Wilberforce,
Slavery, and the Bible. Genesis 47
William
Wilberforce lived in the late 18th century and into the 19th
century, and he was responsible for the passage of the anti-slave trade bill
that ended the slave trade in the British Empire, and also the abolition of
slavery in the British Empire.
Three statements:
1) Slavery is not
immoral, sinful or wrong.
2) Slavery in some
cases is a very good thing.
3) The Bible does
not condemn slavery.
The
average late 20th century, early 21st century, person
thinks that all three of those statements are false because there is a
presupposition in American thought today that slavery by definition is evil and
inherently wrong. What we are going to see is that it is not. Genesis 47 is the
story of what happens as Joseph has brought the family to Egypt, and he settles
them in the land of Goshen where they will be protected and where they will
grow. They will actually acquire land, according to Genesis 47. In contrast to
the blessing of God upon Jacob and his family and their acquisition of the land
during this world-wide depression and famine at that time we see the Egyptian
citizens coming toward the end of their seven-year famine cycle. As the last
couple of years approach they are running out of money to buy grain and food,
which was wisely stored up by Joseph. Joseph is a picture of wisdom throughout
this section, so we have to keep that as a back drop because as we loo at
Genesis 47 through the eyes of a lot of contemporary development we can come to
wrong conclusions because it doesn’t look good to us from our 20th
century vantage point. Yet the writer of Genesis is Moses under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit and is presenting a series of events in the life of Joseph
to show how wise he is as the savior of both the Egyptian people and the Jewish
people. Joseph is pictured here as being a blessing, not only to his family and
to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also he is a blessing to
Pharaoh and to the Egyptians. By the end of the chapter, in order for them to
survive—he doesn’t give them handouts—they get to buy to survive
but they do it with their own land and with their own property and with
whatever is left of their own cattle and their own livestock. It ends up
meaning that Pharaoh owns everything. At the end of the chapter the Jews have
autonomy but the Egyptian citizens have become what we would call debt or
indentured servants to the government which imposes under Joseph a twenty per
cent property tax in order to work the land and enjoy it. It is interesting
that when God sets up the Mosaic Law there is no property tax because God is
providing for a future for the generations so that they can acquire wealth. So
that there was a flat rate income tax of three different tithes in the Mosaic Law.
But the end of the chapter ends up with slavery.
What
does the Bible say about slavery?
What is the role of Christianity? And what should a Christian think about
slavery? If we listen to the secular media today that has this knee-jerk
reaction against Christianity and wants to blame Christianity for every ill
that comes along, then we are going to see that Christians get blamed for
slavery. It is true that there have been certain groups of Christians—using
the term in a very broad sense—that have been involved in the
justification of wrong forms of slavery. But it is not Christianity as
Christianity is taught that produced that; that came from other systems. In
fact, the only religious or philosophical system in the history of the world
that developed a system for abolishing slavery was Christianity. Abolitionism
could not grow out of Islam; it could not come out of Buddhism; it did not come
out of Hinduism; it didn’t come out of secular humanism, or any of the other
systems that have dominated the 20th century, from man in all of his
intellectual arrogance as he looks down his nose at Christianity.
William
McDonald in the New York Times wrote: “How an institution to spread a message
of love [Christianity] could also engage in brutality and persecution, and turn
a blind eye to slavery …” In other words, it is all you Christians’ fault. On
the other hand, on a web site for the Council for Secular Humanism we find the
following quote” “Slavery was a close companion of Christianity and was not
thought to conflict with religious doctrine.”
Christianity
did not invent slavery; it goes back into the deep, dark recesses of the
post-Noahic flood era. We have no indication of it before the flood but it may
very well have been practiced before the flood. But slavery in one form or
another was practiced by the Sumerians, by the early Babylonians, by the
Hittites, by the Canaanites, by the Egyptians. It has been practiced by the
Greeks and by the Romans, by the inhabitants of North America known as the
American Indian. All of these different groups practiced slavery. It happened
in Africa: black on black slavery hundreds of years before Christianity came
along. Aristotle considered that some men were born in such a way that they
naturally ought to be slaves. So there has been a justification from human
viewpoint throughout the centuries that some men are naturally born to be
slaves and others are different. Even in some of the early years of the church
there were writers such as Justin Martyr and others who wrote against slavery,
that this was not consistent with what the Bible taught, that men should love
their brothers as themselves.
