Evangelicals and the Abolition of Slavery

[0:00] This is a vast topic, and I've tried to portray the canvas very widely here, so if you can't take it all in along the way, you can mark a few points to follow up an interest, whether in reading or discussing a later point.

[0:25] I thought I would start with just a passage from Scripture, from 1 Timothy, that serves as a collective confession for this vast, enormous sin that has marked us as human beings throughout our history.

[0:43] I thank Him who has given me strength for this, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful by appointing me to His service. Though I formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted Him, but I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.

[1:02] And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

[1:15] And I am the foremost of sinners, but I receive mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience for an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.

[1:31] And then he breaks into adoration to the King of ages, immortal, invisible, and the only God. Be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

[1:42] Amen. Amen. Amen. All right, here's a little quiz to start with. I was going to have you break up in the groups, but I think it would take too long.

[1:54] But what are the iconic images that you think of when you hear slavery and abolition?

[2:06] And, you know, you can, you've got a clue as to one of them here. but what comes to mind John? Portuguese okay Portuguese others? Slave ships yeah Wilberforce Simon Le Gris okay John Newton yeah what about the yeah and that covers it I was going to ask you about people as well so we'll start in here and so images here's another one that somebody mentioned back there the slave ship Brooks which the abolitionists used in their good propaganda Harriet Beecher Stose Joan mentioned her this morning I won't

[3:07] I won't touch on that but and I jumped ahead to the next part of the quiz there got it out of the way but so if 11 million or so Africans survived passage the slave passage across the Atlantic what were their destinations what percentage had English speaking North America as their destination West Indies Caribbean islands Spanish speaking America and Brazil any any general ideas about that the break the breakdown 40% for North America okay I think a huge huge amount went to Brazil it's obviously looking at the bigger beans yeah yeah yeah yeah well here we go British North America 5 to 6%

[4:07] Caribbean 48% with all those sugar plantations Spanish speaking America is 4.5% and Brazil 41% one of the things that throws you is that in British in the British American mainland there was tremendous biological growth among slaves so by the time of the Civil War half of slaves in the hemisphere lived in in in the U.S.

[4:37] at that point I will make an argument this morning meaning that it was the development of Christianity that brought about the abolition of slavery this abolition impulse took a long time in its making it became a very deep current deep below the surface it did not depend solely on particular individuals such as Wilberforce but there were contingencies and like the Battle of Thermopylae individuals stepped in at important moments abolition might not have happened and that that's an interesting discussion that we really can't go into at the moment I would also like to say that abolitionist women were very important and for so many we don't know their names and even more so we don't know the names of so many many slaves but God does I hope that I am able to return to these considerations but if I don't please please remember that how do we broadly define slavery number one there is a relationship that involves permanent violent and personal domination an animalization of the enslaved person the person is chattel property number two the slave is always an excommunicated person lacking an independent social condition and here I'm speaking broadly again number three the slave has a perpetual condition of dishonor with some exceptions the slave particularly as slavery developed there are changes the slave owner held the power of life and death over his slaves facial mutilation and other types of mutilation were common and castration was not uncommon in antiquity slavery was basically universal whether one lived in

[6:52] Europe Asia Africa or the Americas in pre-capitalist antiquity slavery was the capital in Africa for example there was no landed property as in Europe and this absence made slavery much more pervasive and in a market that could eventually be tapped into by outsiders slaves were the only productive capital there there is also the key question of what makes one eligible to be a slave why this eligibility changes over time what separates outsiders the slaves from insiders for example Africans did not see other Africans as Africans the differences were across tribal or language lines going to another continent the Russian aristocracy was able to make ideological distinctions or distinctions in birth line or whatever in order to enslave other

[8:01] Russians by the time of the Renaissance the Dutch and the English were the most advanced in a capitalist sense but the least likely to enslave their own subjects and slavery of almost any type had largely disappeared from Western Europe Spain being on the border there was an exception in the West the line between slavery and freedom was basically the line formed by the Danube and Sava rivers West of the line was freedom even though life say in medieval times was very tough and east of the line slavery existed cultural factors are at work here rather than strictly economic ones I argue that these cultural factors include religion and I put more emphasis on religion than many would in the field it would have made more sense economically for Europeans to enslave other

