In My Year with God, Svend Brinkmann seeks to explore how someone can find meaning in religious faith in a modern, secularised world informed by science. The book is set out as a diary spanning one year, with each month addressing a particular question in connection with religion or faith. Thus, the author documents his thinking on a range of subjects, such as what religion is, how it might relate to morality or what the nature of the soul might be. The approach is commendable: the writing is accessible and honest, and Brinkmann adopts an enquiring and thoughtful approach to his subject. Indeed, he states from the outset that he has always been ambivalent about religion but recognises many important insights from religion and religious philosophy. As a Professor of Psychology (as well as a renowned public speaker, the author of several books and presenter of a radio series), Brinkmann is very knowledgeable and is as at home with philosophy and sociology as he is with his own discipline. It becomes clear fairly early on, however, that while he considers himself a ‘cultural Christian’, the book is to depart some way from the central tenets of Christianity.
Distinguishing between faith and religion, Brinkmann considers the former to be personal and connected with the individual’s ‘total reaction upon life’ (to use the language of William James), while the latter is defined in communal or social terms, as a collection of rituals and symbols that binds people together.
Following John Caputo’s thought about the ‘weak God’, he arrives at a position whereby God, as an independently existing, transcendent being, is rejected in favour of a view that considers the Almighty to be ‘the unconditional’: a moral demand that we recognise the obligation to help fellow human beings in need. God is thus recast as the absence of human perfection, which we strive to address: ‘ … God can be considered a term denoting an absence in the world – one humans are required to remedy to the best of their ability’ (page 168).
Likewise, while opposing a mechanistic view of human beings as robots made of meat, Brinkmann suggests that the soul is not an object that we can locate; rather, following Wittgenstein, he suggests that it is a way of regarding others – as people rather than objects – that demands a certain attitude. As the author says with regard to both the soul (pages 85-87) and God (pages 39-45), they insist rather than exist. Thus, they are really terms to describe moral obligations, the character of existence and our attitudes to others. Likewise, the notions of resurrection and the afterlife are reinterpreted in terms of one’s legacy in the community to future generations, in passing on the importance of our moral obligations.
As for the Bible, this is understood as expressing truths about human nature in terms of social psychology (in the creation story found in Genesis), while the teaching of Jesus highlights the moral demands of the unconditional: ‘The Bible is, therefore, a source of both psychology and ethics. As I see it, both can be expressed without a mythical belief in an omnipotent, celestial God or the rewards of an imagined afterlife … the teachings of the Bible pave the way for perhaps the most real and meaningful form of faith, because it’s only with the death of God – the revelation of the impotence of the Almighty’s omnipotence, as symbolised by the Crucifixion – that humankind is called upon to have faith. After that, it’s up to us. The Bible’s promises of resurrection and eternal life then become about passing down the narrative of the unconditional to succeeding generations’ (page 114). Jesus, then, becomes a person who embodied ‘the unconditional’ in Christianity, about whom we tell stories in the absence of any proof of the existence of God – the unconditional (page 182-3).
When reinterpreted in secular terms, then, religion and faith ultimately have to do with our moral relations with others and the search for meaning, and provide a way of speaking about these central aspects of our lives in a way that the purely causal, mechanistic, materialistic language of empirical science cannot. An important facet of religion, therefore, is what it enables us to say or express. As the author says, ‘ … we need the language of poetry and religion to comprehend life. If it makes sense to talk about religious truth, then it must be poetic’ (page 179). Religion and faith therefore help us to express those experiences and relations that are of fundamental importance to us as human beings, but the traditional truths posited by religion are re-interpreted in secular terms. In accordance with the author’s ‘social’ definition of religion, many of our secular practices (such as grieving and commemoration) retain a religious character.
Given that this book amounts to the author’s personal reflections on a series of religious questions – and one conducted in a respectful and open manner – it is difficult to be critical. As Brinkmann himself says, ‘Many will object that this is a very strange idea of God. And that’s fine’ (page 178). There are several matters that invite comment, however. Some might wonder whether his treatment of scripture is somewhat thin: reducing Jesus’ teaching to a message about the unconditional, for instance, is perhaps something of an over-simplification that misses the radical novelty of Jesus’ message, particularly in relation to the Hebrew scriptures. The author does acknowledge that he runs the risk of being accused of being a dilettante when it comes to theology but expresses the hope that his reflections will provide food for thought (page 172-3). Interestingly on the matter of scripture, he asks: ‘why is it the Bible, of all books, that is so crucial to conveying the message of the unconditional? Why couldn’t it be Harry Potter or Star Wars, both of which are also about good and evil? An essential part of the answer is probably that it is simply due to the Bible’s reception history. It is the Bible, and especially the New Testament, that conveyed this message first – and most clearly. Other texts simply follow its lead’ (page 118). Many Christians would take the view that the reason for the Bible’s reception is that is emphatically not like Harry Potter or Star Wars, as libraries of exegetical scholarship have demonstrated.