By
the late 18th century the British Empire was deeply involved with
the slave trade. Starting in the 1600s they had started transporting African
slaves from Africa to the West Indies, and this went on and increased
dramatically through the 1700s, so that by the time of the American war for
independence there were about 100,000 slaves a year being transported from the
heart of Africa to the western hemisphere as slaves. This was a major economic
enterprise in the British Empire.
But
it was at that time that there were some key evangelicals—using the term
in a correct way. Men who believed in the inerrancy and infallibility of the
Word of God, that the only way to have eternal life was to put your faith alone
in Christ alone, who were committed to the basic orthodox views of the church.
This was before there was the influence of Protestant Christian
liberalism—like William Wilberforce who was the prime mover and shaker in
the movement against slavery. But it did not begin with him. There was another
man who was an even stronger influence in the movement, and although he wasn’t
a member of Parliament at the time he was very influential. His name was
Granville Sharp. One of the things he did in his spare time was become a master
scholar in Greek. But one of the things he was deeply concerned about was that
slavery in the form of cattle slavery was inherently wrong. We need to make a
distinction between cattle slavery and what is called debt slavery or what
might be called an indentured servitude. When we come to the Scriptures we see
there is a distinction between those two positions.
There
were several early movements to try to abolish slavery. There was Justin Martyr
and there was also Patrick of Ireland. By the time of the end of the eighteenth
century there was a group of people develop called the Clapham Sect. They met
in the small village of Clapham just outside of London and really weren’t a
sect in the pejorative sense of a cult. They were just a close fellowship of
evangelical Christians, most of whom were very powerful and very wealthy
English lords and gentlemen. They met together for the purpose of mutual
encouragement because it was a time in England where England recognized that
they were in a period of moral and spiritual decline. These men recognized that
God had placed them in a unique position because of their wealth, influence and
political power to have a positive impact on the nation. It is important to
understand how they did that, what their motivation was, and what their
theological framework was, because we will see some differences between what
happened in England and what happened in the United States; and theology is at
the very core. Theology drives every issue in life; there is no issue in life
that is not ultimately driven by a theological perspective. If you start off
with bad theology at the get go you are going to end up with wrong application
and it will bring with it consequent problems.
William
Wilberforce was a native of Kingston Upon Hall. He was born in 1759 and raised
by some evangelical relatives of his parents but did not become a believer until
about 1784 when he was about 25 years of age. He was educated at St. John’s
College in Cambridge and in 1780 when he was 21 years of age he became a member
of Parliament for Hall. Later he was a representative for Yorkshire. At that
time he became an intimate friend of William Pitt. William Pitt was the one who
labelled him the nightingale of the House of Commons because he had the ability
to sway people with his tremendous oratory. So he was very involved in politics
from the time he was 21 on and in representing his constituency. In 1784 and 5
he was travelling on the Continent and was reading the New Testament and also a
tract written by a Philip Doderidge, and while he was reading that he
recognized that Jesus Christ had died on the cross for his sins and he trusted
Christ as his savior. Unlike many Christians he recognized that that meant he
had to overhaul all of his thinking from the ground up in terms of what the
Bible said. He recognized that God had saved him for a purpose and placed him
where he was in society and in politics for that purpose. He didn’t get there
easily. Initially he wanted to go into the ministry, but there was a pastor who
was involved to some degree and knew many of the people involved in this
Clapham group who became his mentor. This pastor told him that he didn’t need
to go into the pastorate, he needed to recognize that God had placed him in the
House of Commons for a purpose and that he needed to serve the Lord there as a
member of Parliament. This young pastor had the well-known name of John Newton.
John Newton was a former slave ship captain and slave trader. He trusted Christ
as his savior and left the slave trade and became a pastor who eventually wrote
a hymn that is sung now and then by people, called Amazing Grace. Newton was a
mentor for Wilberforce for the rest of Newton’s life; he was somewhat older
than Wilberforce.
Wilberforce
kept his position in Parliament and he became involved with other believers who
were involved behind the scenes to influence the government and to influence
legislation. This was the beginning of what snowballed into the golden era of
evangelical Christianity during the Victorian era. It was the decisions that
were made by these men in a lot of different ways that set the foundation for the
rise and development of missions and the world missionary movement that came
out of England in the 19th century. It had a tremendous impact
because of a lot of things that they did. For example, in 1787 they established
the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. In 1799 they established the
Church Missionary Society. In 1804 they established the British and Foreign
Bible Society. In 1796 they established the Society for Bettering the Condition
of the Poor. They also involved in establishing the Society for the Reformation
of Prisons. They were involved in the founding of the Society for the
Propagation for the Knowledge of the Gospel among the Jews. Wilberforce was
involved in that, he was very much a pro-Zionist, believing that the Jews had a
right to their own homeland. He also founded the Society for the Promotion of
Manners because it had come to a point by the end of the eighteenth century in
England where people just didn’t know what good manners were anymore. They did
this because they understood what provided stability in a nation, and that
stability could only come from the eternal principles of God’s Word, and they
were simply applying these. Some of these men were members of government,
others weren’t, but they were extremely influential. Their impact extended in
England down through the 19th century and into the early part of the
20th century.
