Christian Heroes | The Atlantic Slave Trade
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The Slave Trade
The Atlantic slave trade was, and still is, an awful indictment of human nature. The fact that so called civilised and Christian societies could engage in such a revolting activity shows the true nature of the human heart. No one can doubt that the very nature of people is evil. Simply because these people had a different skin colour, whole societies felt justified as treating them as mere objects, possessions that they could mistreat and abuse. And it was whole societies that participated in this evil. If people do not oppose such evil acts then they are also responsible for what happens.
It must not be forgotten that, although the West was the market place, it was various African tribes who were actually capturing and selling people as slaves. The slave trade could not have existed without Africans who were prepared to sell their own people, albeit that they belonged to a different tribe! Even in these days, Africans are taking other Africans as slaves in many of the countries in Africa. And it was not only the African peoples who have been the victims of slavery. The English Feudal system was a form of slavery and this lasted for a long time.
However it was the personal dedication of a number of Christian men and women that eventually caused the English Parliament to abolish the slave trade. It took eighteen years from his first attempt to ban this evil trade in human beings until the Act was passed. It took a further twenty six years before Parliament resolved to free all slaves throughout the British Empire.
Slavery still exists in many parts of today's so-called civilized world. Are you doing anything, no matter how small, to try to bring the United Nations to ban such evil? Your own intervention may seem to be too small to have an affect but you do not know the impact that your protest has in the long term and, even more important, God knows what you did!
Visit this article on understanding slavery at this excellent Discovery School web site.