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School defends slavery booklet (Critic says text is 'window dressing')
News Observer ^ | Dec 9, 2004 | T. KEUNG HUI

Posted on 12/12/2004 12:21:53 PM PST by mac_truck

Students at one of the area's largest Christian schools are reading a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery with its view that slaves lived "a life of plenty, of simple pleasures." Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think.

Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern perspective," he said.

'SOUTHERN SLAVERY, AS IT WAS' Here are some excerpts from the booklet:

* "To say the least, it is strange that the thing the Bible condemns (slave-trading) brings very little opprobrium upon the North, yet that which the Bible allows (slave-ownership) has brought down all manner of condemnation upon the South." (page 22)

* "As we have already mentioned, the 'peculiar institution' of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories." (page 22)

* "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." (page 24)

* "Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." (page 25)

(Excerpt) Read more at newsobserver.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News; Philosophy; US: North Carolina
KEYWORDS: cary; christian; christianschools; classicaleducation; confederacy; confederate; dixie; fact; history; opinion; pc; slave; slavery; south; thoughtpolice
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To: pbrown

I try to be careful when searching. I use firefox now. That seems to help.


121 posted on 12/12/2004 4:27:50 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: mikegi

LOL. Good one.


122 posted on 12/12/2004 4:28:32 PM PST by processing please hold (Islam and Christianity do not mix ----9-11 taught us that)
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To: mikegi

I don't believe in birth control. I don't get the question about ancestors. My parents are immigrants.


123 posted on 12/12/2004 4:31:38 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: dsc
...love your neighbor as yourself?

What is loving? Nurturing? Kindness? Generosity? Compassion? Financial gifts? Material gifts? Sharing the Good News?

124 posted on 12/12/2004 4:31:42 PM PST by TaxRelief (Merry Christmas!)
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To: cyborg
I guess from here on out I shall have to be more careful in what I try to google when it's something about slavery.

I'll make sure I put in the words, 'African slavery'.

Do they have weird bondage stuff in Africa? LOL

125 posted on 12/12/2004 4:32:25 PM PST by processing please hold (Islam and Christianity do not mix ----9-11 taught us that)
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To: pbrown

I don't wanna know LOL


126 posted on 12/12/2004 4:36:58 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: cyborg
What if someone wanted to be an indentured servant?
127 posted on 12/12/2004 4:37:24 PM PST by TaxRelief (Merry Christmas!)
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To: TaxRelief

That's their own business. What does that have to do with slavery where a person has zero rights.


128 posted on 12/12/2004 4:40:00 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: mhking; rdb3; stainlessbanner; Squantos; archy; ExSoldier; B4Ranch
I'm not sure that this material is appropriate for K-12 levels, but it is a private school. If I lived in NC, I'd definitely be sending children elsewhere. Here's more on the school, at least from what I can tell:

http://www.google.com/local?q=Christian+School&near=Cary,+NC
http://carychristianschool.org/

If you see me posting anything with a leaning toward the south it's because of the disarmament issue. I blame the institution of slavery on the same type of thinking that gets us today's illegal immigration. America's elite has always had a glint of evil in its eye. Our Founding Fathers were the type who sacrificed to root King George's Tories out of power. Those Tories were in the South, too.

Today's slavers are bipartisan according to Victor Davis Hanson. They're landed, propertied, and they own the multinational factories and agribusinesses that have driven our small town farmers off their land for the last 100 years. They're the socialist elites in universities and city councils across the land. They're the environmentalist whackos and pseudo-scientists claiming America's economy should be linked to UN. They're the grade school teachers who are teaching that culture is irrelevant and America should give way to every savage creed that we can bring in from Asia, Africa, and the mideast.

In other words, there are a lot of lies being passed off as anti-slavery today that are anything but. If only we just had the Cary School to deal with! This one isn't sponsored by our tax dollars. I'm worried about the ones who are!

We can learn at least three things about our erroneous and deadly experimentation with slavery. First, the Founding Fathers weren't 100% correct on everything. Second, we have to think for ourselves. They didn't establish everything as it should be, and we are expected to rise to each challenge history brings us on our own. Finally, when they come for your community's guns, don't count on the ensuing civil war being a short and painless one.
As Bill Cosby and Star Parker have shown us, it looks like we have plenty descendants of former slaves who are up to the occasion when all too many whites aren't.
129 posted on 12/12/2004 4:45:24 PM PST by risk
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To: cyborg

Now I'm afraid to search 'African Slavery'. I might come up with an African version of what I just cleaned up on my 'puter


130 posted on 12/12/2004 4:48:15 PM PST by processing please hold (Islam and Christianity do not mix ----9-11 taught us that)
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To: risk

amen


131 posted on 12/12/2004 4:49:11 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: risk

Agreed.


