Slavery was a normal part of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, and the biblical texts reflect that. The Old Testament contains laws that regulate how slaves may be acquired, treated, and released. The New Testament contains instructions to slaves and to masters. In none of these texts is there a command to abolish slavery as an institution, and in several there are explicit permissions to own people.

Two clarifications keep the claim precise. First, the Bible does contain some restrictions: Exodus 21:16 prescribes death for kidnapping a person to sell them, and 1 Timothy 1:10 lists 'enslavers' (andrapodistai) among wrongdoers. Second, the question here is not whether the biblical authors were worse than their neighbors, but whether texts presented as morally authoritative treat slavery as acceptable. This card is mainly about what the texts say and how they were used.

“When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.”Exodus 21:2

“When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken, for the slave is his money.”Exodus 21:20-21

“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.”Leviticus 25:44-45

“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.”Ephesians 6:5

“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.”1 Peter 2:18

The Hebrew ebed and the Greek doulos mean 'slave', and many modern translations render them 'servant' or 'bondservant', which can obscure the point. The Old Testament laws also distinguish between Israelites, who are to be released after a period of service (Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12), and foreigners, who may be held as property and passed on to one's heirs (Leviticus 25:44-46). The regulations for treatment include some protections (for example Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 23:15-16) alongside provisions such as the one in Exodus 21:4, where a slave's wife and children remain the master's property if the slave goes free.

In the nineteenth-century United States, both defenders and opponents of slavery argued from the Bible, and the arguments were taken seriously on both sides. Southern theologians such as Richard Furman, Thornton Stringfellow, and James Henley Thornwell pointed to the Old Testament laws, to the absence of any New Testament command to free slaves, to Paul's return of Onesimus to Philemon, and to the instructions in Ephesians, Colossians, Titus, and 1 Peter. Many also appealed to the 'curse of Ham' in Genesis 9, a reading with no real basis in the text, which does not mention skin color and places the curse on Canaan.

Abolitionists such as Theodore Weld, Sarah Grimké, and Frederick Douglass had to make their case differently. They cited Exodus 21:16 against slave trading, Deuteronomy 23:15-16 against returning fugitives (a key text against the Fugitive Slave Act), the Exodus narrative as a story of liberation, the Golden Rule, and Galatians 3:28. Historian Mark Noll has argued that the pro-slavery side often held the stronger position on the plain sense of individual passages, and that abolitionists had to appeal to the broader 'spirit' of the Bible over its letter. Others dispute that characterization, but the debate itself shows how hard the texts were for opponents of slavery to use.

The church's institutional record reflects this. The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 after a dispute over whether slaveholders could serve as missionaries, and it formally apologized for its role in 1995. Some earlier Christians had already criticized slavery, notably Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, but they were exceptions. Augustine (City of God 19.15) explained slavery as a consequence of sin, and most of the church tolerated it for centuries.

Apologists have offered several explanations. Some have real merit, and fairness requires saying where.

This question is partly historical and partly moral. The historical part can be answered with reasonable confidence. The moral part depends on what one believes about biblical authority.

It is virtually certain that no biblical text commands the abolition of slavery as an institution. It is very likely that the Old Testament laws permit permanent ownership of foreign slaves as property, and highly probable that the New Testament authors accepted slavery as a fact of their world and instructed both slaves and masters within it. It is probable, though more debated, that Leviticus 25 and the passages on striking slaves in Exodus 21 reflect a standard ancient view of slaves as property. It is also plausible that some texts contain real limits and protections, and that texts such as Galatians 3:28 and Philemon later helped some Christians resist slavery.

The bottom line: The claim that the Bible 'regulates but never abolishes' slavery is very likely accurate. The claim that it 'endorses' slavery depends on what endorsement means. Each defense raises a real point, but none shows that the texts oppose slavery as such. What follows for faith is a theological question that historical analysis cannot decide.