A more fundamental problem is that the book fails to engage directly with religion itself, as lived and experienced by its practitioners. The subtitle, which does not appear on the cover, is ‘Faith for Doubters’. Both title and subtitle might lead one to expect a book in which the author, though sceptical, decides to give religion a try in its concrete form – perhaps by attending church services, visiting catechetical groups or talking to worshippers – and recording his reflections. Since the book was written at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps this was an intention that was thwarted, but it is an unfortunate omission and can only result in a somewhat hollowed-out analysis of the content and role of faith in people’s lives. A fundamental aspect of religious life is missed and a good deal of the core content of religion is removed by (re-)interpretation. Religion and faith are thereby reduced to an individual ‘reaction on life’, a set of symbols and rituals that have a social role, a form of language and a moral demand. Given the author’s starting point, perhaps this is the most sympathetic and complete treatment one could expect – but it is thoroughly immanent. In placing everything squarely in this world and stripping away the transcendent, together with the experience of religion itself, the final picture that emerges is a long way from anything that most Christians would recognise.
Sympathetic, honest and open as it is, this book represents a year of reflection, using scholarly resources, on questions relating to faith and religion – but it is not a year with God. As a thoughtful and personal reinterpretation of God, faith and religion, that seeks meaning in a modern, secular context, it is interesting, but those approaching it from the position of an existing faith are likely to find little with which they can seriously engage.
‘My Year With God: Faith for Doubters’ by Svend Brinkmann, was published in 2022 by Polity (ISBN: 978-1-5095-5272-6). 193pp
Neil Jordan is Senior Editor at the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics. For more information about Neil please click here.
The history of the liberals, radicals, socialists, feminists, and Christians who advocated for free trade as the necessary accompaniment to anti-imperialism and peace is the subject of Marc-William Palen’s Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World. Pax Economica was a term promoted by Jane Addams of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, whose idealistic vision was of such a world after the catastrophe of the First World War (page 199).
Today, free trade is most often associated with neo-liberal economic thought but Palen demonstrates that its origins are rooted in nineteenth-century left-wing politics, with its advocates promoting a heady blend of peace, anti-imperialism, and free trade: a vision at odds with the powerful currents of nationalism, protectionism, and colonial expansion.
The book charts the continuous movements for free trade from the 1840s to the present day. Its scope is broad in time and space, with the core themes often intersecting with major events across the period. The vicissitudes of the drive for free trade as the harbinger of a peaceful world is prominent, and its mutability is closely considered and evaluated.
Palen reveals how, for some of its more left-wing adherents, free trade represented a challenge to imperialism and militarism. In its most idealistic form, it was held that free trade would create international bonds of union, dependence, and harmony which would make war obsolete. Suffice to say, that idealist vision has not materialized.
Nonetheless, the vision of a ‘Pax Economica’ evolved to include supranational regulation, and the establishment of post-1945 liberal institutions such as the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which did meet, albeit insipidly and ultimately disappointingly, their support for global governance and cooperation. Yet Palen’s work is not primarily a history of international institutions but rather a detailed study of the left-wing vision of globalism. In the main, this means a roll call of movements, pressure groups, and individuals, mostly those employing an ‘outsider strategy’ as a means of changing policy. The work is ambitious, immaculately researched, and a timely publication amid the resurgence of economic nationalism and geopolitical conflict.
The text, divided into six chapters, ranges over an extensive landscape, encompassing the anti-imperialism of free trade, Christian pacifism, socialist internationalism, feminism, and Marxism. The idealism conflating free trade, peace, and prosperity is well-delineated, and the intellectual antecedents well-identified and contextualized, with Richard Cobden, Henry George, and Norman Angell referenced throughout in multiple contexts. The geographical diaspora of free trade sentiments is a fine testimony to the vibrancy and durability of these ideas.
The book considers these developments, broadly defined, with short-hand organizing themes such as the ‘Marx-Manchester’ and ‘Marx-List’ traditions. Continuity of struggle and complexity of the tasks are keynotes of the work, from the battle against the systemic protectionism of the 1840s to the current disputes over trade liberalization and neoliberalism.
Indeed, divisions over the legitimacy of free trade principles were explicitly made with the publication of Friedrich List’s National System of Political Economy as early as 1841 at the height of the campaign for economic liberalization in Britain. Economic nationalism, as a counterpoint to free trade, features prominently, with List’s ‘infant industry’ framework and the ‘American System’ of Alexander Hamilton appearing equally, if not more, historically important, in the commercial policy of nations. The idea of tariffs as a shield against foreign competition, and more positively, as an economic development strategy, proved highly influential in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and even Britain.
Free Trade has always been presented in many different guises, and Palen effectively demonstrates that it is intersectional and situational. It could be a liberal, socialist, or anti-colonial force, for the variegated ‘productive profile’ of nations meant it possessed different connotations and meanings on a country-specific basis. While viewed as a liberating measure in Victorian Britain, the same policy preferences led to it being considered by less-developed countries, such as India, Ireland, and China, as a tool of economic imperialism, used against territories which had ‘suffered under the yoke of British free-trade imperialism’ (page 109). Conversely, protectionism, while historically often reflecting the dominance of political and business elites, was often considered, especially in recent times, integral to the economic development of emerging states, and in anti-colonial national struggles. Hence the terminology of ‘Marx-List’ and ‘Marx-Manchester’ traditions as a way of understanding political economy preferences via national subjectivities and economic complexities. Undoubtedly owing to constraints of space, the book does not go far in its forensic analysis of divergent commercial policy preferences, and a particularly notable omission is the extent to which policy preferences were influenced by the fiscal demands of increasingly democratic electorates.
