Let my people go
Anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce: a Christian hero
by Jonathan Sarfati
A longer, more detailed version of this article
is available at <www.creation.com/wilberforce>.
Image Wikipedia
William Wilberforce
This year is a historical bicentennial: on 25 March 1807, William Wilberforce’s
long fight to end slavery resulted in the Royal Assent to ‘An Act for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade’, which abolished the buying and selling of humans
throughout the British Empire. This was after 20 years of struggle and repeated
previous defeats of his anti-slavery bills in Parliament.
Even the usually anti-Christian Hollywood is commemorating this historic day with
the film Amazing Grace, about Wilberforce and his mentor John Newton, the
slaver-turned-abolitionist who composed the famous hymn of that name.1
With all the attacks on Christianity, it is important to remember the great good
it has achieved when truly followed. Slavery is one of the best examples—far
from being a Western Christian invention, it was the Christian west that abolished
it.2
Slavery throughout history
A scene from the movie Amazing Grace, Samuel Goldwyn Films
As conservative black economist Thomas Sowell points out,3 slavery has been around all over the world for most
of its history. And for most of this dismal history, it was not a racial
issue. Most slaves did not differ racially from their masters. Africans enslaved
Africans, Asians enslaved Asians, and Europeans enslaved Europeans. In fact the
Slavonic peoples were such a prolific source of slaves for Western Europe that the
very word ‘slave’ derives from ‘Slav’. The dark-skinned
Muslim Moors enslaved ‘white’ Europeans during their occupation of the
Iberian peninsula from 711 to 1492. Later, from the 16th century, the
Muslim Barbary States of North Africa encouraged pirates which had a flourishing
white slave trade.
Wilberforce and the anti-slavery society
Wilberforce and his anti-slavery fight were documented in a recent book Bury the
Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves
by Adam Hochschild (2005). Dr Sowell summarizes in a
review:
‘The anti-slavery movement was spearheaded by people who would today be called
“the religious right” and its organization was created by conservative
businessmen. Moreover, what destroyed slavery in the non-Western world was Western
imperialism.
‘Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today’s
intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and
Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world.’
Indeed, Hochschild documents that the world’s first anti-slavery movement
began with a meeting of 12 ‘deeply religious’ men in London in 1787,
including Wilberforce.
Wilberforce’s motivations are crystal clear from his own book A Practical
View of Christianity (1797). John Piper writes:
‘What made Wilberforce tick was a profound Biblical allegiance to what he
called the “peculiar doctrines” of Christianity. These, he said, give
rise, in turn, to true affections—what we might call “passion”
or “emotions”—for spiritual things, which, in turn, break the
power of pride and greed and fear, and then lead to transformed morals which, in
turn, lead to the political welfare of the nation. He said, “If … a
principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should … gain ground,
there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence
on our political welfare.”’4
Samuel Goldwyn Films
MOVIE PROMOTION
A cinema promotional poster from the new production stating ‘Behind the song
you love is a story you will never forget’.
Wilberforce had to struggle against not only repeated rejections, but also ill health.
Yet not only did he lead the way to abolish slavery, he also promoted hospitals
and prison reform, and advocated positive reform in India and other colonies. He
also fought against cruelty to animals, founding what we know today as the ‘Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’. No wonder he was eventually called
the ‘Conscience of Parliament.’
Wilberforce was not always a Christian. Indeed, he was born into the privileged
class, and that culture, much like today’s Hollywood, loved gambling, fancy
clothes, fast horses, drinking and gluttony. Furthermore, he had denounced the deity
of Christ after attending an apostate church much like today’s liberal ones.
However, Wilberforce gave his life truly to Christ in 1875, then wanted to quit
parliament because of the immorality and infighting. However, he visited John Newton
of Amazing Grace fame. Newton in his earlier days had been a slave trader
himself before his conversion to Christ. Newton was the one who convinced Wilberforce
that he would do the most good by remaining in Parliament.
