A biased, politically motivated movie that pretends to be historically accurate

Rating: 1/10 (2 April 2014)

The movie is filmed artfully and it certainly portrays the evils of racism and slavery in a historically accurate way. However, practically all that evil is subtly (and not so subtly) blamed on the Bible, which is far from being historically accurate. Moreover, it is theologically flawed. The main driving force behind chattel slavery was and is economical, not theological. It is true that in the days in which slavery was still legal the Bible was repeatedly misquoted in order to justify such an abuse, but it is also true that the Bible was the main driving force behind the most important abolitionist movements both in the USA and everywhere else in the world. In this movie Christianity is indicted with being the sole origin of the evils associated with slavery, without showing that true Christians were among the only ones who were trying to end slavery once and for all.
To prove that I have evidence to support my claim I will say that in ancient Israel slavery differed greatly from the sort of slavery that used to be commonplace in the USA. In ancient Israel people chose to sell themselves and their children as slaves (actually, serfs is a more accurate term), since they saw slavery not as an oppressive system, but as a sort of welfare institution. Nobody in his right mind would have himself as a slave 19th century USA. Likewise, no one would have sold their children into slavery. This shows that Biblical slavery or serfdom was vastly different from USA slavery. Moreover, the lives of the serfs was protected by the Bible, as opposed to the lives of the American slaves, which depended entirely on the will of the masters. Moreover, Christianity has always been a driving force behind abolitionist movements, from ancient Rome to our own times (slavery is still commonplace in the Middle East and Christian groups are among the few that fight against it). Anyway, I believe that this movie is crap because it shows only one side of the story and completely neglects the other, while positing as a historically accurate depiction of American slavery.