Chapters on free trade feminism and Christian pacifism demonstrate the continuing influence of Cobdenite ideas into the twentieth century. The final chapter takes the story up to the present day, charting the post-war Bretton Woods system, and the triumph of the Pax Americana and neoliberalism, with the caveat that economic nationalism aligned with infant-industry strategy continues to challenge the long-standing association between equity and free trade. Argentina is usefully highlighted as a case study of a nation adopting a growth strategy informed by Listian and American System ideas as ‘economic blueprints’ for development (page 196).
In a divided and unequal world, an absolutist stance for free trade has often been construed as entrenching inequality. Interestingly, free traders often reconciled these Global South infant-industry strategies as a rational, though hopefully temporary, response to Western neo-liberalism, which preached free trade but practiced protectionism. Most notable in that respect, despite the guiding principles of Reciprocity and Non-Discrimination promoted by the World Trade Organization, is the recent surge of regional trade agreements delimiting and protecting rather than expanding market access.
In some ways, the timing of the book’s publication in 2024 was unfortunate, and the idea that the ‘neo-liberal order has been placed on notice’, appears chimerical. With rising global geopolitical tensions, and war in Ukraine and Gaza, any notion of Pax Economica appears unlikely (page 222).
Nonetheless, the analysis within the book is broad-ranging, conceptually coherent, and highly informative. A particular strength is the ability of the author to convey the changing nature of free trade movements, yet while the breadth of the study is highly impressive, it does necessitate a sacrifice of depth in places.
The book is primarily an intellectual and institutional history with a plethora of organizations, acronyms, and an eclectic array of individuals. At times, it would have been useful to know how popular many of the cited organizations were, and how long they lasted. Some readers may find the numerous terms, ideologies, adjectives, and acronyms difficult to follow. Equally, the thematic approach means there is some reiteration and repetition.
Nomenclature is a little odd at times, with John Bright described as an ‘antislavery activist’ and Cobden as an ‘opponent of slavery’ (page 155). It is not that these descriptions are inaccurate but that they convey a limited view of individuals whose backstory is much wider than suggested by the description. There are also some contentious points, such as the claim that the Manchester School ‘envisaged the gradual decline of the nation-state, and with it the elimination of national rivalries and trade barriers’ (page 97). Despite its purported universalist and utopian principles, there existed many, maybe even Cobden himself, who supported free trade at least partly because it aligned with vested class and/or national interests. Self-interest could co-exist with or even be disguised by idealism. Indeed, trade agreements today, such as the USMCA, are examples of managed and negotiated free trade, which are a far cry from the voluntarist model promoted by free trade idealists portrayed within the book.
At times the book appears a somewhat breathless account (indicated by 65 pages of notes and a 20-page index) in covering so many events, times, and places but there is much to be gained from a close and careful reading of the text.
In sum, the book will interest scholars and general readers. It follows the tradition of ‘broad sweep’ history, informed by a considerable body of research and synthesis, and as such is thought-provoking, engaging, and interesting to read.
‘Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World’ by Marc-William Palen was published in 2024 by Princeton University Press (ISBN: 978-0-69-119932-0). 309pp
Gordon Bannerman is a professor teaching Business History at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Guelph-Humber, Ontario. His primary research interests focus on modern British political and economic history.
In this deeply researched study, Joseph Slaughter describes the organization, economic power, and cultural impact of three different Christian businesses in pre-Civil War America. He calls attention to the underappreciated of role of Christian enterprise in the development of capitalism and points to descendants of his three examples among evangelical businesses today.
Harmony is Slaughter’s first example. Under the zealous authority of George Rapp, the community of German Lutheran immigrants dominated textile manufacturing in several parts of Pennsylvania and Indiana in the 1820s and 1830s. Harmonists were not always welcome neighbors. With cotton mills, silkworm farms, and new steamboats, Harmonists competed for markets and resources with more efficient organization and more aggressive fiscal operations than their neighbors.
Expectations of Christ’s immanent return contributed to their work ethic and separatism from ordinary society. Rapp’s commune was laying the groundwork for Christ’s return, and the new millennium Christ would inaugurate. With that prospect in mind, community members worked as a unit with strict rules and a strong leader, apart from the allegedly corrupt world of their neighbors.
The Pioneer Stagecoach Line is Slaughter’s second example. In contrast to the separatist piety behind Harmonist enterprise, the Sabbatarian business led by Josiah Bissell, Jr. sought reform and moral improvement throughout American society. Unlike other stagecoach lines in upstate New York that ran seven days a week, the Pioneer Line stood firm against the sin of work on Sundays. Funded by Calvinist Presbyterians and Congregationalists, with cooperating inns along the line to accommodate rest and worship on Sundays, the Pioneer Line aspired to hold all Americans to the nation’s covenant with God, modeled on that of ancient Israel.
The Line enjoyed some initial success. Only a year after its inception in 1828, it commanded two-fifths of the market for stagecoach travel in the busy region around the newly opened Erie Canal. But this success was short-lived. While some riders welcomed morally upright travel, Josiah Bissell’s aggressive sanctimoniousness irritated others, making him a butt of jokes. The Line also struggled to find and retain experienced, cooperative drivers. It went out of business in the early 1830s.
Slaughter’s third and most compelling example of Christian business success is Harper & Brothers. Founded by four siblings and staunch Methodists, Harper’s grew from a printing business into the foremost publishing enterprise in pre-Civil War America. Headquartered in New York City, Harper & Brothers struck it rich with the Illuminated Bible they published in 1846, followed by the popular Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, first published in 1850 and still in print today under an amended title. Harper & Brothers is the most lucrative, expansive, and long-lasting of Slaughter’s examples.
