Wesley, Wilberforce and the battle against slavery
Written from his deathbed, John Wesley’s last letter was to the young William Wilberforce MP.
The letter (right) was written on 24 February, 1791, six days before Wesley died. At the time, Wilberforce was engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to pass an abolition bill.
Wesley wrote to encourage Wilberforce in his campaign:
". . . if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing.
Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!. . ."
Wesley met enslaved people for the first time when he visited Georgia in 1736. He would go on to preach on the issue and, in 1774, he published his "Thoughts Upon Slavery", decrying the abuses of slavery and calling for its abolition. On the title page, he quotes the words of God on discovering that Cain has murdered his brother Abel: “And the Lord said, ‘What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.’” (Genesis 4:10) (Thoughts on Slavery is available to read in full online.)
In 2007, the year that marked the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in Britain, Richard Reddie (then project director of Set All Free) wrote in the Methodist publication Momentum:
"At a time when many in Britain were ignorant of the brutality and immorality of African enslavement, Wesley railed against this vile institution. His Thoughts Upon Slavery was truly a seminal publication. Although the language seems archaic by today’s standards, Wesley’s insights into the dynamics of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, its effects on Africa and the false justifications used to endorse it, are spot on. He shows that Africans had civilisation and culture, and dismisses ideas of the slave trade being beneficial for the continent. He also debunks misconceptions about Africans being more spiritually or physically suited to enslavement.
"Slavery went against Wesley’s belief in the dignity and equality that should be given to everyone made in the image of God. What is morally wrong cannot be politically or economically right, he says."
In the light of modern day trafficking, Richard says: "Wesley’s words are a clarion call to challenge, poverty, people trafficking and inequalities such as racism. The question is, can we end the work began by Wesley and the other abolitionists?"
In his blog What does the British Methodist Church have to do with slavery?, Professor of Theological Ethics David Clough gathers together a number of “snapshots” of British Methodism’s engagement with slavery, and concludes:
“Perhaps there is more to celebrate; perhaps there are more complex and compromised parts of the story. Whether one or both of these is the case, I’m convinced that getting better acquainted with our history in this area is an important part of what is necessary for the church to work to resist the racism that unhappily is still a feature of our church life.”
Additional reading and resources
United Reformed Church’s Legacies of Slavery archive
John Wesley and William Wilberforce by Lex Loizides
On Singing the Faith Plus:
John Campbell's hymn Cry, "I can't breathe!", with accompanying notes
Discover “the forgotten life of a campaigning hymn writer”, John Greenleaf Whittier (author of “Dear Lord and Father of mankind”, and read about James Montgomery's opposition to the slave trade. (Hail to the Lord's anointed, StF 228)
God in chains: hymn reflections on the film 12 Years a Slave (PDF)