Slavery is one of the curses of our century, and Christians should be better informed about its evils.
by Margaret Rodgers
Archbishop Jensen writes a regular column for the Sun-Herald. In his January column he discussed the issue of slavery – for the UN has declared 2004 as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery. Cape Coast Ghana was chosen for the launch ceremony, because it was a place from where many desperate souls were transported far away from their families and homelands at the height of the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.
This odious trade in human flesh came to an end in the British Empire through the robust opposition of evangelicals such as John Wesley, William Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton. Their gospel commitment and biblical understanding of the doctrine of the human person impelled them, as it does evangelicals today, to work for the good of their fellow human beings, for justice and the relief of human misery.
One other well-known name early in this campaign was the former seaman, slave trader and author of Amazing Grace, John Newton, who persuaded William Wilberforce to become involved. Archbishop Jensen recently told me how moved he was by reading an edition of the letters and memoirs of Newton.
That repentant sinner recounted one story of a young female slave on one of the ships on which he served. Her child was crying and could not be quietened. The captain, irritated at the young one’s noise, grabbed the child and threw it overboard. That put an end to the noise! That is Newton’s testimony to an actual event.
It is a great mistake
for anyone to think
today that this evil trade is all in the past. Slavery is one of the curses of our own century.
A distressing story of the outcome of modern human trafficking hit the headlines for some days in the UK last month. Nineteen Chinese cockle gatherers drowned on the treacherous sandbanks of Morecambe Bay. Those who perished were understood by Lancashire police to have been paid a mere pittance by their gangmasters for their work. They lived in ‘slave houses’ in cramped and fetid conditions. One survivor told police she had paid more than 20,000 pounds sterling to leave mainland China for her dream of a prosperous new life in Britain. But the reality she ended up in was living in squalor in a putrid house reeking of decaying fish, where the bedrooms were dormitories with mattresses on the floor. Police said up to 40 people were living in four or five bedroom houses.
Just think of it. All this in modern day Britain, the epitome of Western civilization!
In this 21st century when we all think slavery is a thing of the past, the International Labour Organisation estimates there are 8.4 million children who are slaves. Added to that, about 20 million people are estimated to be bonded labourers, like the cockle gatherers in Britain. They or their family, either present-day or an earlier generation borrowed money and they have to work to pay off the loan, which few manage to do. Women, children and men are trafficked into the international sex trade or into forced labour situations throughout the world. Child slaves work in the sex trade, as soldiers, as domestic workers, as camel jockeys in the Middle East, as workers in carpet manufacturing in India and Pakistan.
Sudan is still haunted by slavery. There, people who have been kidnapped are bought and sold from one owner to another. Christian Solidarity Worldwide, led by Baroness Caroline Cox from the UK, has travelled to the Sudan and redeemed slaves by paying cash to their captors. Others claim this CSW practice prolongs the trade, as people engage in it for money. Cox replies she is tired of waiting for the international community to develop a long-term solution, and while it does not, someone must act.
What can we do about it? We can become informed through the websites of organisations like the Anti-Slavery Movement ([url=http://www.antislavery.org]http://www.antislavery.org[/url]), Free the Slaves ([url=http://www.freetheslaves.net]http://www.freetheslaves.net[/url]) or Christian Solidarity Worldwide ([url=http://www.csw.org.uk]http://www.csw.org.uk[/url]).
Christians are slaves, but slaves of the Christ whose service is perfect freedom. Thus our enslavement brings us into the experience of the liberty we find in Him.
The stories of representatives of today’s slaves can be found on the websites mentioned above. They will surely impel every person to yearn and to work for a twenty-first century world where every person - every child and adult - is truly free, both in Christ and in this world.