[9:07] Europeans in many ways but Christian inhibitions had developed against enslaving one's Christian neighbor in a different context one's inhibitions might fall away a la William Golding in Lord of the Flies or Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness or the New World as we will see here there was an enduring slave trade that went across the Sahara and south into Africa going far back and in the other direction north into Eurasia perhaps 10 million slaves over 1,000 years flowed into the lands controlled by the sultans in the Mediterranean basin Africa was always a source of slaves as I've said they were the only form of revenue producing property recognized by

[10:08] African law but at one point 10,000 Muscovites a year were transported south as slaves so interesting to these facts are just interesting in painting the canvas of how extensive slavery was in the ancient world and in all places I should mention the topic of resistance when I was in my oral exams at UBC my advisor for slavery the topic of slavery really pushed me on the topic of resistance and I do recognize its importance but I don't see it as determinative for freedom and you know I lost some brownie points here but I did pass the exam resistance by slaves of course goes back to antiquity

[11:11] Spartacus in the years 73 to 71 BC Spartacus was a slave from Thrace a Roman slave who became a gladiator and escaped and led 70,000 slaves against the Romans and they tramped up and down Italy for two years most of the slaves died in the final battle some got away but in the end 6,000 were crucified along the Apian way the objective of the rebellion like all of these rebellions was not to abolish slavery and they I understand I believe that they took slaves as they went Romans no doubt but rather they wanted to plunder and or just to go home but they ended up and it was an opportune time the legions were out of the country for the most part and they created havoc the Jans slave rebellion from 869 to 83

[12:23] AD was even larger and took place near Basra which has been in the news in the last couple of decades in the years 869 to 883 and those who rose up were the Jans who were Bantu speaking slaves from East Africa tens of thousands of them were killed in this uprising one estimate puts the total at one million but seems hard to believe but it does give you a sense of the size of the slave trade if at this point you know 1200 years ago or whatever tens of thousands of slaves African slaves died in this place it gives it gives you an idea of how many peoples were transported resistance was always present in everyday slave life whether here or in the

[13:28] United States but again I don't hold it as being determinative in the case of the abolition of the kind that we see in 1833 and we could talk about Haiti but in 1791 to 1804 and the rebellion there but we we don't have the time to go into that right now here in BC first nations in BC and throughout the Americas were slave cultures at least the powerful and wealthy nations the Haida were wealthy aggressive and powerful their war canoes were superior they would hold 50 to 60 warriors and they would travel up and down the coast in search of plunder and even more importantly slaves their islands served as fortresses but the British were able to shut down this kind of war party with their gunboats although they used gunboats on occasion in very sinful ways which I won't go into right now but

[14:42] I'm not saying that Europeans did not commit many many sins in the history of the encounter with aboriginal peoples James Douglas the first governor of BC was a and I'm getting off track right now but we're in BC so I thought it was appropriate the first governor of BC was an abolitionist with respect to African slaves but also opposed of the slavery practiced by aboriginals in mid-19th century BC and on one occasion personally ransomed a slave and turned him over to the care of an Anglican clergyman so just to refresh you as to where I'm going with all this I'm arguing that Christianity allowed for the breakdown of this divide between slave and free and that the advent of evangelicalism provided the activism and the foot soldiers needed to abolish slavery an enterprise that remained very profitable until the very end of slavery as we know it and this isn't to say that there weren't others involved in abolition but even the surge of evangelicalism allowed for it to happen

[16:03] I will argue but I'm jumping ahead of myself a bit here but just giving you an idea of where this argument is going slavery was seen as natural Aristotle Cicero we read about slavery in the Bible although I believe that the seeds for abolition are planted there in the doctrine of all mankind humankind created in the image of God Gregory of Nyssa who I put a quote down on your handout in the late fourth century was the first writer in antiquity that we have in an extant writing who condemned slavery and he complained slaveholders set themselves up as masters of creatures who are made in the image of God you've forgotten the limits of your authority and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason surely human beings have not been produced from your cattle but like all these voices

