In 1562, the Elizabethan privateer John Hawkins, shipped the first British cargo of men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. My mother’s name was Hawkins and there is a chance that John might have been my great ancestor. He was later knighted and served as a rear admiral during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. For some he was a hero, for others a tyrant. Hawkins was not considered a devout man, but, like most Europeans of his time, claimed to be a Christian.
Many more ‘obvious’ Christians were involved in slavery, including the great evangelist George Whitefield who owned over 50 people. Theologian and revivalist Jonathan Edwards was also a slaveholder but his son, Jonathan Jnr, spoke out against the trade in the 1780s.
John Newton, the famous writer of ‘Amazing Grace’ who was converted on board his slave ship in 1750, only voiced his opposition to the trade in 1788 [1]. The Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) owned slaves in the Caribbean and branded the word ‘SOCIETY’ on their chests [2].
Muted Opposition
For around two centuries, Christian opposition to slavery was muted with only a handful of people such as the American Quaker Anthony Benezet and the English Anglican Granville Sharp, speaking out against its intrinsically evil nature. Many Christians decried the brutality of the trade, but they would have been content to see it ‘humanised’ not abolished. Still others only objected when slave owners prevented the evangelisation of Africans in their keep [3].
Even the influential group of Evangelical Anglicans who gathered around Barham Court in Teston during the 1770s initially only called for benevolent reform. This philanthropic group was made up of aristocratic men and women, such as the poet Hannah More, the charitable recluse Elizabeth Bouverie, Lady Margaret Middleton and her husband Charles (a comptroller of the Royal Navy) and the Bishop of Chester, Beilby Porteus.
They hoped to use their social standing to influence the moral tone of the nation and the cleaning up of the slave trade became a cause celebre. Bishop Porteus called for laws to ‘restrain abusive slaveholders and for initiatives that would provide the enslaved protection, security, encouragement, improvement and conversion.’ [4]
In answer to some slaveholders’ concern that allowing Christian instruction would lead to an undermining of authority and curbing of profits, Lady Middleton replied that preaching the gospel ‘would be the most profitable means of making slaves diligent and faithful; for it would awaken conscience within them, to be a strict overseer, and a severe monitor, whom they could not evade.’ [5]
The Quakers
The Quakers have rightly been credited as providing the impetus for the abolition of the slave trade. They, plus the Evangelical Anglicans from the famous Clapham Sect, founded the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. But the British Quakers had been aware of the horrors of slavery in the Americas for decades before this.
The irrepressible Pennsylvanian Quaker, Anthony Benezet, had written to his London brethren as early as 1766, asking them to lobby for the abolition of the trade. He also wrote to John Wesley, the Countess of Huntingdon and the Archbishop of Canterbury. [6]
But it was only in 1782 that a small committee of London Quakers was convened in response to Benezet’s repeated appeals. Admittedly, Britain’s war with the American colonists prohibited more vigorous action. But with the war over and the mood in Britain decidedly anti the colonial upper classes, the time was ripe for a more concerted effort.
The abolitionists
In 1787 the Quaker committee joined forces with likes of Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson and formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. They lobbied public opinion around the country and collected 100 petitions containing 60,000 signatures, mainly from Christians. But despite this promising start it was another 20 years before they convinced parliament to abolish the trade. The French Revolution and the subsequent war diverted the nation’s attention, so another generation of African children had to suffer.
The war was not the only excuse. The financial motivation behind the slave trade was no secret. The British Empire flourished on it. Politically influential people, including many Christians, had made their fortunes on it, and they were not going to give it up that easily. But as the petitions of 1787 - 88 showed, the groundswell of public opinion was turning against it. This was due, in part, to some eloquent and moving pamphleteering by free black Christians such as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano [7]. The essays of ex-slaveholder and church minister James Ramsay also caused a stir so that literate and freethinking Christians no longer had the excuse that they ‘did not know’.
Delayed action
Yet why did it take so long to happen? Let’s not forget that in 1807 only the trade in slaves was abolished, not slavery itself. That took until 1832, and even then, slaveholders were granted a 10-year phasing out period and £20 million in compensation out of the taxpayer’s pocket. And of course, only the British trade was abolished. France and Denmark abolished slavery in 1848, Holland in 1863 and the United States in 1865. The Spanish turned a blind eye to ‘illegal imports’ until 1867. Cuba’s slaves were finally freed in 1886 and Brazil, the last colonial slaveholder, in 1888 - a hundred and one years after the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed.[8]
Of course, that was not the end of slavery. The European trade in slaves to the Americas would not have been possible without the co-operation of African traders and rulers. And slavery, in its indigenous form, continued on that continent and in Asia well into the colonial period. And it still does today. But more of that later.
For now, the question still remains: why did Europeans who considered themselves ‘good Christians’ fail to speak out against the transatlantic slave trade for so long? I would like to suggest six reasons:
1. Ignorance
As the New World was opened up, many people believed the stories of explorers that indigenous Africans, Asians and Americans were not really ‘human’. But that excuse wore thin. Educated black people were becoming more common and their ‘humanity’ was no longer questioned by the majority of Europeans in the enlightened 18th century.
2. Lack of biblical clarity
Christians wanting to defend slavery cited the fact that the Bible didn’t actually condemn it. This argument was countered by the likes of Olauday Equiano who pointed out that biblical slavery was really just indentured servitude and that God’s Year of Jubilee was designed to free all who were enslaved every seven years.
