Slave and brother? Christian brotherhood in a world of slavery and inequality

The New Testament and Respect for Masters

How was the language of brotherhood and sisterhood actually experienced within the New Testament itself? And what did this kind of language mean in practice for enslaved people in the early Christian communities? 1 Timothy 6:2a offers us a glimpse of an answer. We read:

Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are brothers and sisters; rather, they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved.

The text depicts a situation in which both the enslaved person and the master are Christians—they are called “brothers.” At the same time, the enslaved person is emphatically kept in his place: brotherhood in Christ must have no consequences for the existing social hierarchy. Unity in Christ remains strictly separated from inequality in the world. It is precisely this warning that suggests that some enslaved people—and perhaps some masters as well—did believe that their shared status in Christ ought to have consequences for their daily relationships. The author of 1 Timothy firmly suppresses that idea. Brotherhood is restricted here: acknowledged theologically, but rendered socially harmless. This tension is highly significant and would continue to shape church history for centuries.

The Community of Macrina the Younger

That this tension was not merely an abstract issue becomes clear when we move forward to the fourth century. Macrina the Younger (327–379) founded a Christian community on her family's estate in Cappadocia in which personal wealth was renounced. This had direct consequences for the treatment of the enslaved people, who were jointly owned by the family.

In the biography written by her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, we read how Macrina persuaded their mother to abandon her luxurious lifestyle and dependence on servants, and to make “treating all her slave girls and menials as if they were sisters and belonged to the same rank as herself” (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St. Macrina (1916) pp. 17-79 ; English Translation).

Remarkably, slavery was not formally abolished here: Macrina did not legally emancipate the enslaved people. Yet within this community slavery lost its practical significance. By taking sisterhood seriously, the hierarchy was hollowed out. At the same time, a limit remains visible: equality without freedom remains dependent upon the goodwill of those who hold power. It was a radical step, but not the final one. This brings us to the next thinker, in a very different context: Hendrik Millies.

Hendrik Millies and Dutch Colonial Slavery

Like Macrina before him, the Dutch Lutheran minister and professor Hendrik Millies (1810–1868) wrestled with the question of how Christians ought to relate to slavery. This was by no means an abstract question, since slavery still played an important role throughout many parts of the Dutch colonial empire during his lifetime. In his 1847 pamphlet, significantly entitled May a Christian Own Slaves? (Mag de christen eigenaar van slaven zijn?, translations our own), Millies reduces the issue of slavery to personal relationships and their moral consequences.

Millies argues that the Christian faith leads people not only to acknowledge God as Father but also to recognise their neighbour as brother. He calls slavery “a slander upon human nature,” a sin against one's neighbour. In doing so, he connects brotherhood not only with faith but with humanity itself.

When he then asks whether Christian slavery is conceivable, his argument becomes unequivocal: anyone who defends slavery while at the same time wishing to spread Christianity understands neither. The heart of his critique—and here he goes further than Macrina—is that brotherhood (and, we may confidently add, sisterhood) is incompatible with the master's absolute power over the slave. His rhetorical question amounts to nothing less than a moral indictment:

Can the master truly call his slave his brother, without falsehood upon his lips and in his heart?(Source: May a Christian Own Slaves?, p. 23)

For Millies the answer is clear: wherever slavery continues, brotherly love is violated and the gospel cannot be proclaimed in its fullness. To celebrate the Lord's Supper together while one person is the property of another he calls a profanation. Here brotherhood is no longer restricted or interpreted symbolically, but thought through consistently—and this inevitably leads to the demand for abolition. That abolition would indeed come thirteen years later in the Dutch East Indies and sixteen years later in Suriname and the Dutch Caribbean. Theology was not the only factor behind abolition, however; changing ideas about freedom, revolts by enslaved people, and the development of a new economic system also played important roles.

The Metaphor of Brotherhood and Its Consequences Today

The (implied) enslaved people in the Letter to Timothy, Macrina the Younger, and Hendrik Millies, despite all their differences, shared one crucial insight: Christian brotherhood must have consequences. Wherever those consequences are avoided, brotherhood is emptied of its meaning. Unfortunately, history shows that Christianity has often lacked the courage to take the idea of brotherhood truly seriously. But that history is not a closed chapter.

Even today, the church readily speaks of brotherhood and connectedness while structural inequality and racism continue to persist—including within ecclesial contexts. Colonial slavery has been abolished in law, but its legacy continues to shape power relations, economic inequality, and who feels heard, seen, and represented in church and society. Churches also frequently speak of reconciliation without naming injustice, or of brotherhood without acknowledging differences in power. When they do so, they repeat a pattern deeply embedded in their own history. Brotherhood is once again reduced to pious language, made safe by disconnecting it from concrete consequences.

Yet Christian language about brotherhood and sisterhood ought to unsettle, disrupt, and confront. Those who profess brotherhood today cannot evade questions of racism, the colonial legacy, and structural inequality. Otherwise, we do violence once again to the name of brother—not with chains of iron, but with chains of silence.