Editorial: remembering abolition

Two hundred years ago Parliament made the British slave trade unlawful. The Act of 1807 did not end slavery, and it did not end the trade, which continued illegally and was long defended by other states. Its anniversary invites reflection rather than simple celebration.

Commemoration, celebration or repentance

The official word is commemoration. A good deal of the public language has been celebratory. Some, especially among the descendants of the enslaved, have spoken of repentance, and their point is not easily dismissed. Britain profited from the trade for generations before it renounced it.

Race and memory

Slavery rested on ideas about race that outlived abolition and shaped the Empire that followed. Many black Christians in Britain and beyond regard the anniversary as the beginning of a longer reckoning rather than the end of one.

The Christian story

The abolitionists were overwhelmingly Christian, and evangelicals were prominent among them. That is a true and honourable part of the story. It is also true that many devout Christians of the same era owned slaves or looked away, and that enslaved people themselves resisted and believed, often with a Bible in hand.

In this issue

Three articles take up the theme. One reads Paul's letter to Philemon in the light of recent scholarship on slavery in the New Testament. One traces evangelical attitudes from accommodation to abolition. The third examines how a former slave read Scripture against the trade in his own book, published in 1787.