The
Abolition of the Slave Trade
S
When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, then were we like unto them that dream.
Slavery is a blot on our history. Of course we Brits are by no means the only guilty ones - there’s always been slavery and there’s always been a slave trade – The Babylonians took slaves. The Egyptians, Assyrians and Greeks took slaves. The Romans took slaves. But somehow our Slave Trade was worse –it was ruthlessly efficient – not just hundreds or even thousands of slaves captured in war, but three and a half million people moved by British ships alone between 1700 and 1800. The traders bartered, hunted and caught them, and then packed them like battery hens into the holds of slave ships. When I was young I used to visit my Grandmother who lived in Hull and my mother would take me to the William Wilberforce museum to see the original 18th and 19th drawings of African men women and children crammed into the ships. And our ruthlessly efficient Western slavery was not just normal slavery, it was ideological. It was even religiously ideological –church leaders argued between themselves not about whether the slave trade was right – everyone accepted that – but about whether black Africans had a soul, just as church leaders – men - had argued whether or not women had a soul.
And so the Western Slave Trade was not only cruel and inhuman – as all slavery is – it was also racist and blasphemous. It was done in the name of God.
How wonderful then that just a mile or so from here Christians gathered and slowly, gradually, persistently changed the world. William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect go down in history as good men and women. Men and women who faced opposition, hatred and abuse on the streets. Men and women who also acted in the name of God, and we can be proud of them. We can be proud that it was their faith which inspired them and gave them courage.
But before we get too proud – most of these men and women were not Church of England – they were dissenters: Some were Quakers and some of them were what we would now call Methodists. What were we doing? What was the Church of England doing? Well I’m sorry to say that the Church of England was defending the Slave Trade with all its might. When William Wilberforce tried to push through his first bill to abolish the Slave Trade in 1791 the Church of England bishops were unanimous – unanimous - in opposing his bill in the House of Lords.
After revolution in France rich land owners had seen enough of social change. The Church of England and most of its friends had significant financial interests in the Slave Trade, and the Bishops believed that the Bible was in favour - not only in the New Testament where the epistles of St Paul and St Peter tell slaves that they should obey their masters submissively – shut up and put up - but in the Old Testament, where slavery is part of God’s plan for the world. Didn’t all the great patriarchs have slaves? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon - and in Genesis chapter 9 the Bible says that the sons and daughters of Ham should be slaves. “Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave” And as Ham’s family line had gone on to populate Africa, it must therefore be God’s plan that all Africans are slaves. Now we can listen with horror and amazement at such a crass misuse of Scripture but we of course have the benefit of hindsight and we live, thankfully, in a very different age. But these bishops – our bishops - believed what they were saying – and to them it all seemed very logical.
And what was happening here in Battersea when William Wilberforce was rounding up support against slavery in Clapham? What were our forebears doing?
Well my predecessor – the vicar of Battersea – John Gardnor - was probably painting watercolours in Wales – which apparently is what he did. And the Churchwardens were probably raising money to pay for the new church. And pious benefactors – our gallery of famous men – were giving £10 to clothe poor or £100 to feed the destitute. And where did all this money come from? What were the government bonds – the 3% in consols - which they so kindly gave away? Well I don’t actually know, but it seems to me inconceivable that there is not slave money involved somewhere; it seems to me inconceivable that there is not slave money in these stones and in these memorials which honour the rich and the famous. The money, the wealth, the lifestyle of the British Empire was bought at a price, and that price was the suffering of black men and women on the other side of the world in the Sugar plantations of the West Indies.
And that is where this sermon should just begin to hurt. We would never get involved with Slavery – if thousands of Africans were being shipped half way across the world today and sold as property we would be the first to rise up and object. It would be all so blatent – but today is not just about cruelty – the cruelty of the slave trade, it is also about the very essence of the slave trade. Slaves could be carried across oceans in the first class cabins of the QEII but slavery is always wrong. Am I not a man and a brother – or a woman and a sister – is still the cry. And if the money, wealth and lifestyle of the 18th century was bought at a price, as it surely was - then there is no doubt that the money, wealth and lifestyle of the 21st century is also bought at a price. It has to be – it always is!
And so a few uncomfortable examples: The huge construction company Caterpillar has in the past sold bulldozers either directly or indirectly to the state of Israel so that the military can demolish Palestinian houses as collective punishment against the families of suicide bombers – no one doubts that. Collective punishment is illegal under International Humanitarian Law – do one doubts that either. In 2005 General Synod asked the Church of England to disinvest from Caterpiller, to support Palestinians – including the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem – and to support the Jewish peace and justice movements – who have explicitly and repeatedly asked the West to disinvest. In the Church Commissioners refused to disinvest with a hundred and one good and logical reasons about their legal responsibility as a charity to make the maximum income from investments so that they can pay clergy pensions - about how individual companies cannot be held responsible for the use or misuse made of their equipment once they have been sold, and how it’s better to keep investment and keep hold of influence on Caterpillar’s future policies …… I wonder why all this sounds so much to me like the Church of England in 1791? And so we quietly mind our own business – we see both sides of the argument, because of course there are many sides to all arguments.
I wonder how many members of the congregation of St Mary’s in 1805 wrote to their Bishop or to their MP expressing their horror at the Church’s position on the Slave Trade? And I wonder how many today write to their Bishop or their MP about injustice today? Not many I suspect – because, of course, it’s not the same – it never is!
No two oppressions or injustices have ever the same – how easy it would be for all of us if they were! What makes it so difficult for good Christian men and women of any age is that it is never the same. We always have to learn again and again in every generation where justice and injustice is found – and that is never easy.