[17:16] Gregory can't envision a call for the abolition of slavery but he condemns it nonetheless and is very important in this this is the only extent writing from antiquity that is critical of the institution of slavery but as I was writing that I happened to read a review written by Peter Brown of the new translation of Augustine's Confessions and in this review Brown quotes a letter that was actually discovered in the 1990s I believe in which Augustine is out rescuing slaves from slaveholders that had come into his own parish and you can read that fascinating little passage so then we will jump ahead okay Gregory of Nyssa on slavery you've got that quote

[18:17] Augustine of the Hippo and the Corsairs of from this period 1500 1800 that came up from the Mediterranean and did raids up along the coast of Europe into the British Isles even Ireland and making raids along the coast and grabbing slaves grabbing people who they made into slaves but we'll jump ahead to Richard Richard Baxter here and I've included a quote from Baxter who was a fierce critic of slavery and he said that it was heinous that it was a heinous sin to buy a slave except for the purpose of freeing him and so there is one voice there Puritans were often very critical of the slave trade and the brutality of it but at this point still this open abolition is not or a movement it's just not envisioned slavery is part of the landscape it's part of everyday life although not again in the British

[19:37] Isles but Baxter of course knew that by this point British and other Europeans were trading in slaves so what exactly are we talking about that's being abolished in this process and we can look at the sheer numbers of slaves and the growth of the trade the Atlantic trade is what we're talking about here so late 17th century almost 30,000 this is the late 1600 30,000 slaves per year it picks up to 50,000 per year in the second half of the 18th century the late 1700s or in the first half of the 18th century the early 1700s and in the second half of the 18th century it picks up again to 75,000 slaves per year and who's doing the transporting all of the

[20:54] European countries are involved in transporting slaves from Africa to the new world with goods back to Europe and England from 1751 to 1775 British ships carried 859,000 slaves of a total of approximately 1.9 million the numbers aren't precise but there are records and scholars study these records and have compiled databases and then here we see the effect of the early abolition efforts and after this British ships there is a decline with British ships carrying 257,000 from 1801 to 1825 after 1808 they're of course not transporting to British colonies because as we'll see the slave trade to British colonies is abolished and to the United

[21:57] States for that matter and zero after 1826 whereas Portuguese ships you see almost 50% of slaves being carried by British ships at this point and after 1826 the Portuguese are carrying alone are carrying 1.2 million and that's in the face of British resistance after slavery is abolished British gun boats are actively prowling the coast of Africa and Brazil as I recall later on but the ocean is a big place and yeah lots of slaves were still getting through of course but it was even more profitable by the 19th century in the new world there were some rather long voices there were a few

[23:02] Quakers that were speaking out against slavery very early on George Fox was in favor of a gradual manumission of slaves William Penn was a slave holder as were many Quakers in the new world so the critics tended to be lone isolated voices this is Benjamin Lay who was an early Quaker prophet in Pennsylvania he stood four feet high he lived in a cave and he had 200 with 200 books or so but he would venture out to Quaker meetings and condemn them and I could go into some details but time is short but he is a lone voice he was born in England and he had some connections with a

[24:06] Quaker in Pennsylvania in Philadelphia by the name of Anthony Benazette I think is the American pronunciation who lived from 1713 to 1784 he was born in France of Huguenot parentage and moved to London with his family when he was young became a Quaker I think he had an evangelical orientation to his faith I'm an expert on that moved to Philadelphia where already in the 1750s he was speaking out against slavery but still a very isolated lonely voice he starts a school there for black children and writes about the subject although the linkages between abolitionists and we see this happening that there is a current deep underneath that is already flowing there is an abolitionist impulse that is forming but it's not a big movement by any means and I shouldn't spend more time on

