William Wilberforce has been the subject of both acclaim and scepticism over recent weeks. Precisely how far was he responsible for the abolition of the British slave trade?
Lurking beneath this specific question has been the broader one of faith in public life. Does it improve or impair us? Does it work or not? Does it even belong in public?
The complex relationship between Christianity and the slave trade makes it an interesting test case. On the whole the Church of England Bishops sided, at least at first, with the Establishment, arguing that the abolition of the slave trade would be disastrous to the Empire’s economy. In the West Indies the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts owned a plantation. Its governing board included the Regius Professors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Slaves were branded with a red-hot iron with the word ‘Society’.
Despite noticing the plantation’s high death rate, the clergy on the society’s board made no move to change how it operated. Indeed, in 1760 the then Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to a fellow bishop, 'I have long wondered and lamented that the Negroes in our plantations decrease, and new supplies become necessary continually. Surely this proceeds from Defect, both of Humanity, and even of good policy. But we must take things as they are at present.'
The flip side of this is that it was the Christian faith of William Wilberforce, among many others, which inspired and sustained the abolition campaign.
Wilberforce’s conversion in 1785 had a profound impact on him. His immediate thought was to leave parliament and become a clergyman but he was persuaded otherwise by, among others, the Revd. John Newton, a one time slave trader himself.
By 1787 the two pre-eminent concerns of his life had emerged: first, to spearhead the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, and second, to promote moral and spiritual reform at home, the so-called ‘reformation of manners’.
This complicated relationship between Christianity and slavery prevents easy conclusions about the role of faith in public life. However, it is telling that only a minority of the opponents of abolition based their position on religious arguments. For the majority, economic concerns were paramount.
Conversely, the vast majority of abolitionists, not least Wilberforce, based their arguments and campaign on the Christian faith, understanding the gospel to be wholly incompatible with the horrors of slavery. They wielded their faith openly in public.
It is worth remembering this when we hear secularists call for the privatization of faith today. Only the most blinkered would claim that religious faith was an unalloyed good. But privatising it is not the answer. For if we did, we would be gagging the next William Wilberforce.