In Slaughter’s typology of Christian businesses – Pietist, Reform, and Arminian – Harper’s exemplifies Arminianism, a theological term for belief in the free will often associated with Methodism. As an expression of their investment in free will, the Harper brothers approached their book and magazine business as means of encouraging virtue in individuals through helpful reading. The Harper Brothers engaged with individuals in the world around them, unlike the Harmonists whose Pietism demanded separation from the corruption of their neighbors. And unlike the challenge to Sunday travel posed by Sabbatarian stagecoaches, Slaughter characterizes the Harper’s Arminian enterprise as an effort not to Reform the world by challenging its immorality but to redeem the world through individual persuasion.
The great contribution of Slaughter’s book lies in his attention to three examples of Christian enterprise in the early United States, never studied as thoroughly before, or sufficiently appreciated for the varying degrees of economic and cultural influence they exerted. That said, Slaughter’s case for the importance of Christian enterprise in pre-Civil War America rests mainly on the shoulders of Harper & Brothers. While some conservative Christians complained about Harper & Brothers’ openness to fiction, and some intellectuals complained about the Brothers’ lack of interest in serious new literature, Harper publications played a major role in shaping the reading culture of nineteenth century America.
The relationship between the Harpers’ Arminianism and the emerging culture of American consumerism merits further discussion. Slaughter invites but does not pursue discussion of religion’s contribution to consumerism, and the prominent role of Methodism and its offshoots played in shaping and propelling its development.
There is also more to be said about the impact of economic and industrial development on Christian life in the early US. In his fine-tuned descriptions of industrial innovation at Harmony, the Pioneer Line, and Harper Brothers, Slaughter invites discussion of industrialism’s influence on American religion but does not develop it.
With respect to Slaughter’s claim that, “the role played by CBEs (Christian business enterprises) offers an alternative to the competing narratives of the Social Control and Democratization Schools” of American religious history, I would disagree. Slaughter’s examples point not to a third and alternative narrative for American religious history but rather to an interesting combination of social control and democratization.
It is difficult to imagine a stronger example of religion as a form of social control than George Rapp’s community. He ruled Harmony with a firm hand, organizing his people as if they were cogs in a machine, with each adult assigned to one specific task to be repeated perfectly. Rapp organized children as well, tasking them with powering mills and gathering worms.
The Reform stagecoach line established by Josiah Bissell can also be appreciated as an effort at social control. Bissell wanted Americans to observe the Sabbath as he thought it should be observed. His Pioneer Line was created to reform the business of American travel, based on the principle that Sabbath observance was fundamental to Christian life and to the nation’s upholding of its covenant with God.
With their commitment to reading as a means of persuading individuals toward virtue, Harper & Brothers falls more easily into a democratization narrative about American religious history. But the Harper’s story also shows how democratization and social control could be overlapping. The Harper story supports a democratization story in which a religious business is able to shape society precisely because it is more indirect, and more respectful of individual will than Pietist or Reform business.
Through the triumph of Arminianism outline in this book, Faith in Markets points to the integration of familiar and often competing narratives of social control and democratization. Evidence of that integration can be seen in the trajectory of Christian enterprise that Slaughter’s examples reveal. Readers interested in US economic history will enjoy this book, as will readers interested in the interplay of religion and American business.
‘Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic’ by Joseph P. Slaughter was published in 2023 by Columbia University Press (ISBN: 978-0-23-119111-1). 400pp.
Amanda Porterfield, Emerita Professor of Religion at Florida State University, is the author of Corporate Spirit: Religion and the Rise of the Modern Corporation (Oxford University Press, 2018).
On the 24 February 1807, the House of Commons voted by 283 votes to 16 to end the trade in human slaves in all British territory. The principal opponent of the slave trade within Parliament and a leading figure in the diverse coalition of campaigners against the evil trade was a man named William Wilberforce. He worked closely with others building a broad coalition for the common good.
Wilberforce’s faith led him to campaign not only against slavery but also for wider moral reform of society and to his involvement in a range of organisations that are still going today.
In this publication (written for an April event with CCLA) Richard Turnbull introduces William Wilberforce.
A PDF is available here and the full text is below.
William Wilberforce is an iconic figure. He was the principal opponent of the slave trade within the British Parliament and a leading figure in the diverse coalition of campaigners against the evil trade in the country. Who was William Wilberforce and what lessons can we learn from him?
On 24 February 1807, the House of Commons voted by 283 votes to 16 to end the trade in enslaved people in all British territory. The slave trade had been in existence for around 300 years. Even when Parliamentary action commenced in 1789 there was still a long road of nearly 20 years before abolition. Why had it taken so long to achieve such a majority? Wilberforce first introduced an abolition Bill in 1789. For years he was blocked by vested interests, parliamentary procedures, the House of Lords, and varying degrees of both support and prevarication by the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806). The tide finally turned in 1806 under a new government.
