Slavery has been the standard throughout world history. What is unprecedented is a society that willingly abolished slavery. And while Christians were not always united on the issue, slavery would not have ended were it for Christianity.

Slavery was common in ancient Greece and Rome, but it died out in the Middle Ages. Slavery only survived on the pagan fringes of medieval Europe, such as the Vikings of Scandinavia. This alone should be a strong testimony to the fact that Europe’s Christian nature led directly to opposition to slavery - why else would warlike feudal lords not take slaves?

In fact, the Catholic Church did oppose slavery. Here is an article by sociologist and historian Rodney Stark summarizing some of the positions of the Church and other prominent Christians during the early Middle Ages and beyond. His book, For the Glory of God goes into more detail.

Of course, some people have argued that serfs were effectively slaves. But this is not true. While serves were not free, they were still greatly elevated above slaves. Serfs were free to marry. Serfs owned land that they could pass to their children. They were allowed to keep the products of their land. On the downside, they were tied to the land, and owed labor to their seigniorial lord. They typically had to devote some of their labor to his land. Furthermore, the Church encouraged Lords to free their serfs as an act of piety (see page 287 of Western Europe in the Middle Ages).
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Great article by Rodney Stark debunking two myths. The first is that the world has become more secularized as it gets more modern. He quotes people claiming that over 300 years ago. The second point that he debunks is that Europe was a staunchly Christian during the middle ages. It wasn’t. Most priests could not read or write Latin and didn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer. Most Churches were tiny, way to small to seat a sizable percentage of the town’s population. In fact, only the larger towns and cities even had Churches. Christianity spread rapidly from person to person for its first 300 years or so, but once it became the state religion of the Roman Empire it became corrupted. The Catholic Church was more interested in baptizing kings and cultivating ties to wealth and power than it was in saving the masses. The secular Europe of today is probably more Christian than it was during the Middle Ages.

I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization. It wasn’t a crazy theory. There was some evidence for it. But I think it’s basically wrong. Most of the world today is certainly not secular. It’s very religious.

Read the full article here. It is long but worth the time.