Fighting slavery

Ownership, a recently published book by Sean McGever on the serious failings of some key 18th-century evangelicals, namely George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards with regard to the issue of slavery, has been a great reminder of the fact that our heroes from that era were human beings like ourselves – broken and bent. And yet, there were some, thank God, who were steadfast in their denunciation of both slavery and slave trade.

One such figure was Abraham Booth (1734–1806), who has appeared on a couple of earlier occasions in this column. He was widely admired within the Particular Baptist denomination, the Christian community among which he ministered for most of his life. Benjamin Beddome, the great Baptist hymnwriter of the 18th century, is said to have exclaimed: ‘Oh, that Abraham Booth’s God may be my God’. Andrew Fuller, another Baptist leader of that era, once described Booth as ‘the first counsellor’ of their denomination.

But not only Baptist contemporaries viewed him highly. The Anglican evangelical Henry Venn was a lifelong friend and admirer, while Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, a remarkable patron of Evangelical causes, took the time to come to his ordination in February, 1769.

His congregation at Little Prescot Street in London genuinely adored him for what contemporaries called his ‘unsullied purity and kindliness’. One of them penned a most moving, though brief, tribute in the church minute book after his death: ‘He sought not ours, but us’.

Preaching against the slave trade

Booth’s love for others was very evident in an influential sermon that he preached against the slave trade on 29 January, 1792: ‘Commerce in the Human Species, and the Enslaving of Innocent Persons, inimical to the Laws of Moses and the Gospel of Christ’. The great moral blight upon the landscape of the British world in the 18th century was the slave trade and its concomitant, slavery. It is noteworthy that numerous Evangelicals of that era, like Booth, regarded it as important not only to preach the gospel of divine grace but also speak to burning social issues.

Booth’s sermon opened with a statement that is redolent of the 18th-century values. Incumbent on every human being, according to Booth, was the duty ‘to adore our Almighty Maker, to confide in the Lord Redeemer, and to exercise genuine benevolence toward all mankind’. Booth was convinced that the promotion of such ‘cordial affection for our neighbours’ was part of ‘the great end of an evangelical ministry’. Booth went on to emphasise that the Christian faith is intimately bound up with ‘the exercise of moral justice, of benevolence, and of humanity’, and as such he was prepared to take a public stand against the slave trade, ‘the stealing, purchasing, and enslaving of innocent persons’.

Booth argued that the slave trade was inimical to the ethical teaching of Christ. Christians are to love their enemies and do good to them that hate them (Luke 6:27). ‘If our sovereign Lord requires benevolence and active love to our enemies’, surely, Booth reasoned, he cannot require any less to those who are not our enemies, which would certainly include the Africans, who are unknown to the slave traders prior to their being enslaved.

The doctrinal teaching of Jesus also stood in marked contrast to the thinking that informed the slave trade. According to Booth, the gospel was ‘the doctrine of divine benevolence to man – of mercy to the miserable, and of grace to the unworthy’. Through the gospel God sought to do good to sinners, ‘Jews and Gentiles, Europeans and Africans, without any difference’. What a contrast this was to the slave trader, whose profession seeks to ‘diversify and propagate human misery’ and was one ‘completely fitted for universal abhorrence’.

It is noteworthy that Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), a key abolitionist, considered Booth’s sermon one of the most important documents in the early stages of the anti-slavery movement.

In word and deed

Booth’s sermon concluded with some pointed directions as to how Christians can be involved in the fight against the slave trade. First of all, Booth mentioned prayer ‘for the interposition of Providence to abolish the detestable traffic in man’. In an early memoir of Booth, William Jones recalled how ‘the cries and tears of the oppressed Africans pierced every fibre of his [i.e. Booth’s] soul – their pitiable case took deep hold of his heart, and became much the subject of his entreaties at the throne of grace, both in public and private’.

Booth not only preached and prayed about the end of the slave trade, he also took an active role in sending petitions to Parliament in order to effect its end and collecting monies to aid in the fight. Not surprisingly, then, Booth emphasised in his sermon that alongside prayer there should also be action: ‘prudent, peaceable, and steady efforts, in order to procure the total abolition of that criminal traffic, and of the cruel slavery consequent upon it’.

It was Booth’s fellow Baptist, Caleb Evans (1737–1791), the Principal of Bristol Baptist Academy, who said in a sermon that he preached on 16 August, 1775, with regard to the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘When we pray for the advancement of this kingdom, if we are not willing to do all we can to advance it, our prayers cannot be genuine, they are hypocritical’. Booth would have been in full agreement.

The union of word and deed in Booth’s life stands as a powerful model for us in our very different day – yet still one of great human distress and need – to follow.