by Jennifer Winters
Abstract
Today slavery is almost universally condemned as evil, and absolutely unacceptable, but the practice of slavery has been the rule of history and not the exception. Philosophers and politicians such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and many others believed slavery was the normal and necessary way of life. No culture can claim total freedom for all of its members, although some societies have done better at identifying slavery and allowing freedom to thrive. What are the elements of slavery in our modern day? The goal of this article is to expose the elements and characteristics of slavery, how it grows in a society, and then how it declines. It is no coincidence that the fight to end slavery occurred in the Christian world. The reason why the failure to fully end it seems so atrocious is because it stands in stark contrast to the ideals of freedom given by the Hebraic Christian faith. Slavery has been a stumbling block leading one to infer that there is something in the nature of mankind that descends towards the practice of enslaving others while at the same time acknowledging it as an injustice. By the same reasoning it can be said that people do not choose freedom for others, just for themselves. If one does not choose freedom for one’s self and others one will be enslaved. I hope that this paper will lead men and women to choose freedom over slavery.
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