Moorfield Storey Blog: "Evangelicalism and Slavery: Historic Allies Not Enemies"
Check it out
here. A taste:
Now,
for some inconvenient facts. Wilberforce was not the first to call for
abolition of slavery. Deists like Jefferson and the Quakers, who are not
orthodox Christians by any means, were there first. Nor was England the
first country to abolish slavery. Revolutionary France, considered
godless by the orthodox Christians, had abolished slavery in 1794, but
Napoleon, an orthodox Christian and opponent of deism, restored it when
he took power.
The city state of
Venice outlawed slavery in 960, Iceland abolished it in 1117, Spain did
so in 1542, Poland in 1588, etc. Wilberforce gets attention for two
reasons. First, English-speaking people tend to only pay attention to
the history of English-speaking countries. Second, Wilberforce is
promoted by fundamentalists because he was an evangelical Christian.
Evangelicals are working hard to take credit for abolitionism.
2 comments:
First, English-speaking people tend to only pay attention to the history of English-speaking countries. Second, Wilberforce is promoted by fundamentalists because he was an evangelical Christian. Evangelicals are working hard to take credit for abolitionism.
True, but it was England who actively deployed her ships to shut down the slave trade, a landmark in history, and Wilbur was the driving force.
It is true that Quakers were represented in the organized anti-slavery movement in England and America far in excess of their very small proportion (less than 1% in England) of the population at large. And Quakers were the first organized group/denomination to officially announce their opposition to slavery (from the 1688 Germantown Mennonite Quaker protest to the 1783 anti-slavery petition presented to Parliament), and disciplined their member accordingly. Everyone should acknowledge the courageous work of Quaker abolitionists like John Woolman, Anthony Benezet and Lucretia Mott (to just name a few). But we should also acknowledge (which the article fails to do) that not all Quakers, and probably a minority of Quakers, participated in the organized anti-slavery movement. Some feared that too much association with the "carnal world" would compromise Quaker testimonies (especially the peace testimony); others felt that the more militant tactics of some in the anti-slavery movement hindered rather than aided the work of emancipation, or could lead to the use of “carnal weapons” (i.e., war), which it did tragically in America.
Whether they were evangelical Christians or not, in England John Wesley (Methodist) and Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce (Anglicans) were Christians in the vanguard of the late-18th and early-19th century anti-slavery movement.
Both the First (early 18th C) and Second (early 19th C) Protestant Christian evangelical Awakenings spurred some anti-slavery activism in the Atlantic world, as did Enlightenment rationalism. Sure, George Whitefield defended slavery, but a “new light” evangelical Calvinist Presbyterian, Rev. Jacob Green, was the foremost anti-slavery advocate in late-colonial and revolutionary era New Jersey (see excellent new book, Jacob Green’s Revolution: Radical Religion and Reform in a Revolutionary Age – hat tip John Fea)
Last but not least, the major weakness of the blog is the total absence of African American evangelical Christians, like Richard Allen, founder of the AME church in Philadelphia in 1794, or the creation of black Baptist, Episcopalian and Presbyterian congregations (1794-1809) in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
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