Another example: When women fought for the right to vote it was not the same as the abolition of the slave trade – women were not chained up by their millions in stinking ships – but ‘am I not a human being and a sister’ could still have been their cry. And good Christian men – many of them Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords - opposed votes for women and cited both St Paul – who said women shouldn’t speak publicly – and what the men called science that women were weaker in mind as well as in body – and they believed it. When women were illegally ordained as priests in Philadelphia in 1974, it was good Christian men and women, many of them Anglican Bishops, who opposed that as well – citing Church order, Christian Unity and a few more verses of St Paul. When eventually it got past the bishops and General Synod, and women were ordained as priests in the Church of England in 1994 there still remained many good and faithful Christian men and women who oppose the move, because it really is not the same as the Slave Trade. But, is it justice and the Gospel, or is it just a whim of the age and heresy. How do we know? I wonder what those women who now serve as priests think?
A third example: Whenever gay rights have come up in parliament, - there have been good and faithful Christian men and women who have advocated the changes, and there have been good and faithful Christian men and women have opposed the changes. – usually loudly and fiercely. In Great Britain there are no chains and torture, although there are elsewhere - but is this a question of gospel justice or Bible sin? I often wonder how many gay men and lesbians our Bishops and our Archbishops have really talked to about what it feels like - what it’s like being in love! Or what it’s like having to lie about your partner’s existence or about your parents because of prejudice and the fear of discrimination. It’s quite hard to make up your mind without talking to the people involved.
In Nigeria even straight people who merely attend a gay civil partnership can be put in prison for five years – so I can’t imagine there’s much conversation there!
The difficulty for all of us – mere humble Christians like us, and elevated Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Westminster alike, is that although as good Christian men and women, faithfully trying to follow Jesus we all want to rid the world of injustice, oppression and prejudice, it’s almost impossible to see what injustice, oppression and prejudice look like in our own time and in our own society as it happens all around us. And it’s always been like that. It’s what Amos and Hosea found in Israel in the 8th Century before Jesus and it’s what 2nd Isaiah found writing in the 6th Century BCE…. And if you are waiting for me to have an easy answer to this age old question – then you flatter me!
But never one to miss an opportunity, I do have some thoughts:
My first thought: God rarely simply takes us back to where we want to be. He nearly always leads us on to where we thought we did not want to go, but where it always turns out to be best for us. It happens time and time again in the Bible.
“ Thus says the Lord: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
or the passionate reading from St Paul’s own account of his conversion – just think about it for a minute - he had been a happy, content, faithful, conservative Jew – and God forced him in a blinding flash into a new life with a whole new set of values. His world was turned upside down.
And fundamentally for Christianity everyone in Israel was expecting a military Prophet of Righteousness who would quite literally drive out the foreign Roman invasion and reign on the throne of his father King David – and God’s greater wisdom and mercy sent a Messiah who reigned from a Cross. Not at all what people were expecting, not at all what they thought they needed.
Second thought: finding justice has never been easy, and we should not expect it to be easy for us. From the time of Amos and Hosea prophets have been getting up people’s noses with their sermons and conservative voices have been putting them in prison. William Wilberforce and the Quakers were prophetic voices – the Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords stood in the way …. The moral of that story is, as you weigh up the arguments for yourself, choose your prophets carefully, - they may still even be quakers! - and take whatever the House of Bishops says with a very large pinch of salt – they have a very bad history. (that’s my motto anyway!)
And thirdly we really have to trust in God more! In today’s Gospel Jesus says: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me” – not a very easy text you might think for a sermon on social justice! But it does make the rather good point that ‘the poor’ and with the poor, all suffering, inequality and injustice – will always be with us. Way back in 1807 when the work was done and when the House of Lords abolished the slave trade, another biting debate was just around the corner.
When eventually the Anglican Communion sorts out women bishops and gay bishops – and of course one day it will - I can promise you there something new will pop up to challenge us – it always does! “You always have the poor with you” … “but” – Jesus goes on to say “you do not always have me” Curious that phrase – doesn’t Jesus end St Matthew’s Gospel with the words “Surely I am with you to the end of the age?” Didn’t he say that “wherever two or three gather in my name there I am in their midst?” well yes – but here it’s different. He will not always be with us in a visible, walking, talking on earth sort of way. When he said “you do not always have me” he was talking about his death by crucifixion which was only a few days away – in another Gospel it’s clearer and we’re told that Mary anoints him for his burial.
The poor –suffering, injustice and inhumanity – will always be with us, - that is the way of the world - but Jesus’s death and his resurrection is coming - a victory over evil and the beginning of God’s new thing. So what do we do? What do we Christians - stuck in this old world but belonging to God’s New World – have to do? We must pray for change and we must work for change, we must campaign, argue, disagree, and vote –some of us must even write letters to our MP’s and to our Bishops and Archbishops – but we must always trust God. Justice, real justice, is in the hands of God – and God always gets his own way in the end!
And a final thought to lift us up: one of the most amazing graces to come out of this dreadful chapter in our history, one of the sweetest sounds to comes out of our inhuman treatment of Black people and the evil of the slave trade is their awe-inspiring Christian faith – their trust in God even though it is the God and the Christian faith of the very people who are oppressing them. How amazing is that! What an example those slaves are to us! How many of us, - comfortable, safe, and un-vulnerable in our western society could ever joyfully sing in the midst of the minor “dangers, toils and snares” we have to deal with, with the Black People of South Africa living under apartheid “Freedom is coming, O this I know” . How many of us could sing with the slaves of the West Indies “Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus” with such passion, and know that it is true!
The Rev'd Paul
Kennington
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