After Newton’s conversion, he first insisted that slaves were to be treated
humanely. But he soon came to see that since the slaves were also created in the
image of God, the slave trade was wrong in itself, and could not
be humanized. He left the trade, became friends with the great evangelists George
Whitfield (1714–1770) and John Wesley (1703–1791) and his brother
Charles (1707–1788), became a minister, and testified to King George III (1738–1820)
about the atrocities of the slave trade.
John Wesley was instrumental in the conversion of Wilberforce himself. And
Wesley’s last letter of his life of 24 February 1791 was to Wilberforce
commending his abolitionist work, comparing this to the gallant struggle of Athanasius
(c. 293–373) for the vital biblical doctrine of the full deity of Christ:
‘Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum
[Athanasius against the world], I see not how you can go through your glorious
enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion,
of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing,
you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you,
who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary
of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even
American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.’
Sequel to anti-slave trade act
The 1807 Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade didn’t actually abolish
slavery, just trading in slaves. So Wilberforce’s campaign was not
over. But as it stood, it allowed the British navy to declare slave-transporting
ships as equivalent to pirates, and capture them to free the slaves and possibly
execute the crew. This is what Dr Sowell means by ‘Western Imperialism’.
It was also an example of ‘imposing one’s morals on others’!
Fortunately, Wilberforce lived to see the passing of the ‘Slavery Abolition
Act’. He had become seriously ill with influenza when on 26 July 1833, he
learned with much rejoicing that this act had passed the final reading in the House
of Commons. Three days later, he died. One month after that, Parliament passed the
act.
Biblical teachings and applications
It should not be too surprising that Wilberforce and his allies should have such
a strong Christian commitment. Indeed, the opposition is founded in the Creation
account of Genesis. God created a male and female human in His image, and gave humanity
dominion over the rest of creation, not over fellow humans
(Genesis 1:26–28). And Galatians 3:28 explicitly teaches the foundational equality
of human beings in nature.
A scene from the movie Amazing Grace, Samuel Goldwyn Films
THE PETITION
The movie portrays an event where Wilberforce presents a petition to the British
parliament supporting the abolition of slavery.
This is reinforced in the Mosaic Law, which explicitly prohibits kidnapping and
selling others into slavery: ‘Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone
found in possession of him, shall be put to death’ (Exodus 21:16). And of course, Moses was the man God used
in His miraculous deliverance of the Israelite nation from bondage in Egypt, commemorated
in the great Jewish celebration of the Passover.
In the Law of Christ, the Apostle Paul lists ‘slave traders’ / ‘menstealers’
(ανδραποδιστής
andrapodistēs) with murderers, adulterers, perverts, liars and other
evil people (1 Timothy 1:10). Paul tells slaves to become free, if they
can (1 Corinthians 7:21), and conversely tells free people to
not become slaves (1 Corinthians 7:23). When it came to a personal example,
he encouraged Philemon to free his escaped slave Onesimus
(Philemon 16)
. Furthermore, he ordered masters to treat their slaves in the ‘same way’
as they were treated, and not to threaten them (Ephes.
6:9).
Such practice would see the end of slavery, and without bloodshed. This indeed happened,
as thoroughly documented in Rodney Stark’s book For the Glory of God.5 He devoted chapter 4 to the
consistent church teachings against slavery.
Stark documented that even back in the 7th century, Christians publicly
opposed slavery. The bishop and apologist Anselm (c. 1033–1109) forbade enslavement
of Christians, and since just about everyone was considered at least a nominal Christian,
this practically ended slavery within Europe. As Stark writes, ‘The problem
wasn’t that the [Church] leadership was silent. It was that almost nobody
listened.’
Does the Bible support slavery?
