The First and Only Abolitionists

After two years of sensitive negotiations, the United States government is about to deliver an agreement ending the persecution of Christians and genocide in Sudan. For the past six years, I and other Christian leaders have been involved in a campaign to bring an end to the murder and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Christians. But fighting slavery is nothing new for Christians. After all, Christianity was born into a world where chattel slavery, one person owning another, was the cornerstone of the economy. Ironically, many famous historians, including those most critical of Christianity, were indifferent about the role that slavery played in antiquity. Edward Gibbon called the "cruel treatment" of slaves "almost justified by the great law of self- preservation." Western Christianity saw matters differently. Its spread through western Europe was accompanied by calls for an end to chattel slavery. Saint Bathilde, the wife of the seventh-century Frankish king Clovis, was canonized, in part, for her efforts to free slaves and end the slave trade. The result of hers and similar efforts was that, by the eleventh century, slavery had been effectively abolished in western Europe. The lone exceptions were areas under pagan or Muslim control. By the time Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica in the thirteenth century, slavery was a thing of the distant past. That's why Aquinas paid little attention to the subject, devoting himself instead to the issue of serfdom, which he considered "repugnant." So, why did slavery make a comeback in the Americas? As historian Rodney Stark writes in For the Glory of God, the problem was that people stopped listening. The distance between the Americas and western Europe, coupled with the rise of nation-states and commercial interests, meant that Christian teaching about the evils of chattel slavery was less likely to be heeded. The failure to obey this teaching doesn't change the fact that, according to Stark, the "moral predisposition" to oppose slavery was unique to Western Christianity. It certainly didn't exist in the Islamic world, where legal slavery existed until 1981 and where informal slavery still exists. This "moral predisposition" was why the second successful abolitionist wave in the beginning of the nineteenth century was led by William Wilberforce and other Christian politicians. And in this country the abolitionist campaign which brought about an end to slavery was led by Christians as well. What Stark calls the "moral potential for an antislavery conclusion" lay uniquely within Christian thought. Despite the Bible's apparent acknowledgment of slavery, what the Bible taught us about God and man led Christians to conclude that the holding of another man or woman in bondage was a sin. This religious appeal is why the people of Britain taxed themselves to abolish slavery in the West Indies. Unfortunately, this is not the story being told in our schools and universities. While the faith of men like Wilberforce might be acknowledged, the story of how Christianity, and Christianity alone, led to the abolition of slavery won't be. That's why you need to learn this story. If Christians aren't going to set the record straight, who will? Certainly not the ideologues to whom Christianity and its "moral predispositions" are even more repugnant than slavery itself. For further reading and information: Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton University Press, 2003). Read an interview with Rodney Stark and an excerpt from the book. Learn more about the Sudan slavery issue. Kevin Belmonte, Hero For Humanity: A Biography Of William Wilberforce (NavPress, 2003). To order call 1-877-322-5527. Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett, Christianity on Trial: Arguments against Anti-Religious Bigotry(Encounter, 2000). To order call 1-877-322-5527.

12/5/03