Thursday, March 5, 2015


                                  World history of Abolitionism

 Today  Feb 27, 2015 Thursday at 11:00am PST call-in at (347) 826-7353

When thinking about the history of slavery one tends to think about the abolitionist movement. Generally speaking when we thing about this movement we tend to think about the Quakers and          their impact in the USA and perhaps beyond and rightly so.

While it’s true the Quakers did much toward ending slavery I content the abolitionist movement started about the time Jesus of Nazareth ascended into Heaven. Paul’s Epistle to Timothy clearly illustrates the picture of a disdain for owning a human being.  Paul explains whey we have the law;

“the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel. (I paraphrase).

This then becomes a clarion call to the world actually that slavery was an abomination to God. That as Christians we can not abide by a person owning another person. This of course was taken seriously by both believers and non believers alike. To the non believer who owned slaves he saw an enemy of his enterprises. To the believer they came to truly understand what Paul meant when he said;

 In speaking to the Athenians, Paul stated that God "has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings" (Acts 17:26). We are all descendants of Adam. While we are divided between different nations and languages, we are all the same -- human beings created by the hand of God.

Or when Christians thought about the letter to the Galatians stating in Galatians 3:28;   There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Or the reason we find in Genesis 1:21; So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. So here in the very beginning of the Bible we see that God said he created man in his own image. Can you imagine this image in the form of a slave? Then Jesus said something just as important; All people can enter the kingdom of heaven that believe on him as the “Son of God – all people. 

I must point out that for the sake of this discussion the fact that you believe or do not believe is a moot point.  What is not a moot point is this; people all over the world came to believe in Christ and the bible. As a result they knew that if we were all the same to God no person could own such a person. This they knew and they kicked against the idea of slavery from that day on.

Let’s take a look at Europe just a few short years before our Revolutionary war and look at some Christian thinkers and their views on slavery. A good place to start would be the Parliament in England and one William Wilberforce.

Early Christian on Abolitionism

William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) was an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.

In 1787, he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

We’ll then return to our own country beginning with the Declaration of Independence founding fathers and on we’ll go until slavery was finally ended in the USA. It is worth pointing out that at no point was slavery ended in certain Middle Eastern countries to this day. I maintain that in parts of the continent of Africa it remains a problem to this day. Why then do we hear so much about the fact that there were I repeat were slaves in the USA but no one ever talks about the countries that have slavery to this day. That question needs an answer and soon!

 


 

 

 

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