132 posted on 12/12/2004 4:52:26 PM PST by processing please hold (Islam and Christianity do not mix ----9-11 taught us that)
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To: pbrown

I just googled it. I didn't get anything bad. Just use your judgment. I usually look at the url first before I click.


133 posted on 12/12/2004 4:52:38 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: cyborg
I don't get the question about ancestors. My parents are immigrants.

The ancestors question was a way for me to, whatever answer rdb3 gave, condemn his ancestors as evil.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of people get off on condemning average people in the past. I guess it makes them feel superior about themselves today. Maybe I have a higher threshold for tossing out "evil" when describing people.

134 posted on 12/12/2004 4:56:17 PM PST by mikegi
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To: cyborg
So, the fundamental issue is the fact that slaves do not have constitutional rights: no freedom of speech, no right to assemble, no freedom of religion, no right to pursue "happiness".

Therefore, it is not an issue about living conditions, treatment on-the-job, nor the security or lack-of security in that life style.



Cyborg, don't you think these kids would come to this same conclusion without just having "slavery is wrong" memorized for their mid-year exams?

You see, it is critically important for kids to learn to reach their own conclusions while they are still under the moral supervision of adults. If you force feed them your opinions of right and wrong, they go off to college completely vulnerable to whatever brainwashing they are exposed to in liberal classrooms.

135 posted on 12/12/2004 4:57:47 PM PST by TaxRelief (Merry Christmas!)
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To: mac_truck

"I don't disagree with your premise, but would simply point out that American slavery is a lot more recent and relavant to our current society than the slavery from ancient Greece or Rome."

When we evaluate the moral status of the American slaveholder, are we not making a judgment about what he could have and should have known?

We can't hold anybody responsible for what he could not have known, and it's only slightly less difficult to hold somebody responsible unless we can say he should have known.

It is very relevant, then, to point out that slavery was nearly ubiquitous throughout human history. The notion that slavery is morally wrong didn't really catch on until the 19th century. England didn't outlaw slavery in her colonies until the 1830s. There's probably no living human that doesn't have ancestors who were slaves.

For all of history, throughout the world, slavery was as much a part of life as the weather, and nobody thought about abolishing it any more than they did abolishing the weather.

Gradually, though, the perception that slavery is a moral evil began to grow. It caught on here, it caught on there, but slowly. The first slaves in North America, excepting the Indians, who practiced slavery, were white. The first slave market was in New York.

Now, when it got to be about 1850, and slavery was clearly on the way out in the Western World, you might want to say to the Southern slaveowner, "Hey, catch up. Get a clue." But he is not practicing an atrocity of his own invention, nor one unique to himself. He's been slow to change, but he's doing what has always been done, since the dawn of history.

Even so, there was movement in the right direction. Before the war, a motion to end slavery was defeated by the Virginia legislature by only one vote. Many leading figures, including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, were known to advocate abolition.

One reason that John "Ossawatomi" Brown had trouble getting funding from his northern sympathizers was the widely held perception that the edifice of slavery would collapse under its own weight within a decade.


136 posted on 12/12/2004 4:58:13 PM PST by dsc
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To: mac_truck
Slavery in any form is an abhorrent abomination. It is a stain on this country's history. It matter not the least whether or not the slaves were comfortable or well cared for because the slavery itself was a poison to the spirit of both the slave and the slave-owner.

It is and always will be an indefensible evil.

137 posted on 12/12/2004 4:58:18 PM PST by muir_redwoods
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To: mikegi

understood... I don't knH


138 posted on 12/12/2004 4:59:24 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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To: TaxRelief

"What is loving? Nurturing? Kindness? Generosity? Compassion? Financial gifts? Material gifts? Sharing the Good News?"

I wouldn't claim perfect knowledge of that, but I would go so far as to assert that it doesn't include enslaving your neighbor.


139 posted on 12/12/2004 4:59:48 PM PST by dsc
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To: cyborg

What I meant to say was I understand and I wouldn't be so quick to call people evil. I don't know the people who owned slaves and don't think everyone who did so was 'evil'.


140 posted on 12/12/2004 5:02:35 PM PST by cyborg (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/flamelily.html)
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