally acceptable?
Robert Sungenis answers that the Old Testament allowed a form of servitude God did not treat as immoral, provided the servant kept rights such as earning money, legal representation and care for his children. He holds that slavery became wrong when those rights were stripped away, leaving people chained with no way out, and that any service must include a path to freedom.
A viewer asks what conditions must be met for slavery to be morally acceptable.
Answer
There was a form of slavery in the Old Testament that God did not regard as morally wrong, but you had to treat the servant the way indentured servants were treated, with rights: the right to earn money outside their service, legal representation, care for their children's health and schooling, and so on. If all those things are satisfied, so the servant has everything the ordinary citizen has and is protected by the owner, then it is acceptable. What slavery became, however, was the stripping away of all those rights, so the slave was forever indebted, bound by literal chains, unable to escape, with no freedom at all; that is what is wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with putting yourself under the employment of a benefactor who pays you, which is what we do in corporate America, obeying their rules under their thumb. But you keep the right to leave, and a slave did not. If someone owes work or money, then you give him a contract spelling out what he must do to be free, so there is always a way out.