Wilberforce was not perfect but he was a man of great character, resilience and faith. He suffered from ill-health for much of his life, not least very poor eyesight. He worked with others for the achievement of the greater good, forming coalitions that went beyond his own position of faith. He was described in the final debate prior to the vote for abolition as a man of ‘unwearied industry’, ‘indefatigable zeal’ and ‘impressive eloquence’.[1]
Wilberforce campaigned on this issue – and indeed many others – from the position of an explicit Christian commitment. He was perhaps the most prominent example of an evangelical Christian in Parliament at the end of the eighteenth century. He had converted to this form of Christianity in 1785 in the aftermath of a great revival or awakening which had swept Great Britain and North America in the middle decades of the century. Wilberforce believed that society needed this passionate love for Jesus and commitment to the teaching of the Bible, and nowhere more so than in the campaign against the slave trade.
Wilberforce’s faith led him to campaign not only against slavery but also for wider moral reform in society. He was involved in key evangelical organisations and a project to establish an evangelical newspaper, the Christian Observer. He also published a widely popular theological tract, known as A Practical View.
His evangelicalism was a distinctly moderate version which placed him at some odds with the wider movement, especially as time went on. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1780 to 1826, representing three different seats in that time. In a period when politics and personalities were more fluid, he clearly associated with Tory groups and personalities, but always sought election as an independent. He remained a backbencher, never seeking or being offered high office. He was a significantly more complex character than is often appreciated.
[1] Sir John Doyle, Slave Trade Abolition Bill, Hansard, col 977 (23 February 1807). Note that the sitting is recorded as having taken place on 23 February but the vote actually took place at around 4am on 24 February.
Wilberforce was born in Hull in 1759, to Robert and Elizabeth Wilberforce. The family were prominent merchants in the city. With Hull being on the east coast rather than west, the city’s wealth derived primarily from trade with the Baltic countries rather than the slave trade.
Wilberforce’s childhood brought him at various points into contact with Christians of the more evangelical sort, which his mother did not appreciate. At Hull Grammar School, he came under the influence of the Milner family, later a significant evangelical family. However, in 1768, after his father’s untimely death at the age of 39, his mother, unable to cope sufficiently well, sent him to an uncle in Wimbledon and he attended a boarding school in Putney. His aunt belonged to the evangelical banking family of the Thorntons, and it was partially their influence that led William’s uncle and aunt (William and Hannah Wilberforce) to embrace the evangelical faith. This influence included taking William, at the age of 11, in early summer 1771, to meet John Newton (1725–1807) in his rectory at Olney, Buckinghamshire. Newton also became a prominent anti-slavery campaigner, and years later Wilberforce would seek counsel from him. Both Wilberforce’s mother and his grandfather were unhappy at these influences and Elizabeth removed her son from Wimbledon amid family disagreements.
Back in Hull, all was not straightforward – Joseph Milner (1744–1797), the school head, had turned ‘methodist’.[2] Wilberforce would, naturally, not be able to return to the school. So, he was despatched to Pocklington, near York, to board. The attractions of Hull during the school vacation – theatre, balls, cards, gaming, concerts and plays – all proved increasingly attractive to Wilberforce. Any early religious influence was pushed out of him. He entered the University of Cambridge in 1776 but there, in essence, he wasted his time. It was, however, while at Cambridge that Wilberforce first met and formed a friendship with William Pitt, the future prime minister, and he resolved to become an MP.
[2] The term ‘methodist’ was generally used at this time to describe any adherent of evangelical faith rather than the specific denomination, which emerged later in the century.
Wilberforce, finding no real reason to remain in Cambridge for the purposes of studying, began to travel to London and attend the visitors’ gallery at the House of Commons, along with William Pitt, who was also seeking a political career. The two developed a lifelong friendship that would at times be strained by the slavery question but that, nevertheless, endured.
In 1780, an election was looming. Elections prior to the Reform Act of 1832 were very different affairs from what we are used to now. Hull, with 1,500 electors made up of the town’s freemen, was not a pocket borough (an electoral district under the control of one person or a family) – though the freedom of the town was a piece of hereditary property! With his family connections, Wilberforce’s home town offered a viable seat.
There were two seats, one occupied by the Tories and the other by the Whigs. Wilberforce stood as an independent. The costs of running in an election anywhere could be high. The electorate almost demanded entertainment, and beer was a prerequisite. Moreover, to run in Hull with its 1,500 electors would incur additional expense. Several hundred of the electors lived in London. Not only did they need to be entertained but also, if they were to cast their votes in Hull, provision would be needed for their travel and lodging expenses, not to mention a going rate to cast their vote for the right candidate. The one thing the freemen feared most was an uncontested election!
Wilberforce’s preparation and work paid off with a dramatic result: he topped the poll. On 31 October 1780, at the tender age of 21, he took his oath as an MP. We must remember that while parties did exist, much politics at this time was heavily influenced by factions (groups of interest formed around powerful people). Wilberforce remained an independent but was gradually drawn into a revived form of Toryism around Pitt. In 1784 he was elected for the county seat of Yorkshire (with an electorate of 20,000), again as an independent but unopposed by the Tories. Wilberforce remained close to Pitt but was not invited to take office, then or subsequently.
Let us turn then to Wilberforce’s conversion and his adoption of the Christian faith as a living, vibrant, personal faith as understood by evangelicals at the time.
With the county election out of the way, in late 1784, Wilberforce set off on the traditional European tour for young men of his age with either an aristocratic family or a degree of status and wealth. The idea was to introduce the ambitious rising talent of the nation to the sights, the experiences and the encounters with art, philosophy, religion and culture that would come from being immersed in the daily life of Europe. These tours could last several months and were usually undertaken in the company of others. Wilberforce was accompanied on his tour by his mother, his sister and some female cousins. However, for male company he chose Isaac Milner (1750–1820), the younger brother of Joseph. Isaac was ordained, a mathematician, and a fellow and later president of Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was also an evangelical, the only downside from Wilberforce’s family’s perspective.