[25:19] Benazit but I will move on so at its peak 90,000 Africans a year and 200 to 300 ships from every major European country were carrying were being carried the increase in demand benefited African traders African traders controlled the trade in Africa there were very few Europeans in Africa on the coast in the trade they bought slaves European ships bought slaves from Africans and there was a series of forts set up along the coast Almina in Ghana is one of the famous ones and today it's a pilgrimage site for African Americans who go back to what they see as their roots so

[26:21] African traders bargained with the Europeans they played off different groups against each other they tried to prevent European monopolies it's not to say that Europeans weren't committing grievous sins so with respect to abolition and we'll move on a little bit here to some theoretical historical concerns there's two lines of with respect to abolition as to what is behind it what forces are behind it position one is that abolition was driven by economics abolition correlated to the rise of industrial capitalism and it did of course the second line of argument and that's the one I take is that abolition is a derivative of the rise of evangelicalism and I don't disconnect this from the rise of industrial capitalism either but they're certainly relate they weren't separate phenomena certainly slavery had coexisted with

[27:49] Christianity for 1800 years so why now historians such as the late Roger Anstey has forcefully argued that it is related to evangelicalism the strongest center of abolitionist thought and activity was found in the strongest center of evangelicalism even as late as 1770 evangelicals were not sensitized on the slavery issue so it depended on what generation you were a part of with evangelicalism being kicked off in the 1730s the first generation were folk like Whitfield and Wesley Jonathan Edwards in the US British colonies at that point of course so they were British you have to remember that Edwards although he condemned the slave trade and the brutality of it had slaves had a few slaves in the household

[28:52] Whitfield also condemned the brutality of slavery but he advocated the introduction into Georgia of slaves to assist with his orphanage and just to give the generational side to this Jonathan Edwards the younger the son of Jonathan Edwards became an ardent abolitionist and even once said that to own a slave was a worse sin than visiting a brothel and I don't want to debate that but that's what he said so even as late as 1770 evangelicals were not sensitized on the slavery issue in the sense of starting a movement John Wesley and John Wesley bridged both generations but he lived long enough to do so

[29:53] I would argue John Wesley's turnaround seems to come in 1772 with the important Somerset legal case and I might be able to get into that a little bit more and through the writings of the Quaker Anthony Benezet Christianity was very weak in the colonies but evangelical missionary activity exported from the British Isles brought about change the colonial churches whether Catholic or Protestant had supported the status quo but onto the scene came this surging evangelical movement such that Britain had basically proprietary rights on the abolitionist voluntary society abolition was a British export France did not develop a significant abolition movement or anywhere on the continent was there significant abolition movement one could argue that this was because

[30:58] France did not have the industrial capitalist base that Britain had but the Netherlands also that did maybe slightly different type did not develop much of an abolitionist movement slavery continued on in Dutch Suriname and the Dutch East Indies long after or significantly after and in the cases of these European countries where there was abolition it was one could argue it was through pressure from Britain which was the global superpower at this point among historians so among historians of slavery the bedrock economic question is was abolition facilitated by the decline of slave economies and or the rise of capitalist industrial systems and how did economic and non-economic considerations figure in the process and I will continue to argue that it was religious beliefs that brought about abolition and more specifically the surge of evangelical beliefs and their development and so we've mentioned some stirrings of abolition among

[32:14] Quakers in the new world in this evangelical revival that comes along in the 1730s but there was still little coordination or even awareness of other abolitionists but deep under the service continued these currents and remember also in the midst of degradation Christianity gave individual slaves a tremendous sense of self-worth and this became increasingly important with the advent of evangelicalism which believed in regardless of your perspective on slavery believed in evangelism among black slaves and the black church as you know became a tremendous force in all this the first okay I've I've I've I've kind of skipped over some bits here and I think I will just skip over it

[33:20] Granville Sharp a very important person in all this he links up with Benazet in 1772 the Mansfield judgment is all important and seems to mark the beginning of Wesley's sensitization to the issue of slavery it's a legal decision made in 1772 with respect to a slave James Somerset who was he'd been brought to London by his owner Charles Stewart from Boston who was the receiver general for customs in Boston and in 1771 Somerset ran away but came into contact with Sharp Granville Sharp and Granville Sharp had had taken two years of law school just to defend slaves and the general impression that folk had even though it was somewhat ambiguous was that

