Baptism (the ritual washing which marks membership of the church) and the Lord’s Supper (the commemorative meal of bread and wine) were offered to everyone in the church of Christ, slaves included. Therefore, it became impossible, theologically, to deny the full personhood of those who were members of the same spiritual community. Laws began to be enacted which forbade the enslavement of fellow “brothers and sisters”, and increasingly the equality of the spiritual community began to be reflected in the political realm too. Before we ever got to the Renaissance, slavery had melted away in much of Europe: another bright development in that “dark” medieval age. Glen Scrivener