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Yeah, yeah - we know, Mr. Scotsman. All the good things in society are because of Christianity, and all the bad things are just culture.
What you've written here is 100% correct. It is equally correct to say, "Although its been misused by many for their own ends, Christianity is not to blame for slavery and yet was crucial in its extension. Its really not any more complicated than that."
Uh, yah, that's nowhere near what I said. But don't let that stop you from being a jerk.Yeah, yeah - we know, Mr. Scotsman. All the good things in society are because of Christianity, and all the bad things are just culture.
Based on the very public posts on this board, and the opinion of many learned historians, I'd say it's very much up for debate.
I don't think anyone argued that Christianity CAUSED slavery, just that it was used to justify the spread and continuation of slavery.
It was also crucial in its spread to the Colonies (in particular the American South) and was vital to its continuation.
Enlightenment and human decency. The same factors that are now driving the push to end a key remaining discriminatory practice in the US: denial of marriage rights to a huge portion of the population. A push, by the way, that is being completely opposed by the religion that purports to be about treating your neighbors the way you would like to be treated. So trends toward better treatment of minorities and those who have traditionally been seen as having fewer rights can, and do, happen without Christianity.
I don't think anyone can definitively say whether Christianity made "THE" difference, or that there would have been "NO" slavery - you're trying to set things up as black and white and then drawing the line between them at an absurdly high level. I don't need to make that case at all to argue that Christianity was used as a justification for slavery and resulted in it existing in some places much longer than it otherwise would have - that's as close to a fact as you'll ever find in any study of history.
The economics of owning a slave was turning against the practice long before the war. In a few years it would have been to the point where slaveholders would have given up the practice on their own for the simple fact that it was expensive to own another person - food, clothing, lodging, discipline, etc.. Plantations were businesses, first and foremost. There have been economists who've looked into the subject and came to the conclusion. In fact, prior to the cotton gin, the institution was on the verge of collapse for that very reason. Then the average marginal revenue of each slave became much greater after the cotton gin, which extended the practice, but was still on the decline and its eventual end all because of the profit motive. Feel free to research it.
While it may in fact be true that they were becoming more expensive to keep, they also could have been used for more productive pursuits than cotton if the institution had been allowed to continue. Look what China has been able to accomplish on the backs of virtual slave labor. While I can't be bothered to find out who these economists are, it does remind me of the Dilbert comic strip where Dogbert went into the Rent-a-Weasel store and ordered 3 bitter economists and 100 lazy journalists. In the next caption Dilbert is reading an article about how babies thrive on pollution. 
