Slavery and the Bible

Had a friend who posted a meme criticizing the fact that the Bible does not ban slavery, though it bans shellfish.

I am not a Christian and have not been since I was in my teens. I have no interest in defending societal attitudes from some 3000 years ago. We are in a different age, with different social sensibilities. Things which were accepted thousands of years ago are not accepted today and vice versa - properly so when the outdated approaches harm other people.

Since I left Christianity, I have studied and followed Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, and Judaism. What I find is that slavery is not condemned in any ancient religious teachings - not in the Bible, not in the teachings of Buddha, not in the Tao Te Ching, not in Confucianism, not in Islam not in Hinduism.

Frankly, until the late 18th or early 19th centuries, slavery was generally accepted in societies around the world. After the "Enlightenment" in Europe, people began to shift away from finding slavery acceptable, and abolition of slavery became a social movement. In the Americas, slavery was practiced until well into the 1800s, not ending in the US until the Civil War. Slavery, in fact is enshrined in the US Constitution.

According to people studying such things, there are still more than 30 million people effectively or officially enslaved around the world. Frankly what we need to shine a light on is the slavery that still continues, and bring it to an end. Criticizing a 3000 year old religious text for not banning something that only ended in this country 150 years ago seems to me to be a sort of intellectual masturbation.

We have a plethora of problems in this country and this world, but whether or not the Bible bans slavery is at best a very minor side note.