The Liberating the Captives conference in Sydney on 24 March,

2007 celebrated the bi-centenary of the Abolition of Slave Trade Act and the witness of William Wilberforce. The conference also provided the occasion for the launch in Australia of a new abolitionist campaign to address global slavery in its contemporary forms. The conference featured David Batstone, former editor of Sojourners, author of Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade — and How We Can Fight It (HarperCollins, 2007) who has launched the Not for Sale campaign aimed at building a movement to end slavery in our lifetime. http://www.notforsalecampaign.org

Today’s slavery targets the most vulnerable in our community, the women and children. According to the U.S. Department of State’s “2005 Trafficking in Persons Report, of those individuals extracted out of impoverished countries and trafficked across international borders, 80 percent are female and 50 percent are children.

According to Batstone, there are more slaves now, up to twenty-seven million across the world, than in Wilberforce’s day. Most confrontingly, Batstone argued, on the basis of substantial evidence and his own experience in the United States, that if you “Go behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today and you are likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings. You may even find slavery in your own backyard.”

Batstone called for a new abolitionist movement, powered by a similar faith commitment to that which drove Wilberforce, a movement that would move beyond freeing the slaves to providing a future for them that included restoration, economic empowerment and community linkage.

All of us wonder how we would have acted in the epic struggles of human history. Imagine we lived in rural Tennessee in 1855 and Harriet Tubman came to our door, asking us to join the Underground Railroad. Would we have stood up and been counted among the just? There are times to read history, and there are times to make history. We live right now at one of those epic moments in the fight for human freedom. We no longer have to wonder how we might respond to our moment of truth. Future generations will look back and judge our choices, and be inspired or disappointed.

The conference at the Wesley Mission in downtown Sydney pulled in over 200 participants, including a high proportion of young people and students. World Vision Australia’s Stop the TraffiK Project, http://www.stopthetraffik.org.au/events/, TEAR Australia, and Micah Challenge, along with the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute and University of Technology Sydney Anti-Slavery Project http://www.antislavery.org.au/ actively cooperated in the conference. In celebrating the bi-centenary, beyond the call for a new abolition movement, the conference addressed the historical and theological background to Wilberforce’s campaign. Superintendent of the Wesley Mission, Keith Garner, drew attention to the theological roots of Wesley’s stand against slavery, Wesley’s public writings against slavery and his encouragement of Wilberforce in his prolonged campaign. Historian Stuart Piggin, from Macquarie University, cast light on the wider impact of Wilberforce’s political activism with a fresh and penetrating account of the historical impact of Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect on the shaping of nineteenth century Australian society and some suggestions for its relevance to Christian social activism today.

Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia drew connections between the substantial challenges faced by Wilberforce, from vested interests in the campaign against slavery and the current campaign to “make poverty history”. Workshops addressed a range of practical issues dealing with slavery and poverty including “Ethical Investment”, “Globalisation and slavery” and “What can be done about Slavery in Australia Today.”

David Batstone is professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco and is author of Saving the Corporate Soul & (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own, which won the Nautilus Award for “2004 Best Business Book”. For the last six years, Batstone was executive editor of Sojourners magazine and the creator of the SojoMail e-zine.

The most recent issue of Sojourners, March 2007 is devoted to the issue of slavery.

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0703&article=070310

(submitted by Doug Hynd, Canberra)