Continuing
William Wilberforce's legacy
Setting
captives free in 2007
by
Jim Uttley
There's
been a lot of talk in recent days about slavery. There's
even been an apology.
On
February 24, 2007, the Virginia General Assembly voted
unanimously to express “profound regret” for
Virginia’s role in slavery. According to the sponsors
of the resolution, no other state has passed such a measure.
Missouri is considering doing the same.
“This
session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20
years hence I suspect one of those things will be the
fact that we came together and passed this resolution,”
said Delegate A. Donald McEachin, who sponsored the resolution
in Virginia’s House of Delegates.
Interestingly
enough, the resolution also expressed regret for “the
exploitation of Native Americans.”
Virginia’s
apology was introduced as Virginia begins the 400 th anniversary
celebration of Jamestown , where the first Africans arrived
in 1619.
The
United States Senate will be considering an official apology
to Native Americans. The bill sponsored by Kansas Senator
Sam Brownback was first introduced in April 2005.
Key
to defeating slavery
The
last weekend of February, a film depicting the life of
William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament
who was the key to defeating slavery in the British Empire
opened across North America . Entitled Amazing Grace
, it includes a dramatic portrayal of John Newton,
former slave trader, who penned the famous hymn by the
same title.
At
the time that Wilberforce sought to rid Great Britain
of slavery, about 50,000 new slaves were being boarded
onto ships each year. While that was a horrendous number
in 1807, did you know that there are many more children
sold into sex slavery every year in the 21 st century?
And this says nothing of the millions of adults around
the world who are held in other forms of slavery in mines,
factories, plantations, and mills.
If
you haven't already noticed, there's an excellent article
about this tragic crisis facing our world, entitled “Slavery
Lives Again” beginning on page 5 of this issue.
The
most difficult challenge that Wilberforce and his supporters
faced was helping people understand the brutality that
was a major force behind the whole slave industry in his
day. In an odd sort of way, a majority of British citizens
actually believed that the slavery provided some sort
of paternalistic support and protection for slaves. They
failed to see that slavery was not only brutally violent,
but also inhumane and actually a crime against humanity.
While
many of today's Christians have known about the current
tragedy of slavery around the globe, most have not realized
that the basis of today's slave industry is also forceful
violence. Today's slaves are forced to work and are coerced
and terrorized. They are also learning that poverty, ignorance
and spiritual darkness are major factors that fuel slaves
vulnerability and they need people to rescue them from
their slave masters.
Some
will ask, “So what does this have to do with First
Nations peoples?” While the forms and causes of
imprisonment are different, it's a sad fact that many
Native peoples are imprisoned in some form of slavery
which is perpetuated by poverty, ignorance and spiritual
darkness.
Slaves
in our own backyard
We've
heard talk in recent days about the Third World conditions
many First Nations people are forced to live in. We hear
and see reports of people living on reserves and reservations
in deplorable housing with unemployment rates close to
90 percent. We hear that drugs and alcohol abuse is rampant
and the suicide rates are three times what they are in
mainstream society. Yet many people fail to see these
conditions as a form of slavery.
It's
slavery if people don't have control over their lives
and destiny. If people aren't given the tools they need
to make positive changes.
It
is heartbreaking that the system created to protect and
care for Native people actually gives them few if any
avenues to begin to take control of their own situation
and search for ways of improving their conditions.
So
what can be done?
Perhaps
it's time for people to begin challenging the government
concerning how it deals with Native people. Canada 's
Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and the U.S.
's Bureau of Indian Affairs have become huge bureaucratic
complexes, consuming hundreds of millions of dollars each
year with very little actually benefiting the average
Native person.
We
challenge our readers to contact your government representatives
to reexamine how Native people are treated in North America
and press for sweeping changes to Indian Affairs and the
federal, state, and provincial justice systems.
We
encourage you to go see the movie Amazing Grace
and read the book. As you do, ponder not only the tragedy
of slavery that Wilberforce confronted 200 years ago,
but the tragedy facing us today, not only abroad but also
in our own backyard.
We
encourage Americans to tell your senators to support Senator
Brownback's apology to Native Americans. Canadians ought
to press their representatives to ensure that the recommendations
made as part of the official apology to Aboriginal people
be carried out.
Yes,
there are hundreds of millions of people living in Third
World conditions who are suffering from a plague of violence—rape,
prostitution, slavery, domestic abuse, substance abuse,
illegal detention, police abuse, land seizures and treaty
violations, and extortion.
We
have much to thank and commend Wilberforce and Christian
advocates in the 19 th century for confronting violence.
They revolutionized Britain and America fighting against
slavery, child labor, sex trafficking, lynching, police
corruption, and oppression of women and children.
Ultimately,
we believe that a person's life can only be changed through
a personal relationship with our Creator and this can
only be found through Jesus Christ. Apart from this, other
changes will only be superficial. Yet in sharing this
good news with the suffering and broken, we also need
to speak out against the evils of our day.
How
sad it will be if people get excited about what William
Wilberforce did to abolish slavery in 1807 but fail to
act to begin setting slaves free in 2007.