[34:31] English law did not support the keeping of a slave on English soil and there never had been many slaves on English soil even though there even in Tudor times there were blacks in England but they were not slaves so there was no inherited black slavery in England and I should mention African slave narratives I won't get the chance I'd like to just mention briefly Ukasa Griniasa who was a slave born on Lake Chad transported to the New World was a slave for a time but eventually he was bought by Theodore Freelenhausen has anybody heard of Theodore Freelenhausen Jim has of course but he was a Dutch evangelist in the

[35:32] Great Awakening and he treated Griniasa very kindly and educated him and manumitted him but anyway Griniasa had this conversion experience through reading Bunyan and Baxter and when he was freed he joined the Royal Navy for a time among other things he even went to the Netherlands as a butler but he knew about England and that was the new Jerusalem so he went to England and he had heard Whitfield on several occasions in New York and he tracked Whitfield down and tried to get some help and Whitfield was I believe as I recall helpful to him he married an English woman a weaver and he wanted to go to Kitterminster so he ended up in Kitterminster because of the influence of Richard

[36:36] Baxter through reading Richard Baxter but I can't go into the whole story he died destitute unfortunately but with the help of a Calvinist woman wrote up his narrative which probably sold very few copies because he died in 75 so this is just before abolition gets going but remarkable life read you can find it online this story it's fascinating I never heard of the guy until I got immersed in this a number of years ago he's African and Wesley of course I've mentioned takes us to James Ramsey a remarkable life an early abolitionist at a time when there wasn't any movement there was

[37:36] Benazette as I've mentioned in Philadelphia and then there was James Ramsey Ramsey was a Royal Navy surgeon who entered into service in 1757 early on and importantly served under Charles Middleton an evangelical who became later Lord Admiral of the Navy in 1759 the ship he was on was intercepted the ship he was on intercepted a slaver none wanted to board because of disease and filth but Ramsey the surgeon went down into the hold and treated the slaves as best he could a real gesture that came a deep gesture that of solidarity that came from his evangelical convictions he later broke his thigh bone and was discharged so he took up holy orders and became an Anglican clergyman on the island of St. Kitts beginning in 1762 where he married the daughter of a planter and set out to invite whites and blacks into his church and to convert slaves he was appointed surgeon on several plantations as well as being a clergyman and he observed first hand the conditions of slaves exhausted in 1877 he moved back to

[39:02] Britain to Teston in God's Providence where the Middletons lived and he became part of a group of abolitionists that met at Barham Court this is Charles Middleton and his wife Lady Middleton not a whole lot is known about her in terms of letters but she is formative for the abolitionist movement including Wilberforce and company and the first group of this first group of abolitionists to meet as a group nobody was meeting as groups to form a movement at this point met at Barham Court which is still there burned in the 1930s but it's now office condos and I'd like to visit that before I leave the planet I haven't got there yet I'm trying to talk my son into going down there with me it's east of

[40:04] London so the Middletons lived there and became part of a group of abolitionists and Lady Middleton is at the center of this I wish we could find out more about her like so many women who were involved in the movement so the Middletons encouraged James Ramsey to write up to write up his writings that he had started and observations that he had started already in St. Kitts and the Bodleian Library has published them along with the writings of his critics those who used the Bible to support slavery so he was the first abolitionist writer as a mainstream

[41:13] Anglican who was an evangelical the British public was able to read and this is in the 70s now late 70s early 80s actually he met with Prime Minister Pitt and with Wilberforce multiple times when Wilberforce was just a young recently converted MP from Hull James Watt wrote this about Ramsey his enemies his exemplary qualities while deploring the intemperate language of his books and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 probably owed more to James Ramsey's personal integrity ethical arguments and constructive proposals than to any other influence he died in 1789 before seeing the promised land but the cause carried on it was suggested that Middleton lead the anti-slavery cause in Parliament but the