It was, in fact, one of his travelling cousins who gave Wilberforce a book written by one of the leading Protestant dissenting ministers of the time of the revival: Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. Wilberforce needed to be back in Parliament and he and Milner left Nice on 5 February 1785. Wilberforce asked Milner whether the book was worth reading. Milner replied, ‘It is one of the best books ever written. Let us take it with us and read it on the journey.’[3]
In this way, Wilberforce began to be introduced to Christianity as a living, vibrant personal faith, as it was understood by evangelicals. The book covered the classic themes of evangelical faith, often known at this time as ‘vital religion’: self-examination, prayer, devotions, diligence and prudence, divine providence, and the certainty of death and judgement. Milner challenged Wilberforce to examine the scriptures themselves to see whether he found the same themes.
There is some evidence in Wilberforce’s diary he now felt a degree of disdain towards his own moral failings as well as those manifest more broadly in society. By June 1785, he and Milner had returned to Europe, meeting up with the women of the party in Switzerland. He objected to attending a play, refused to travel on a Sunday, and complained about the corruption and profligacy of the times. Significantly, he was also, by now, studying the Greek New Testament with Milner. By autumn 1785, his conversion was complete. He wrote:
I hope as long as I live to be the better for the meditation of this evening; it was on the sinfulness of my own heart, and its blindness and weakness. True, Lord, I am wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked. What infinite love, that Christ should die to save such a sinner and how necessary is it he should save us altogether, that we may appear before God with nothing of our own! God grant I may not deceive myself, in thinking I feel the beginnings of gospel comfort. Began this night constant family prayer, and resolved to have it every morning and evening, and to read a chapter when time.[4]
In brief, the evangelicalism Wilberforce embraced gave weight to the scriptures and to justification (being declared righteous by God), conversion, preaching, the Christian life and divine providence. As Hannah More (1745–1833), another early pioneer, put it, this version of faith was not merely an opinion or sentiment, but a disposition – a turning of the whole mind to God.
In a letter to Pitt, Wilberforce mentioned the temptation to turn away from society and the world – perhaps to pursue ordination but certainly to withdraw from politics. The prime minister’s friendship with Wilberforce was deep and meaningful. He affirmed this friendship in responding to Wilberforce, referring to ‘the appearance of a new era in your life’.[5] Pitt urged Wilberforce to remain in public life:
If a Christian may act in the several relations in life, must he seclude himself from them all to become so? Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple, and lead not to meditation only but to action.[6]
Pitt and Wilberforce met for two hours to discuss Wilberforce’s future on 2 December 1785. We do not know the direct outcome, but within days Wilberforce had sought a meeting with John Newton, now rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the centre of the city of London – the same John Newton that he had met as a child. Newton counselled Wilberforce to remain in public life. Nearly three years later, he wrote to Wilberforce, ‘It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of his Church, and for the good of the nation.’[7]
Wilberforce was now ready to turn to new causes, purposes and actions in order to serve both God and the nation.
Wilberforce returned to the public political arena in 1786. He was a changed man. The following year he declared, ‘God Almighty has set before me two great objects … the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.’[8]
Wilberforce now got involved in a wide range of campaigns, activities and projects. In 1787 King George III, under the influence of evangelicals, issued a proclamation for the encouragement of piety and virtue. Evangelicals were always against sin, but particularly the sin of others. Wilberforce gathered the great and good together to form the Society for Giving Effect to His Majesty’s Proclamation against Vice and Immorality, including Members of Parliament, peers, bishops and, of course, the prime minister himself, William Pitt.
The Proclamation Society was born. Drunkenness, gambling, prostitution and public decency were all areas of concern. The non-evangelical commentator Sydney Smith snorted that the concern was only with reforming the morals of the poor. Hannah More complained of the hypocrisy of imposing restrictions on the common people concerning pleasures happily continued in the houses of the nobility. In 1802 the Proclamation Society became the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and it remained the evangelical vanguard for campaigns on matters of indecency and obscene articles and publications.
[3] Robin Furneaux, William Wilberforce (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974), pp. 33–34.
[4] Diary, 28 November 1785, quoted in Michael D. McMullen (ed.), William Wilberforce: His Unpublished Spiritual Journals (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2021), p. 58.
[5] Pitt to Wilberforce, 1785, private papers, quoted in William Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London: Harper Press, 2007), p. 85.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Newton to Wilberforce, 12 September 1788, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 88.
[8] Diary, 28 October 1787, quoted in McMullen, Wilberforce, p. 83.
Wilberforce gathered around himself a wide group of evangelicals who supported and campaigned with him. This group of Christians prayed together, lived in the same immediate vicinity and worshipped together in the local church. Evangelicals in Parliament at this time were generally known as ‘saints’; the term ‘Clapham Sect’ actually derives from an article by Sir James Stephen (1789–1859) – son of the lawyer James Stephen (1758–1832), who was one of their number – in 1844. This group has a significant place in history and represents a central plank in not only the abolitionist campaigns but also those for moral improvement, philanthropy and the wider role of Christians in public life.