What
distinguished these men from American abolitionists was their theology. It is
very important to understand their theology. In terms of bibliology they
believed that the Word of God was inerrant and infallible, that it was inspired
by God, breathed out by God, and thus infallible. Because they believed that
the Bible was inerrant they believed what the Scriptures taught was absolutely
true. Thus, when the Scriptures taught, as in Acts 17:26, that God made all
nations of one blood, men said all human beings were equally descended of Noah
and of Adam, and thus every single human being, whether they were from the
heart of the dark continent or whether they were Asian or European they were
equally in the image of God. Therefore no one was inherently any better or any
worse. In theology proper they were Trinitarian, but they believed that God
governed and superintended human history. They had a sound view of God as the
creator and consequently man as the creature. That leads to anthropology, the
biblical view of man. They believed that all human beings were created in the
image of God, and thus equal, and they believed that all human beings were descended
from fallen Adam and were equally fallen, so that every human being was totally
depraved, and that because he was born a sinner he would die a sinner and could
not be perfected. He was constitutionally fallen, therefore man was able to
grow as a believer but he was not perfectible. The implication of that is that
if man is not perfectible, society is not perfectible. If society is not
perfectible then that means that part of the role of human government is to
suppress evil and criminality. When it comes to salvation they believed that
because man is a sinner there had to be a spiritual substitute for him on the
cross. They believed in an atonement that was a substitutionary atonement; that
Christ died in the place of us. Their eschatology grew out of their views on
man’s condition, on anthropology and salvation. Some were amilennial but most
were pre-millennial. That is why they had positive views towards Israel and
were involved in missions to Jews being established in England.
Their
motivation grew out of grace orientation and humility. They weren’t trying to
perfect society, they didn’t believe it was the government’s job to bring about
a utopic and perfect society, but it was the role of the government to suppress
evil and criminality and that the Bible was the ultimate authority in defining
what evil and criminality is, not man.
In
1788 a hundred petitions were signed attacking the slave trade and this went
before the House of Commons. The next year, in 1789, Wilberforce gave his first
speech in the House of Commons, but he knew he didn’t have enough information;
he hadn’t done enough homework yet to build his case. In 1792 the House of
Commons voted in favour of the principle of abolition of the slave trade but
the next year there was the episode across the channel called the French
Revolution. That upset everyone in England who thought they were headed for
anarchy, so they reversed themselves in 1793, because they were afraid that
something like the anarchy of the French Revolution would take place in
England. In 1791 Wilberforce had again addressed the House of Commons and he
was beginning to gain more and more support. It was finally some 15 or 16 years
later on 23rd February in 1807 that the House of Commons voted. At
that time the opposition to the principle of abolition had their back broken
and they voted in favor of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the
British Empire. But that did not end it, there was another 20 years of battle,
and finally the Emancipation Act was passed on 25th July 1833, just
four days before William Wilberforce was to die.
Professor
G. M. Trevallian in his work, The British History in the Nineteenth Century, says, “On the last night of slavery in
the British empire the negroes in our West Indian islands went up on the
hilltop to watch the sunrise bringing them freedom as its first rays struck the
waters. But far away in the forests of central Africa, in the heart of darkness
yet unexplored, none understood or regarded the day, that it was the dark
continent that was most deeply affected of all. Before its exploitation by
Europe had well begun the most powerful of the nations that were to control its
destiny had decided that slavery should not be the relation of the black man to
the white.”
What
is interesting is that that was 1833, but that doesn’t end the slave trade in
Africa. There were Arabs still carrying on their historic slave trade,
capturing black Africans and selling them into slavery. This reached another
peak in the 1870s and it was necessary for England to loan one of its more
brilliant military men and more eccentric Christians, a man by the name of
Charles Gordon. He had gotten a lot of fame because he had been used earlier in
China to put down one of the longest rebellions that had ever taken place, and
he received the title “Chinese Gordon” as a result of that. He is also known in
the history of Christianity because he had a tendency to go to all the great
historical sites in the Middle East and would reject the traditional sites of
Calvary, the tomb, Ararat, and many other places. He had his own view. He was
rather mystical and would go out and have these mystical insights. He was
eccentric but was a tremendous military leader. He was put on loan to the
Egyptian government and was sent down in to the Sudan in order to stamp out the
slave trade in the heart of Africa, which he did. He gained great fame for
that.
