How did Christian slave owners justify slavery?

Mitchell

Acton Media's seventh short video from their new documentary The Birth of Freedom features Susan Wise Bauer, author of The History of the Ancient World. She addresses the question, "How did Christian slave owners justify slavery?", describing how slave owners operated under a false (prescriptive instead of descriptive) understanding of the New Testament's teaching concerning slavery.

Dave_L

I think Paul outlines employee-employer relationships. Even if slavery does not exist. He doesn't approve of it, but treats it as a fact of life. I worked for a business the State warned about violating anti-slavery laws. They made an agreement and nothing came of it other than improved working conditions and perhaps a fine. But even then I practiced Paul's advice for slaves, and throughout my entire working years it resulted in a great retirement.

Jan

This is a tricky one... I have a few ethics books in Logos, which cover topics like capital punishment, euthanasia, divorce etc. Slavery is not covered. This is an issue. To me it seems that slavery is universally considered unethical in 2018, yet there are 40 million slaves in the world right now. Everyone of us profits from their work. Why are Christians largely keeping quiet about the issue?

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/19/world/global-slavery-estimates-ilo/index.html

Slave trade (and therefore implicitly also slave keeping) is clearly condemned in the NT. 1 Timothy 1:9-10.

[Deleted User]

@Jan said:
This is a tricky one... I have a few ethics books in Logos, which cover topics like capital punishment, euthanasia, divorce etc. Slavery is not covered. This is an issue. To me it seems that slavery is universally considered unethical in 2018, yet there are 40 million slaves in the world right now. Everyone of us profits from their work. Why are Christians largely keeping quiet about the issue?

Anyone have any idea how many slaves there are in Western capitalism economies where a few globalist "masters" drive salaries lower and lower and exploit their slaves (commonly called "employees") so that many of them with full time work are unable to make a living appropriate to supply food and housing?
How many folks in USA or Germany or other so-called Western economies are in reality in positions no different from that of slaves?