The origins of the group really lie with the Thornton family. John Thornton (1720–1790) was a wealthy merchant who converted to evangelicalism and inherited an estate on the southern side of Clapham Common. After his death, his youngest son – the convinced evangelical Henry Thornton (1760–1815) – purchased Battersea Rise House, on the western side of Clapham Common, while his brothers inherited the original nearby estate.
Henry Thornton consciously set out to provide the setting for a group of lay evangelical leaders for mutual encouragement and support in the aim of transforming society. He added two wings to the house (giving it a total of 34 bedrooms) and built a magnificent oval library as a meeting place for the Clapham group. He built more property on the site: houses which he let out to evangelical Members of Parliament. He secured the services of an evangelical cleric, John Venn, as the incumbent of Clapham Parish Church. Wilberforce moved into Battersea Rise House in 1792, and he remained there until his marriage to Barbara Spooner (1771–1847) in 1797, when they moved into another house on the estate. Other notable figures moved into Clapham as well: in 1797, the lawyer James Stephen (1758–1832), and in 1802, Lord Teignmouth (1751–1834) and Zachary Macaulay (1768–1838). Charles Grant (1746–1823), chairman of the East India Company, lived nearby. Others visited: Granville Sharp (1735–1813), Isaac Milner (1750–1820), Charles Simeon (1759–1836), and the above-mentioned Hannah More and John Newton. The core residents worshipped together in the parish church and were in daily contact.
They were primarily a lay group. They all brought a variety of gifts, skills and commitments to the table. Stephen was a lawyer, Grant an administrator, Thornton a banker and Wilberforce an eloquent speaker. All these skills would be brought to the fore as the campaign against the slave trade developed. Thornton gave away in the region of 90% of his income while single and 33% even when he had a family to support. Grant, Stephen, Thornton, Wilberforce and Thomas Babington (1758–1837), among others, were all Members of Parliament.
Significantly, they also worked with others, especially in relation to abolition, and several had close ties to the Quakers, who were leaders and early pioneers in the abolitionist movement. Members of the group were also the instigators of a wider variety of Christian voluntary societies and other initiatives, including the Church Missionary Society, founded in 1799, and a newspaper, the Christian Observer, first published in 1802.
Clapham was an evangelical centre. However, from around 1808 the residents, Wilberforce included, began to move elsewhere. Rather than a model to be copied, Clapham represented an important landmark, gathering point and support network for the early evangelicals in Parliament, giving birth to societies, campaigns and a newspaper – and, of course, forming the centre of the campaign against the slave trade.
Wilberforce was not a great intellectual, but he was a persuasive speaker and communicator. He wanted to set out his Christian beliefs and he did so in an extraordinarily influential treatise, first published in 1797. The book is generally known as A Practical View, which is unsurprising given the full title: A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity. The book is, as the full title reveals, something of a child of its age and in places is turgid and repetitive. The publisher was cautious: religious books seldom sold well, some of Wilberforce’s own friends advised against publishing, and little demand was anticipated. Wilberforce, though, did have national standing and the publisher risked 500 copies on the first run. They sold out within five days. Within six months, 7,500 copies had been sold; the book was a sensation and went through 15 editions in Britain during Wilberforce’s lifetime, becoming a bestseller.
Wilberforce made clear in the introduction that the book was not aimed at the sceptic but the nominal Christian. He argued that Christianity had become a faith of a vague assent to certain beliefs and generally moderate behaviour compared to others. Nothing he argued could be further from the particulars and specifics of what he termed ‘real Christianity’. He complained, for example, that many Christians saw vice as accidental rather than habitual – temporary rather than constitutionally engrained. To Wilberforce, the Christian faith had to be an all-consuming passion, dictating the whole of life and not restricted to either good works or Sunday duty. Consider just one illustrative quote:
How dexterously do they avail themselves of any plausible plea for introducing some week-day employment into the Sunday, whilst they have not the same propensity to introduce any of the Sunday’s peculiar employment into the rest of the week.[9]
His book was received with acclaim by his friends, the Christian public and, indeed, wider society.
[9] William Wilberforce, A Practical View (London: Cadell & Davies, 1798), Chapter IV, section II, p. 207.
The question of the slave trade and its abolition is a fascinating aspect of English history and one particular place where the general history of the nation intersects directly with the history of Christianity. We must ask honest questions. Opinion was divided.
Did the slave trade fail because of economic necessity or moral and ideological conviction? If the latter, were evangelicals at the heart of the matter or simply one part of a complex mosaic of religion and enlightenment rationality? There was also the issue of whether the conversion of slaves was more important to evangelicals than the abolition of slavery, though that may be a red herring.
There was undoubtedly a range of pressures upon slavery. However, central among these were the activities of the Clapham Sect, gathered around Wilberforce, who was the leading parliamentary agitator. Evangelicals were neither the first nor the only participants in the abolitionist movement, but they were central in this campaign to change public opinion, through petitions, publications and meetings in chapels. The evil trade was seen increasingly as a moral affront to God. Pragmatically, the campaigners aimed in the first instance at the trade in slaves rather than the institution itself – that came later.