Some
ten years later in the middle of the 1880s—once again, note it is another
evangelical believer—Gordon was sent down because of his background in
the Sudan when the radical Islamo-fascists claimed that the 11th Makti
[sp?] had arisen. He was martyred but he delayed the radicals long enough to
get a British army together and go down to defeat the Moslems. All of this
happened as a result of the abolition of the slave trade. The abolition of the
slave trade engineered by Wilberforce had all these ramifications throughout
history. Moslems have been angry about Khartoum and what the British did in the
1880s, and that is what fuels a lot of the stuff going on today.
Notice
something. When they abolished the slave trade and slavery in England, did they
have a civil war? No. Did they have any civil unrest? No. Do they continue to
have racial problems generated by that in English society today? No, they
don’t. They have racial problems like everybody does, but for other reasons,
not out of the slavery situation. It could be argued that the reason they don’t
have these problems is purely theological. The movement to reform society was
generated by men of humility, men who understood man as he was, a totally
depraved sinner. They weren’t trying to perfect society, they were trying to
bring in the Millennium, they weren’t trying to impose anything on anybody,
they were simply trying to end an evil. But over in America … in the 18th
century was the first “great awakening” which happened in the 1740s. In this
historical setting Calvinism is good. Everybody who came to America in the
1600s and 1700s was Calvinistic in his theology to one degree or another. The
Pilgrims and the Puritans had a Calvinistic view of theology and a very high
view of God and a very low view of man because they understood man to be a
sinner.
Sometime
after the first great awakening towards the end of the 1700s there was a
controversy that came up within Calvinism called new light-old light Calvinism.
The new lights were what we would call the liberals. One of the shining stars
in the galaxy of new light Calvinists was an evangelist who came out of the
second great awakening, which began in the early 1800s, by the name of Charles
Finney. There are a lot of people who think that Finney was one of the great
evangelists, but there is doubt that Finney was saved. There was nothing
biblical about the man’s theology. He was born in Connecticut, raised on a
farm, entered into the legal profession, and claimed to have a religious
conversion in 1821. He entered into the St. Lawrence presbytery in 1823 and was
mentored by a pastor in the study of theology, probably heavy on new light
Calvinism.
Let’s
compare the theology with the categories we have seen about the theology of the
evangelicals in Britain with Finney. Finney: Adam sinned, it only affected Adam
Everybody else gets born just like Adam was originally created, pure as the
driven snow. Everybody has pure free will, just like Adam had pure free will.
Everybody is born good and can theoretically make the right decisions and never
sin and never fall. Man is basically good. People by nature, then, are improvable
on their own. Society, then, will be perfectible. In new-school Calvinism
people have the ability to repent and to give themselves new hearts. They
basically save themselves by their own morality. That fits with his view of
salvation. He held to a governmental view of the atonement, that salvation is
by morality, so people just have to be encouraged to want to be saved. So it
boils down to emotion. If you want to make a decision for eternity, then you
just walk the aisle. But I have to motivate you, so we’re going to sing 27
verses of Just
As I Am, or something else, and we’re just going to keep singing it until
everybody is out of the pews and up front. All of this had its roots in
Finney’s theology, because man can save himself and make himself favourable. So
if man can save himself and make himself favourable and man is improvable, then
society is improvable and it is the goal of the Christian to improve society.
Why? Because he is post-Millennial. Jesus comes back at the end of the
Millennium. That means the church has to bring it in. So the church has to
morally improve society in order to bring in a utopia so that Jesus can come
back. Well, we can’t have a perfect America unless we solve our big social
sins, and the first social sin was slavery, the second was alcohol, the third
had to do with labor and union rights, the fourth to all the poor women who
couldn’t vote, the fifth with child labor. (Doesn’t that just describe American
history for the last 180 years?) That was their goal. If we can just end all of
these social sins we will, have a utopic society and Jesus can come back. That
has been made secular in the years since, but that was Finney’s motivation.
What is the underlying motivation that thinks that man can save himself?
Arrogance. Arrogance always polarizes people.