Other abolitionists argued that the emancipation of slaves was on Jesus’ agenda and an outworking of his Gospel of the Kingdom. [9]
3. Lack of empathy with ‘others’
It was simply a matter of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Most of the early abolitionists only started speaking out against the trade when they saw the horrors of it first hand. Slavery was never officially condoned within the borders of the British Isles, but somehow, what happened half a world away, didn’t matter as much.
4. Economic issues
There was a general understanding that the wealth of the Empire was dependent on forced labour. However unpalatable the institution of slavery was to most people, few were prepared to make the financial sacrifices necessary to end it. Even the abolitionists understood this, and needed to show that the whole economy would not collapse if the trade was banned.
But some did, such as the Methodist Samuel Bradburn: ‘(I) have always abhorred slavery in every shape (and have been) in some degree accessory to the Bondage, Torture and Death of myriads of human beings by assisting to consume the produce of their labour, their tears and their blood!’
He went on to ask God’s pardon and hoped that by boycotting sugar he could ‘make some restitution for my former want of attention to my duty in this respect.’ [10]
5. Fear of persecution
The Society of Friends were at the forefront of abolitionism. But it took them a long time to do so. Many Quakers were involved in the slave trade and were only forbidden to do so in the 1770s. Another concern was the fear of persecution. Religious toleration was relatively new in Great Britain, and many Quakers feared that by speaking out against contentious issues such as slavery, their own privileges might be curtailed. [11]
6. Fear of association
Some Anglican Christians feared that by speaking out against slavery they would be labelled a ‘methodist’ or ‘evangelical’ which in the 18th Century was less than respectable. William Wilberforce’s mother had that very fear for her son. [12]
Slavery today
I believe that the same issues prevent Christians from speaking out today. There are more slaves now than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. National Geographic estimates that there are 27 million men, women and children enslaved in the world today. They are either physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence.[13] This time we cannot claim ignorance. Day after day, newspapers, broadcasts and webcasts detail the horrors of exploitative labour practices, child labour and sex and drug trafficking.
What can I do?
We know what’s going on, so why don’t we do something about it? ‘What can I do?’ I hear you ask. Well you may not be able to stop child labour on your own, but if you and a million others stop buying goods made by children, you might make a difference. As journalist John Pilger reminds us: ‘Make sure your money helps rather than harms the world’s poor.’ [14] You may not agree with everything John Pilger says, but that shouldn’t stop you supporting a just cause. Remember the respectable Anglicans who didn’t want to be labelled ‘methodists’?
As a student in South Africa in the late 1980s I was involved in a number of anti-apartheid protests. A slogan of one of the anti-apartheid groups was ‘one settler, one bullet’. As a white ’settler’ I found this very disturbing and I certainly didn’t want to endorse such views by my participation in protest rallies. Nor did I believe in the absolute communism of other protesters. There were yet others who saw the Christian church as a vehicle for white oppression. But although I did not agree with the goals, views or methods of some of the protesters, I did agree that the ending of apartheid was a ‘just cause’.
Strange bed fellows
Some readers might have participated in the Make Poverty History Campaign. I didn’t make it up to Edinburgh in July 2005 but I saw newsclips and videos. Marching side by side were evangelical Christians, atheists, anarchists, gay-rights activists, anti-war protesters, animal-rights campaigners, Islamic fundamentalists and Western pop stars. Strange bedfellows indeed.
Politics and religion are a volatile mix that have led to some explosive encounters in my life. In a recent edition of the Plain Truth I wrote an article on the possibility of Muslims and Christians being friends. As a result one reader assumed I read the Guardian and voted for Blair. It was also suggested that someone with my ‘liberal’ opinions was likely to be in favour of gay adoption rights. On the other hand I was recently labelled a right-wing, fundamentalist, narrow-minded non-intellectual Christian by someone of a more ‘liberal’ persuasion. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
God’s eyes
I pray that we will stop seeing the world through political glasses and start seeing it through God’s. Forget about what the Labour Party or the Conservative Party or the Republican Party or the environmentalists or the capitalists or the communists say about certain issues, the only question for us is: what does God say? This, of course, is not always an easy answer. But there are some things that are clear cut: God hates human suffering. What are we doing to stop it?
Two hundred years ago Christians led a campaign to end their country’s involvement in slavery. They might have taken a while to get started, but at least they finally did. In two hundred years time, if the Lord still tarries, I wonder how the Christians of today will be judged.
Footnotes
1. John Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, 1788
2. John Coffey, ‘The Abolition of the slave trade: Christian conscience and political Action’, Cambridge Papers, Volume 15, Number 2, June 2006
3. See Chapter 1 in Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital, Chapel Hill, 2006.
4. Ibid p352
5. Ibid p350
6. Ibid p401
7. Caretta, V. Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-speaking World of the 18th Century University of Kentucky Press, 1996
8. John Coffey ibid .
9. ibid
10. Samuel Bradburn An Address, p6 as quote in Coffey ibid
11. See Christopher Leslie Brown, Chapter 7, ibid
12. Encarta Encyclopedia, 2003 ‘William Wilberforce’
13. Andrew Cockburn ’21st Century Slaves’ National Geographic, 2003
14. John Pilger The New Rulers of the World
An edited version of this article appeared in Plain Truth as ‘What Took You So Long’?, February 2007">
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