A repentant slave trader and a maverick
MP found the will 200 years ago to abolish the slave trade. We can
learn from them, says LORNA DUECK
Any time Christians organize to take members of Parliament to the
movies, there must be something worth investigating. Three weeks ago,
the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada scored a coup by hosting MPs,
senators and parliamentary staffers at a preview of a movie that
lionizes a history-changing political battle. Amazing Grace, which
opens today in the United States and a month from now in Canadian
theatres, is about the abolition of the slave trade and how William
Wilberforce, an evangelical politician, refused to give up the fight to
free fellow human beings. Lest I strike fear that the lines between
church and state are blurring with this night out at the movies, let's
make a case that some things deeply Christian should not be left out of
the political realm.
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British
slave trade, and it's a strategic moment to call attention to the fact
that more people are in slavery now than in 1807.
Define "slave" as anyone who would be forced against their will to work
in jobs where their person and income are treated as someone else's
property. They may make our rugs, pick our beans for the chocolate and
coffee we consume, process the steel in our cars, sew our clothes, work
in sex brothels or are trapped as sex slaves by tribal religions, and
this list is only a beginning.
There are "27 million slaves, more than any other time in history,"
says Dr. Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, whose research in this area is
listed as one of the Top 100 world-changing discoveries to come from
British universities in the past 50 years.
Last weekend, in an effort to highlight the 27 million enslaved,
hundreds of churches in Canada marked Sunday by singing the hymn
Amazing Grace. The words of that hymn came from a repentant slave
trader named John Newton, words he penned as he learned to walk in
God's forgiveness, words he took on in his new profession as a
preacher. Wilberforce's own "great change," as he called his conversion
to evangelicalism, was aided with mentoring from preacher Newton, but
not without risk to his political career. He was a rowdy in every way
his money could buy, and Wilberforce's diary indicates he'd be a
political pariah should his fledgling faith be exposed. "Let no one
living know of my visit," he wrote to Newton. "I must be secret, the
House is now so universally attended, that the face of a Member of
Parliament is pretty well known."
As time would tell, Wilberforce soon got over being a religious bloke
in the House because, as biographer Kevin Belmonte explains in Hero for
Humanity, "Wilberforce believed abolition could not have taken place
without a concurrent moral reformation to strengthen the consensus the
slave trade was a tragic national sin. He realized attempts at
political reform, without changing the hearts and minds of people at
the same time, were futile."
Members of all faiths, no faiths and just good people are actively
campaigning against slavery today as they were 200 years ago, but we do
live in the reality that Wilberforce wrote of in 1797: "What is good is
only a matter of opinion in secular society. When society defines its
own morality and then applies it to itself, that society can justify
its own serious breaches of character."
The point is that there will always be worth in measuring the
motivations for life around the teachings of God; in this case, the
biblical teaching that all human beings are of equal worth because they
are created in God's image, and worthy of divine love and human care.
We could argue till the next anniversary on why and how the church was
so complicit in slavery centuries ago, but it did repent, and now it's
fair to ask if Christianity can still give us an encounter with God's
truth that helps us fight slavery in 2007.
Some of us are just too selfish to take the time switch to fair trade
coffee and chocolate, buy Rugmark, join petitions, or donate to
Canadian agencies active in freeing slaves. We need a change of heart
motivated by an encounter with a truth bigger than ourselves, or we'll
just go on letting the 27 million slaves documented today languish in
our consumptions.
I do think many can pull this activism off without an encounter with
God, but I can't, and I take heart that neither Newton, nor Wilberforce
could either. The sweet sound of Amazing Grace needs to be applied, and
that's why it should be quite a welcome thing to see Christians bring
their faith to the movies, to the politicians, to the slaves. Let's
never underestimate the power of a changed sinner's heart to set things
right.
Lorna Dueck hosts Listen Up TV, a spiritual look at current events, Sundays at 11 a.m. on Global TV.
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Read Lorna's Globe & Mail columns by searching
our archive.
Read 'Media & The Message'. Lorna says if the church wants to impact society, we need to share our stories.
On April 30, 2005 Lorna was privileged to receive an honorary Doctorate of Christian Ministries from Canada's largest Christian university, Trinity Western University. Lorna was recognized for the witness and leadership that Listen Up TV has provided in public messaging: "a leader in the voice of evangelical life in Canada."
