Dispatch Faith: The One Idea That Ended Slavery, by Tomer Persico (Shalom Hartman Institute; Author, In God’s Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea (NYU Press 2025)):
The oldest known records of slavery come from Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. Then Egypt. Then China. Then Mesopotamia, of course, and Greece, and Rome. They continue for many centuries, presenting a ubiquitous social institution, entrenched across civilizations, celebrated by rulers, rationalized by philosophers, meticulously documented by diligent clerks.
The United States’ specific, horrific history with slavery evokes the subject as continuously relevant, and lately even as a political wedge, with populist voices like Elon Musk’s trumpeting (correct) claims that slavery was more widespread and long-lasting in non-Western civilizations. Just this week the United Nations passed a resolution formally recognizing the trans-Atlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.”
Enslaving other humans has been, in fact, one of the most common and universal of human activities. Indeed most people in the ancient world would have struggled to imagine a human society without slaves, and hardly regarded slavery as an institution that could be separated from society or conceivably be abolished.
Even the citizens of the nation that founded its identity on its exodus from slavery—ancient Israel—held slaves, and did not object in principle to the institution of slavery. The Greeks as well, being the first to introduce democratic principles and institutions to political life, did not reject slavery, and actually found ample reasons to legitimize it.
Notably, a fundamental change began within the Christian world, with the decisive break coming not from economic change or political revolution, but from a theological claim: that every human being is created in the image of God.
Following its transformation into a major, widespread religion, this idea gained acceptance across the Mediterranean Basin and into Europe. When Constantine began Christianizing the Roman Empire at the dawn of the fourth century, even imperial law was shaped by this principle. An edict of 316, for instance, made it illegal to brand a convict’s face. The reason was as simple as it was revolutionary, according to the edict’s language: “Because man is made in God’s image.” …
In the late 18th century, the famous British abolitionist William Wilberforce would still insist that because all humans were created in God’s image slavery was utterly illegitimate. In the mid 19th century, writing in dissent of the majority verdict in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Justice John McLean insisted in defiance of his colleagues on the United States Supreme Court that “A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker.” In his promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992, Pope John Paul II underscored that “Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.” …
It is hard, indeed terrifying, to contemplate the possibility that lacking the idea of the creation in the image of God the institution of slavery would have endured to this day. We must believe another moral or philosophical principle would have emerged to challenge it. Yet as much as we would like to think of our rights as self-evident and eternal, a close examination of the history of the West reveals just how much we owe to that one clear and distinct idea, that all human beings were created in God’s image.
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Tomer Persico (Shalom Hartman Institute), In God’s Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea (NYU Press 2025)):
The idea that all human beings were created in God’s image was core to the creation of the modern West
In God’s Image examines the central role that the idea that all people were created in the image of God played in the development of Western civilization. Focusing on five themes―selfhood, freedom, conscience, equality, and meaning―the book guides the reader through a cultural history of the West, from ancient times through modernity. It explains how each of these ideals was profoundly influenced by the central biblical conception of humanity’s creation in God’s image, embracing an essential equality among all people, while also emphasizing each human life’s singularity and significance.
The book argues that the West, and particularly Protestant Christianity, grew out of ideas rooted deeply in this notion, and that it played a core role in the development of individualism, liberalism, human rights discourse, and indeed the secularization process. Making the case for a cultural understanding of history, the volume focuses on ideas as agents of change and challenges the common scholarly emphasis on material conditions. Offering an innovative perspective on the shaping of global modernity, In God’s Image examines the relationship between faith and society and posits the fundamental role of the idea of the image of God in the making of the moral ideals and social institutions we hold dear today.
