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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Historically, Christianity presided over the most unequal period in European history.

Is that so? Medieval Europe at least did not have slavery in any great amount. That is actually fairly unique for the time period and for the kind of societies they had. The Roman Empire had chattel slavery of pretty much the same kind that would later be re-introduced to the European colonies in the Americas. It seems to have been an old pan-Mediterranean institution, that died out in Christian Europe and was reintroduced basically by cribbing from the Arabs, who had kept it.

I would argue that being a serf was better than being a slave, but only marginally. Yes, you could not be sold away from the land, or be fed to the dogs without any pretense of justice, but mostly your lord captured all of the surplus and you survived on his whim.

So I would argue that your lord being your brother in Christ did gain you something as compared to your lord being a a warrior god who taught might makes right.

I concede that the Roman Empire was probably more unequal, though. For northern Europe, being a slave to some Germanic tribe was shittier than being a serf in the medieval age. But I would argue that the former societies were not very rich to begin with, so the from a Gini coefficient point of view the middle ages were probably worse.

It's actually quite interesting that Christianity, to the limits of sources, never liked slavery very much, even in time periods when slavery was normal and uncontroversial, and that some of the first Christian-religiously-influenced laws ever passed were protecting slave welfare.