18th February 2007: Slavery Then & Now

Two hundred years ago, the British politician William Wilberforce and his band of loyal friends took on the most powerful forces of their day to end the slave trade. His mentor was John Newton, the slave-trader-turned-song-writer, who wrote the popular hymn, Amazing Grace (being released as a major motion picture in cinemas on March 23rd).

This year is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Despite this it is estimated that up to Twenty-seven million men, women, and children are still enslaved around the globe, more people that at any other point in history.

People are being forced into what has been described as “new forms” of slavery, forced to work, often under the guise of meaningless contracts, in sweatshops or in building roads and pipelines for multinational corporations. Along with the exploitive use of indebtedness as an excuse for forced labour, there is also am enormous international traffic, especially in eastern Europe and south Asia in girls or young women who have volunteered for decent-sounding jobs, only to find themselves coerced into prostitution.

The evil of slavery is not something that we as Christians can ignore or accept. Jesus’ declared his mission (and therefore ours) in the following terms:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." (Luke 4:18-19)

To coincide with the events to mark the abolition of slavery in Britain, our Lent Course (which starts on Tuesday 27th February) will examine what lessons we can learn from William Wilberforce’s life, in what way can we build a better world? It promises to be a very stimulating and challenging course, which I hope many people will make a commitment to join. This course is open to everyone, so please invite friends, family and neighbours to join us.

As well as our Lent Course, there are other resources available via our website (follow links from ‘Lent Course 2007’ at http://www.walsallstmartins.2day.ws/) to sign a petition calling for an end to modern day slavery, and find out how you can become involved in the ‘Amazing Change’ campaign.

Simon