[ExI] History of Slavery

[gts]

Lee Corbin wrote:

> By coincidence, the next day after reading this I came across this
> passage in Sowell's "White Liberals and Black Rednecks" which
> supports exactly what you have said:
>
>      Quakers were the first religious group to find slavery
>      morally intolerable...

Yep!

You might be interested to know how I came to learn this important factoid  
about the Quakers...

A couple of years ago I happened to watch Dr. James Kennedy on television  
(if you don't know, he's a prominent conservative evangelical) give a talk  
on the subject of "Christian Statesmanship". I was moderately impressed  
with Mr. Kennedy's speech until he referred to a public meeting of some  
sort at which he had been present. In reference to others present at the  
meeting, he said, "There were no liberals in the room; God at work!"

Wow, he lost me there. I didn't know God did not like or did not want to  
be in the presence of liberals. :)

That comment also made his speech seem to me a bit hypocritical. He was  
applauding the anti-slavery efforts of William Wilberforce, a conservative  
Christian and a member of the conservative Tory party in England in the  
1780's. Wilberforce, Kennedy suggested, was a Good Christian who deserved  
most or all the credit for abolishing slavery in England.

I didn't know much about the history of slavery in England, but I thought  
it odd that ultra-conservative Dr. Kennedy was speaking about a basically  
liberal idea even in a speech in which he suggested political liberals  
were heathens. So I did a little research. I learned that although  
Wilberforce certainly deserves plenty of credit, his abolitionist ideas  
were rejected initially by his fellow Torys. Indeed it was thanks to the  
liberal Whigs that abolitionism gained a foot-hold in the House of Commons:

"Most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the House of Commons were  
opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely  
on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan,  
William Grenville and Henry Brougham."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwilberforce.

So who exactly was Dr. Kennedy kidding here? :)

Anyway...to make a long story short.... it was while studying Wilberforce  
that I learned that the humble, peace-loving Quakers played an important  
major role in abolishing slavery in England just as they did here in the  
USA.

The Quakers were way ahead of their time, both here and in England. I  
think American Evangelicals would do well to study and emulate their  
Quaker brethren.

-gts

P.S. (Please ignore the fact that Richard Nixon professed to be a Quaker!  
:-)