Paul’s acceptance of the secular status quo had especial implications for two groups whose liberation has over the last quarter-millennium sparked conflict worldwide, but especially within Western Christianity: slaves and women. One short letter of Paul from a Roman prison to a fellow Christian called Philemon is undoubtedly genuine, since it contains no useful discussion of doctrine and can only have been preserved for its biographical information about the Apostle. It centres on the future of Onesimus, a slave to Philemon. He had recently been serving Paul in imprisonment and the letter
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