200 Years Later, We Still Need Wilberforce the Abolitionist

Summary

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When [William Wilberforce] first raised his voice in the House of Commons for the cause of abolition in May 1789, he spoke for 3.5 hours. Yet the absence of partisanship must have taken his colleagues by surprise. "I mean not to accuse anyone," he insisted, "but take the shame upon myself, in common indeed with the whole Parliament of Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority."

Most important, he was unafraid to invoke the Gospel to challenge the consciences of slavers and their supporters in Parliament. In his Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, published in January 1807, Wilberforce placed the brutish facts of human trafficking against the backdrop of Christian compassion and divine justice. "We must believe," he warned, "that a continued course of wickedness, oppression and cruelty, obstinately maintained in spite of the fullest knowledge and the loudest warnings, must infallibly bring down upon us the heaviest judgments of the Almighty." A month later, on Feb. 23, the House of Commons voted 283 to 16 to abolish the slave trade.

In our post-Sept. 11 era, there's suspicion and antagonism toward religious belief, especially when it mixes with politics. Secularists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris describe the beliefs of the faithful as a "delusion" and akin to "insanity." Wilberforce endured similar scorn. He was lampooned for his "damnable doctrine" and dismissed as a "treacherous fanatic."

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200 Years Later, We Still Need Wilberforce the Abolitionist

By Joseph Loconte

IN the fierce struggles of the 19th century to abolish slavery, Abraham Lincoln remains the mythic American champion. In Britain, however, that honour belongs to William Wilberforce, the Christian activist and mem...

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