The Bible has been invoked in defense of slavery and to overthrow it. Some saints have confronted slavery, while others have turned a blind eye, or worse, developed theological arguments to support it. The Catholic Church has a mixed history, especially on the subject of chattel slavery, and its one we must always find out about.
This week on “The Gloria Purvis Podcast,” Gloria interviews Chris Kellerman, S.J., about his latest book, All Oppression Shall Stop: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism and The Catholic Church. Chris brings a deep knowledge of history and a faith that wrestles deeply with the horrors of slavery.
“For each saint that we discover out was a slaveholder, for each pope that we discover out, you understand, did something crazy, there’s one other one that was fighting against it,” Father Kellerman says. “There’s a fantastic sense of that hope that there was a change. And quite a lot of that change got here through people speaking up and good Catholics speaking up and saying, ‘Based on my faith I do know this isn’t right.’”
Father Kellerman serves as assistant for Justice and Ecology of the Central and Southern Province of the Jesuits.
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