Thanks! A thoughtful article. I disagree with Dr. Wink’s statement that slavery is condoned in the Bible. While it doesn’t say anywhere that it is immoral, it does say a lot about the treatment of them, and they were never supposed to be treated as property, but as humans, created in the image of God. God knew that the heart of man would always be deceitful and treacherous, and while slavery began as a way to deal with conquered peoples, or a way to pay one’s debt, they were still to be treated as human beings. It was not God’s will that men became slaves.
Slavery can be associated with homosexuality on these grounds only: it is a sexual sin that you (mostly) submit yourself to, although lots of young boys are raped by adult men they trusted in their childhoods. That normally does not mean they were slaves to anyone, but some we know today are kidnapped to be inducted into the sex slavery trade...by corrupt evil men!
The Bible says no such thing. It is silent on whether any of these men owned slaves. FTM it doesn't even say Christ and the apostles did not own slaves.
I very much doubt they did, but the NT just does not say so.
...or condoned such...
That's just nonsense. The Apostle Paul wrote an entire book of the Bible that neither approves nor disapproves of the institution. It just takes it for granted.
Christ himself used the institution in many of his parables. There is not a trace in any of them of a presumption that slavery is itself evil or immoral. As with Paul, Christ's parables just take slavery for granted as a fact of life.
That said, I believe the eventual abolition of slavery was a consequence of the gradual working out of the Bible principle that we are all equally children of God.
But the Bible, both OT and NT, take the institution for granted.