> >plenty of people thought the debate over the legal status of slaves was "settled"
> Are you saying plenty of people don't consider it to be settled now?
Many ultra-conservative Muslims do not consider the issue of slavery to be "settled", in they argue that slavery is still permissible under Islamic law, and consider principled abolitionism to be heretical. Examples include Saleh Al-Fawzan, [0] the most senior Islamic scholar in Saudi Arabia, and Daniel Haqiqatjou, [1] a controversial American Muslim with a knack for social media–to say nothing of the leadership of groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.
Now, this is clearly a minority opinion in contemporary Islam–maybe you could even say "fringe". Still, if it is fringe, it is a fringe that likely numbers in the millions worldwide – and thus counts as "plenty of people".
And, so nobody thinks I'm unfairly picking on Islam, it is not the only major religion in which slavery is still defended. In the 1980s, Rabbi Meir Kahane introduced a bill into the Israeli Knesset, providing for (inter alia) the enslavement of the Palestinians. The Israeli political class found his bill so offensive, they attempted to prevent him from introducing it – but the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that in a democracy, a democratically elected member of the legislature could not be denied the right to introduce a bill, no matter how abhorrent its content. His bill included clauses such as "Non-Jews will be obliged to assume duties, taxes and slavery. If he does not agree to slavery and taxes, he will be forcibly deported". One MK compared it to the Nuremberg Laws; it was near-unanimously rejected. Yet, before one dismisses the late Rabbi Kahane and his followers as some tiny irrelevant minority, consider that one of his devout supporters, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is currently Israel's National Security minister, [2] and there are at least tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands, of Kahanists in Israel today. And proslavery views in Judaism are not limited to Kahanism; the American Haredi Rabbi Avigdor Miller (died 2001) was an ardent anti-Zionist (on religious grounds), and hence radically opposed to Kahane's ultra-Zionism – but he also "defended slavery as an ennobling institution that should not have been abolished" [3]. And, Miller is still very popular in Haredi Judaism, and while it would be wrong to assume that every Haredi Jew agrees with Miller on this, it appears quite a few (possibly even "plenty") of them do.
Christianity, too, has its contemporary slavery advocates. The American Calvinist theologian R. J. Rushdoony (died 2001) founded the "theonomy" movement, which argues (contrary to most Christians) that Old Testament laws should still be applied in the present day, including the biblical laws for slavery. Rushdoony argued that the Bible "recognizes that some people are by nature slaves" and that antebellum American slavery was "generally benevolent". [4] And again, while you might want to dismiss the theonomy movement as some minuscule irrelevant fringe, its leadership has close links to the current speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. [5]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saleh_Al-Fawzan#Controversial_...
[1] https://muslimskeptic.com/2023/04/10/slavery-minor-marriage/
[2] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/who-is-itamar-ben-gvir-the-loy...
[3] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/evangelic...
[4] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...
[5] https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-profound-influence-of-chri...