[42:17] Middletons in turn persuaded Wilberforce to lead the charge and for that we are thankful so it takes us to William Wilberforce still a very young man at this point and a recent recent convert you have to oh sorry I'm looking at it on the other screen this is a contemporary portrait of Wilberforce it's not a modern reconstruction and Wilberforce formed a friendship with Thomas Clarkson another young man even a year younger than Wilberforce who had studied at Cambridge and in 1787 wrote a prize winning essay on slavery and delivered a copy to Wilberforce I don't think they knew each other before maybe they did they both went to

[43:19] Cambridge St. John's College I believe that's where Wilberforce and you can go there now and see a sculpture of Wilberforce anyway Clarkson probably somewhere else there too their friendship was the last 50 years Wilberforce sensed a call from God writing in a journal entry in 1787 that God Almighty has set before me two great objects the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners meaning moral values and I've already touched on the Somerset decision so I will jump over that going back to the new world the 1772 Somerset decision seemed to energize even things in back in the new world 1773 slaves petitioned legislatures in New

[44:32] England for freedom and Somerset decision seems to have been a catalyst in this as James Somerset had been a slave in Boston slaves themselves used all the means that they could to campaign and here we're talking about resistance and its importance steering committees petitions and the ideology liberty and natural rights which was stewing there in this pre-revolutionary American setting anti-slavery tracks increased in America with Wesley and Benezit and Grandel Sharp getting to know each other from a distance in the aftermath of the Somerset decision so there was a triangular correspondence between Wesley and Benezit in the New World and Granville

[45:33] Sharp Methodism I can't forget Methodism it's the fastest growing religious tradition in the transatlantic world and it played an important role Methodist discipline was reined in and employed in avoiding luxury items such as sugar and rum in order to subvert the economics of the slave trade whether it did or not how much of an impact is debatable by urging a sugar boycott it mobilized Methodist women who were of course the custodians of kitchen supplies and evangelicalism was able to ride the tales of vast changes in organizing and communication the voluntary society the newspaper print in general and large spheres of action for women global missions brought back awareness of slavery to the metropole too in a fusion of evangelical humanitarian zeal and enlightenment notions of natural rights produced a powerful mobilization of men and women against slavery whether in newspapers coffee houses debating societies libraries cultures all of this

[46:52] Methodism didn't set out to be politically involved but it is a good thing that it did so okay I'll line things up another ex-slave Bolotto Equiano settled in Britain and entered this abolitionist circle with the Wilberforces and others and he became a celebrity he wrote his narrative also in this collection of slave narratives or you can find it free online of course and he tramped around England and was a celebrity and an abolitionist Canada was in the midst of this and I won't be able to go into it here's an ad for a black woman being sold in 1806 in York which later became

[47:52] Toronto by Peter Russell who was a counselor on the council of Upper Canada and six out of sixteen counselors were slave holders at this point when John Graves Simcoe became governor he had been part of the Wilberforce circle had a religious conversion in Britain after the Revolutionary War in which he was a prisoner and had some kind of a religious conversion evangelical religious conversion was briefly in parliament with Wilberforce and cast a vote in 1791 or thereabouts in favor of abolition and he tried to outlaw slavery but succeeded in gradual abolition and it petered out for the most part after that Mary Ann Shad while we're getting we're getting ahead she lived in Chatham

[48:56] Windsor and was an evangelical black activist American returned to the U.S.

[49:06] during the Civil War but there was a slavery of course went on and this is a book about the slave trade on the Kenya off the Kenya coast Zanzibar late in the century and there's photos of slavery at this point obviously whereas we don't have many from earlier times just portraits British gun boats played an important role well you could debate that but they sought to shut down the trade off the what's now Tanzania coast and Kenyan coast here's a British sailor freeing a slave the manacle cutting the manacle on a slave this is late in late in the century off the coast of Africa and evangelicals continued to be activists in the 1870s 1880s in the midst of this slavery in

