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Text — Romans 8:18-25
I consider
that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing
with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation
waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;
20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will
but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the
creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will
obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know
that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;
23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first
fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the
redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope
that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if
we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
In 1783, in London, England, a newspaper
printed a letter to the editor about a case being heard in a London
courtroom. The case involved a ship that had sailed from Africa to
Jamaica with 440 slaves on board. The slaves were very tightly
packed on board, and that, coupled with headwinds and bad
navigation, made the crossing take longer than expected and many of
the slaves became very sick.
The captain was worried because his job was to
deliver the cargo in good health. Dead or dying slaves made no
profit. The captain ordered 133 of the sickest slaves to be thrown
overboard, and he ordered the crew, if they were ever questioned
about this, to say it was done because the ship was running out of
water. The value of the lost slaves could then be recovered by
cargo insurance. The last batch of slaves tried to resist so they
were thrown overboard with their hand and leg shackles still on.
Living in London at this time was a former
slave, Olaudah Equiano. He could read, and he read in the newspaper
a letter to the editor about this case and he was outraged because
the captain wasn’t being tried for murder but for insurance fraud.
The slaves were considered to be a commodity.
Olaudah Equiano stirred up a lot of interest
in this case, which resulted in many letters and pamphlets being
circulated all over England, and as a direct result of his efforts,
the subject of slavery became the topic for the Cambridge Latin
Essay Contest.
This contest was a big deal. The winner
became a kind of celebrity. One of the entrants was Thomas
Clarkson, who was preparing to be ordained as a clergyman in the
Church of England. Clarkson later said he had no interest in
slavery, but he entered the contest “for the wish of obtaining
literary honour.”
But in preparing for his essay, he read as
much as he could find about the slave trade. He sought out people
who had worked on slave ships and interviewed them, and as a result
of this research, as he put it:
“I felt myself
overcome. In the day-time I was uneasy. In the night I had little
rest. I sometimes never closed my eye-lids for grief… I always
slept with a candle in my room, that I might rise out of bed and put
down such thoughts as might occur to me, conceiving that no
arguments should be lost in so great a cause.”
Clarkson won first prize, and not long
afterwards as he was riding his horse toward London and a promising
church career, but he found that slavery still engrossed his
thoughts.
“Coming in sight
of Wades Mill in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf
by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my
mind, that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time some
person should see these calamities to their end.”
In London, Clarkson met a Quaker friend of the
family. At the time, the Quakers were the only religious
denomination that had come out against slavery, but the Quakers were
considered oddballs and they were delighted to have a respectable
Anglican deacon on their side. One late afternoon, in a print shop
after closing hours, a small meeting was held to discuss Clarkson’s
question: How could these calamities could be brought to an end.
The odds against any success in their effort
must have seemed huge. In 1787, perhaps as much as 75% of the
world’s population lived in some form of slavery or severe bondage.
In parts of America, slaves far outnumbered free people. Slavery
was routine in most of Africa, in the Arab world, in India and
through most of southern and eastern Asia. In Russia, the majority
of the population were serfs. Slavery had been a part of human
experience as far back as anyone could see. The Biblical patriarchs
had slaves. St. Paul seemed to condone slavery in his letters.
For a tiny group of oddball Quakers and one
Anglican to think that they could bring an end to slavery, or to end
even the slave trade — must have sounded ridiculous.
The British economy was intertwined with
slavery. Maritime slave trade was big business. Building slave
ships was big business. Sugar plantations and banana plantations in
the Caribbean were big business. Slave ships employed huge numbers
of sailors. Companies that made scissors and knives profited from
slavery because these items were used as currency in the purchase of
slaves.
This tiny band of activists had very little
reason to believe that their efforts could succeed, but they were
passionate and creative. They printed posters, pamphlets and fliers
like the one shown on your bulletin cover today. Inside your
bulletin is a diagram from one of these pamphlets showing the
implements that were used to control and torture slaves.
They found a sympathetic metal worker who made
brass medallions showing a shackled slave, with the words around the
edge, “Am I not a man and a brother?” These medallion became a
fashionable women’s accessory which suggests that under the surface
of British society was a recognition that slavery was wrong.
Slowly, this movement touched the conscience
of the British people. 9/10 of British people couldn’t even vote
themselves, which makes it even more striking that they cared about
the problems of people of a different color who lived far away.
They circulated petitions to the House of Commons. Some of the
petitions that came in were as long as the House of Commons itself.
The arguments in defense of slavery were
predictable. Slavery was part of the natural order. The whole
world economy would collapse if slavery were banned. If even slave
trading were banned, it would be taken over by the French, who would
treat the slaves much worse. Slave traders and owners said they
could be trusted to regulate themselves to improve living
conditions.
In 1807 the slave trade was abolished, and it
was felt that slavery itself would soon disappear. The slave death
rate was so high, it was felt that without more slaves being shipped
in, the whole system would collapse. Ironically, the end of the
slave trade made slaves more valuable, so their living conditions
and survival rates improved, and reproduction provided plenty of new
slaves for another thirty years.
But this campaign to abolish slavery kept
pushing. Arguments against slavery became more common in
newspapers. These newspapers reached the West Indies, where they
encouraged and incited slave rebellions.
And there were other factors undermining the
value of slavery to Great Britain. Sugar could be made from sugar
beets in Europe, so sugar plantations in the Caribbean became less
profitable. The West Indies were tied more closely to the United
States anyway.
There are many fascinating details to this
story. I can’t go into a lot of them in the time I have, but the
result is that on Aug. 1, 1838, about 800,000 slaves in the British
Empire gained their freedom. This was a day of great jubilation,
but it wasn’t the end of the problems for these former slaves.
A few years ago, Robin and I visited the
Caribbean island of Dominica, which was where I became interested in
this story. In 1838, the British essentially walked away from their
plantations and left 10,000 African slaves in a mountainous jungle
to fend for themselves without a government, without any means of
trade. This was perhaps as cruel as slavery itself, and there is
still huge suffering on the island as a result of that abandonment.
So the cost of slavery continues to be paid for a long time.
The British emancipation certainly fueled the
anti-slavery movement in the United States, and the emancipation of
U.S. slaves was another moment of jubilation, but of course that
wasn’t the end of the true cost of slavery for our nation either.
The true cost of slavery is still being paid here too, and we
celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. as one who renewed the vision of
human community in the past century.
But I find this story of Olaudah Equiano, and
Thomas Clarkson, and his Quaker friends inspiring because the
movement they ignited started so small — one evening in a print
shop, and because their goal must have seemed to most people so far
out of reach.
Think of all the moral failings around us
today, and how impossibly idealistic it seems that we will ever see
these calamities brought to an end. I’m thinking of the growing
chasm between the rich and poor, not only in our country but around
the world. I’m thinking of the terrible suffering of animals in
factory farms, the trashing of our environment (which will be the
subject of our 2nd hour today), the power of corporations
that seem to have as much or more to say about what happens in the
world than governments do. I’m thinking of our assumption that war
itself is inevitable, a part of the “natural order” that has always
been with us and always will be.
Many of you give your time and money to oppose
these modern-day “calamities” and when you attend those meetings and
write those checks it’s easy to feel like a foolish dreamer. But
the world needs people willing to be seen as foolish dreamers.
There’s a famous statement of Margaret Mead,
the famous anthropologist:
“Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” |
