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Created August 11 2002
Latest Update: August 11, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Backup from Feminist Sexual Ethics Project: Brandeis University:
Current Work:The Long Shadow of Slavery Over Women and Girls
By Author - not identified. Staff
Copyright: Feminist Sexual Ethics Project: Brandeis University

"In the United States, more and more people are recognizing that past slavery still affects present society. A few policy analysts have begun to discuss how most effectively to address the long shadow still cast by slavery in our society. Whenever a society’s economy depends upon slavery, and massive slavery exists over a long period of time, the effects will likely be massive and long-lived as well.

"Slavery has affected women throughout history; it formed a web of relationships and women were connected by each strand of the web. Thus, women bought, owned, sold, and employed slaves; they were married to slaveholders; and they were slaves and gave birth to slaves.

"Religious support for slavery influences both the institution of slavery and its effects. This phase of the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project will examine early Christian women as slaves and as slaveholders, as well as the impact of slaveholding culture on the structures, practices, and ideology of the early church. It will also examine topics such as the intersection between technology and female slavery in the Roman Empire and the marriage of female slaves in early Islamic law, which will provide valuable historical comparison.

"Beyond that, we will collaborate with ethicists, American historians, lawyers, and policy analysts in order to integrate our exegetical and historical work into contemporary discussions and debates concerning the legacies of slavery, especially in sexual matters. This type of richly textured historical tapestry can help our country create public policies geared to reverse the effects of slavery on our citizens. As of yet, there has been little serious consideration or discussion of how slavery has affected the family or sexuality in the United States.

"Because the Bible figured prominently in American debates concerning slavery and continues to shape cultural understandings of women and of sexuality, the churches need interdisciplinary analysis of the Bible and of early Christian tradition in order to rethink how they use these, to develop their own policies for addressing the effects of slavery, and to consider how to respond to current public policies and policy proposals in which gender, race, and sexuality intersect (e.g., welfare reform and faith-based Initiatives). In addition, studying the extreme forms of sexual control inherent within slavery can help us to recognize subtler forms found in other types of relationships.

"Slavery exists today, some of it in a sexual form. Every generation needs to study slavery so as to help to prevent its recurrence, for the impulse to enslave other human beings appears to hover just under the surface."

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