[50:17] Brazil was abolished in 1888 and Britain certainly tried to influence that as well and finally I'll this this is a slave boy being punished in Zanzibar in 1890 we can call him Onesimus and believe that the Apostle Paul planted some important seeds even back then and I'll finally a monument to slavery in Zanzibar deteriorating but my picture is a little bit blurred but I better close there I could talk a little bit more about the economics of it but you've probably heard enough about that the economic arguments but that's a big topic anyway alright

[51:25] John there's a neat book also about the Haida it's called Slaves of the Haida and about the Portuguese you know the capoeira was the slaves in Brazil they had a martial arts they disguised it as a dance so the Portuguese slave traders thought that slaves are just dancing when their practice in capoeira was actually martial arts okay resistance yeah sure this has been this has been totally fascinating thank you very much for doing it we're going to have maybe an epilogue or a part two later on yeah I didn't get very far did I everybody's waiting for Wilberforce in parliament and he dies the law the law the law is passed in 1833 I don't know where I mentioned that he dies four days later oh I was thinking when you spoke that shortly after Cortes invaded Mexico this would be 1520 the university from which he had graduated via Belize in Spain there was a debate among clerics

[52:33] I mean the university was clerics I guess at that time and they were debating about the people that Cortes found in the new world were they human like us were they human not like us were they not human those were the three points of the debate I guess I'm wondering whether you've given us a lot of individual people who were active did we ever have debates in Christian groups or evangelical groups whatever post-reformation groups or did they work sort of individually did any of them kind of go public and discuss the why's and the why not yeah there were debates in Catholic circles about enslaving aboriginals which they tried to do and I believe the church banned that but so there were debates but not in terms of abolishing slavery they would be very radical clerics who were and groups of people that were debating the topic

[53:46] I don't know that that exists or it's not recorded there may have been certainly lots of people could have like Augustine or Gregory of Nyssa could have condemned it just from their experience or observations but there's no organized effort and there's a lot of the writings of church history are very extensive and I haven't read them all of course but these are what I've given you I think forms the core of the earliest writings anyway condemning slavery and we can see the seeds in Paul's isn't it good that we have the book of Philemon it's yeah but if you believe that they are not like us then a lot of things are possible besides a lot of the economic which is terribly important but the attitude that they are not like us and there was a huge difference between slavery in the states the 13 colonies and then the states and Brazil which did not disparage intermarriage with freed slaves or other you're right yeah and you know that really that kind of misogyny was well if it's still going there was more manumission there but in the 50s 1850s

[55:25] Brazil tried to introduce slaves into industrial settings for a time and it petered out there was a lot of pressure against slavery and the Brazil trade the plantations needed a continuous infusion of new slaves which was different from the statistics really showed it right yeah yeah and I should again emphasize the evangelical doctrine it will go back to the Puritans and others of monogenesis that of humankind being one and created in the image of God and these abolitionists emphasized that over against others who would racialize and not to say that there wasn't some racialization thought within evangelicals but they did not argue that they were subhuman slaves so that's that is very critical

[56:32] I didn't talk about that enough in this but yeah but it's there thank you George what about thank you very much for your talk what about slavery in the Middle East and the Eastern countries they weren't the source of slaves for North America I got it but what about was there slavery carrying on there oh yes into the Mediterranean basin and it had been coming from you know north of the Black Sea but also Africa and these Zang from Banju speaking from East Africa they were there by seemingly by the hundreds of thousands in you know 1200 years ago in the Middle East so it's it's it's massive although Europeans perfected the the technique and the you know warehousing of

[57:42] Africans on their ships as we saw in the brooks there and you know Mel human and not like us we shouldn't forget in Europe the Nazis yes and the harnessing of slavery and Germany is also an evangelic process yeah no exactly yeah yeah yeah and that shows how universal go ahead I'm sorry so that's not too long ago that's less than 100 years ago that that happened so we can't forget that it happened on European solar and so you know if you can get when there is an economic value proposition for slavery and you can get away with it humans are going to do it but when that begins to teeter and totter