A scene from the movie Amazing Grace, Samuel Goldwyn Films
Most anti-Christian writers ignore the overwhelming evidence (see main text) of
Christianity’s powerful anti-slavery influence, and try instead to portray
the Bible as advocating slavery. But in so doing, they are guilty of gross decontextualizing
of the Bible. They write as if the word ‘slave’ in the Bible refers
to the pre–civil-war American South. In reality, it had a wide range of meanings.
E.g. in the biblical culture, the Prime Minister’s cabinet members would be
called his ‘slaves’. The New World slavery that most people think of
was expressly forbidden in the Bible, because it resulted from kidnapping,
and because converted slaves were not freed as per Philemon and Anselm (main text).
Then why is there no command in the Bible to free the slaves immediately? Because
the commands in the Bible already documented would subtly undermine the institution
far better than a slave rebellion. E.g. the prohibition on trading in slaves would
drastically localize it. Compare the application of Paul’s teachings with
the tragic end to the rebellion of Spartacus (c. 120–70 bc), or in modern
times, compare Martin Luther King’s peaceful (and Bible-based) protests with
the secular revolutionary Malcolm X.
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What does Wilberforce’s fight teach us today?
We can learn much from Wilberforce’s fight against slavery. Not only did
it take decades, but also he had to face many of the same tactics that anti-christians
use today.
Anti-biblical worldview
As pointed out in Christianity on Trial6,
pagan philosophers, like Aristotle, regarded some people as natural slaves, and
‘Enlightenment’ philosophers hostile to Christianity such as Hume and
Voltaire believed in the inferiority of dark-skinned people. They had no time for
the equality of nature taught in the Bible.
‘Keep religion out of politics’
This is probably the most common trap that Christians can fall into today. But Wilberforce
faced exactly the same attitudes. For example, William Lamb aka Lord Melbourne (1779–1848),
a future Prime Minister of the UK and a mentor of Queen Victoria (and the eponym
of Australia’s second city), pontificated: ‘Things have come to a pretty
pass when religion is allowed to invade public life.’ In the same context,
Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon (1740–1799) spouted, ‘Humanity
is a private feeling, not a public principle to act upon.’
Thus pro-abortion policitians who say crude things
like, ‘Keep your rosaries off my ovaries’ are saying nothing new. But
in reality, facile slogans such as, ‘Don’t like abortions? Don’t
have one!’ are as immoral as, ‘Don’t like slavery? Don’t
own slaves!’
The fact that slavery is today so widely regarded as heinous is not the result of
some natural evolutionary ‘betterment’ of society, but a direct heritage
of the gospel of Christ, the most powerful force for good the world has ever seen.
References and notes
- See the review on our website
by Lita Cosner, <www.creation.com/amazing>, 16 March 2007.
Return to text.
- See also Koukl, G., Christianity’s real record, <www.townhall.com/columnists/GregKoukl/2006/11/21/christianitys_real_record>,
21 November 2006, showing that atheists frequently exaggerate atrocities by professing
Christians, ignore the great good done by Christians practising their faith, and
ignore the far greater atrocities of atheist regimes. Return to text.
- Sowell, T.,
Black Rednecks and White Liberals, chapter on slavery, Encounter
Books, San Francisco, 2005. Return to text.
- Piper, J., Peculiar doctrines, public morals, and the
political welfare: reflections on the life and labor of William Wilberforce,
<www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1492_Peculiar_Doctrines_Public_Morals_and_the_Political_Welfare/>,
5 February 2002. Return to text.
- Stark, R., For the glory of God: How monotheism led to
reformations, science, witch-hunts and the end of slavery, Princeton University
Press, 2003; see also review by Williams A., The biblical
origins of science, Journal of Creation 18(2):49–52,
2004; <www.creation.com/stark>. Return to text.
- Carroll, V. and Shiflett, D., Christianity on Trial: Arguments
Against Antireligious Bigotry, Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2001; see review
Hardaway, D. and Sarfati, J., Countering christophobia, Journal of Creation
18(3):28–30, 2004; <www.creation.com/trial>.
Return to text.
(Available in French)
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