[58:46] I think the ethical voices are always there but they get louder when it starts to totter for example when intervisalization comes in other forces start to come in those voices get louder so I should be a little bit careful in saying that it was only the Christian impetus but it was also that this tree was starting to totter and that emboldens many of us in speaking out but when it's going really strong I wonder in Nazi Germany where were those Christian voices which would have been very strong but it was just in your head but yeah yeah very few yeah and that was my argument I'm not denying the changes in economics and evangelicals took new globalization forces that had produced the slave trade at least the transatlantic slave trade and turn that around the communications writing newspapers all of that against it but

[59:55] I'm arguing that it was the surge of evangelicalism that provided the horsepower to bring it about whereas I don't know that it had to happen but you know I'm open to the economic arguments but as you said and I meant to say it Europe this same Europe that had fairly much banished slavery it came roaring back not just in Germany but there were European allies allied to Germany where forced labor took place and in the Far East as well and in Russia how can you you know Russia in the Gulag was there was more slavery going on in the second quarter of the 20th century than there was at the time of at the height of the numbers would have been well at the beginning of the

[61:05] Civil War there were three and a half million slaves in the US and America but that was 60% of the slaves in America so in Germany and Russia and other points I think at the height the number of slaves may have surpassed that but in a very small period of time so slavery I would argue is there and it's been called a peculiar institution but what's peculiar is to me is the absence of slavery you know not complete absence but yeah and it continues today of course with huge numbers Will you would you draw any kind of lessons from the way the church could make excuses for slavery during the 1700s early 1800s and the

[62:06] German church could make excuses the part of the cooperative nazis and the way parts of our church make excuses for abortion now yeah no you can draw that yeah no and I would say with the abortion debate it's very much a case there is of course a great organization but perhaps more of a lonely voice in the wilderness at this point it's oh Gary just hang on from that would you say this was the first time in evangelicalism it was very it was not that old by this time that you're discussing here today that they took a stand against an institutionalized evil a structural evil and could call it sin and say to people I think they would say to you if I'm wrong that just by passively being part of this society that's doing this you are also guilty of something you must stand against this that's something

[63:08] I don't see too ready to do say Dave not just about abortion but a lot of things so is this ridiculous to you or is this true about evangelicalism yeah I'd have to think about there may have been movements yeah I think there were humanitarian movements movements earlier in the church and there was tremendous development over the course of the church in terms of the importance of the individual and the care of souls that came when Christianity really upset the status quo in Rome in ancient in the ancient Roman empire so yeah you'd have to think through that but the organization that is was possible because of of the of industrialization before it just wasn't possible to organize like that but but Christianity spread in its own in its own ways yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry one stand up and then

[64:26] I will let you talk to Bill afterwards but I hear the singing so yeah it's been mentioned many times in different ways just this common thread of they're not like us or they're all right and I really see that as a commonality between we've heard slavery we've heard about Nazism and abortion I'm really glad that's the big debate right are these really persons are we really you know and I just think that going forward I mean we see this kind of thing in our own discourse public discourse right where we separate and segregate in this kind of identity politics that's going on and how we can work against that right calling somebody a deplorable well that kind of dehumanizes them and you can you know kind of hate them then it allows you to because you call them that how can we as Christians work against this because I think we take for granted this universality which is really a radical

[65:34] Christian idea in a sense that one wouldn't have been innate in any of these other things that you know the hiding why I mean they well you're not of our band so we can override you that was universal as opposed to the radical Christian idea which is we're all made in the image of God and we need to see one another as brothers and sisters or as potential brothers and sisters and try to bring them to Christ how can we work in that in our current political situation yeah it's a huge yeah to show love and at the same time to be astute and wise and willing to organize what has to be done and we can't fight all battles of course that's part of being wise you know we as individuals you commit yourself to certain causes but collectively to there's but to show love in the midst of don't dehumanize your opponents but at the same time these evangelicals had the ability to speak out whether

[66:49] James or Ramsey collecting his observations in St. Kitts very early on and coming up with the perception to be able to go against the tide and say hey this is wrong it's always been like this but in this new situation he was given some insight by the spirit I would say but thank you applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause applause