The trade in slaves, long established, was regarded by the few who troubled to think about such things, as an unavoidable evil. This changed towards the end of the eighteenth century, for a variety of reasons, as, encouraged by the abolitionist campaign, the sense of revulsion grew. The slave trade had developed from the middle of the fifteenth century. After the first Europeans reached the Americas, vast agricultural and commercial opportunities were opened up and these led to the development of the triangular slave trade, which satisfied a craving for cheap labour in order to secure commercial advantage. The Old World and the New World became inextricably linked via Africa. In Britain it was the ports on the Atlantic west coast which were the focus of the slave trade, principally Bristol and Liverpool, which became heavily dependent on these activities. In the 1740s some 200,000 slaves were transported on British ships; at least double that number in the 1780s.
Some 85% of British textiles were exported to Africa as a crucial component of the slave trade. In 1783 Pitt estimated that 80% of British overseas income derived from the trade. Because it was triangular and hence (at least to an extent) largely hidden, few slaves ever appeared in Bristol or Liverpool. Rather, goods such as textiles and rum were taken by ship from those cities to West Africa, where they were traded in exchange for slaves, who were then transported in horrendous conditions on the Middle Passage to the West Indies and the southern part of North America. Here they were sold to work on the plantations, and raw materials and other goods, such as sugar, cotton and tobacco, were purchased and brought back to Britain.
To begin with, the captains of the slaving ships would sail along the West African coast for several weeks acquiring their human cargo as they went. However, this ad hoc approach to obtaining slaves was inefficient and was soon replaced by systems of agents and factories, where slaves could be gathered together in one place awaiting the arrival of a ship.
It was primarily the conditions of the Middle Passage, rather than those on the plantations themselves, which provided the fuel for the abolitionist campaign. When the human cargo was loaded, the slaves were often hysterical with terror. They were subjected to medical examination, and the old, the sickly and those with deformities were discarded and often killed.
Those who survived this process were branded with the owner’s mark and often flogged to force them onto the ship. They were crammed into the hold and kept chained in a space smaller than a coffin. Somewhere between 350 and 600 slaves were carried per ship. The more tightly packed, the greater the opportunity for profit even if there were losses, and considerable losses there were indeed. Foul conditions meant slaves often lay in their own filth for weeks on end. The mentally unwell and the dead were thrown overboard for the sharks. Disease was rife: smallpox, malaria, yellow fever. The average length of the journey on the Middle Passage was around 100 days. Sexual exploitation was also the norm, the crew taking their pick of the enslaved women. One slaver wrote, ‘Once off the coast the ship became half bedlam and half brothel.’[10] Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797), one of the few slaves who ended up in Europe, became a free man in around 1766. In 1789 he wrote his autobiographical An Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, African. In it he noted:
The stench of the hold, while we were on the coast, was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time … now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential … the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died … The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered it a scene of horror almost inconceivable.[11]
Before sale, the enslaved were fed quantities of food to ‘fatten’ them and had oil applied to their bodies. Once sold, they were ‘seasoned’ for up to a year to prepare them for a life of subjection and loss of liberty.
In terms of the abolitionist campaign, there were intellectual objections to slavery, but these did not originate with evangelicals. Instead they came from philosophers reflecting on ‘the rights of man’ in the light of the American and French revolutions – essentially, the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Others objected from a more Christian perspective. The moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790) and the theologian William Paley (1743–1805) were among those who opposed slavery. By 1774, John Wesley (1703–1791) was railing against the trade in human beings:
Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air. And no human law can deprive him of that right, which he derives from the law of nature.[12]
Here, Wesley appeals to an innate dignity based on natural law – the natural law of God.
It was, however, the Quakers who led the way in setting out the Christian case against slavery and the slave trade, bringing to bear an influence far beyond their numbers. This was partly because they had among them highly active and respected individuals and partly because they were a well-connected transatlantic community. The Quakers as a body included many influential traders and merchants. George Fox (1624–1691), the Quaker founder, had spoken against slavery as early as 1671. In 1754, the Society of Friends in Philadelphia concluded that:
to live in ease and plenty by the toil of those who violence and cruelty have put in our power is neither consistent with Christianity or common justice.[13]
The Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) published an anti-slavery tract in 1760 titled Observations on the Inslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes. The London Society of Friends purchased 1,500 copies and distributed them to every member of both Houses of Parliament. The London Yearly Meeting (a Quaker group) in 1761 passed a resolution declaring the slave trade repugnant to Christianity.
In 1783 the Quakers formed a committee of six members, including two well-known banking names – Samuel Hoare (1751–1825) and John Lloyd (1775–1854) – ‘for the relief and liberation of the negro slaves in the West Indies and for the discouragement of the Slave Trade on the coast of Africa’.[14]
Very quickly indeed there was collaboration with Granville Sharp (1735–1813) and Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), the former very close to the Clapham evangelicals, while the latter became a key ally of Wilberforce and was closely linked to both the Quakers and the Anglican evangelicals. The consequence was a coming together in May 1787 to form a Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade – the Abolition Society – under the chairmanship of Sharp, with Clarkson as secretary and nine of the twelve founders being Quakers. All that was needed was a parliamentary champion.
Before considering both the popular and Wilberforce’s parliamentary campaign, it is useful to reflect a little further on the manner and nature of the evangelical campaign now that the ‘saints’ were moving centre stage.
The above-mentioned John Newton, a former captain of slave-trading ships, became a public campaigner for the abolitionist movement when, in January 1788, he published his sensational and highly influential pamphlet Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade. There is no question that remorse was one of the motives behind the publication:
I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.[15]
Newton’s testimony was vitally important in converting public opinion to the abolitionist cause. With his old shipboard diaries for the years 1750–1754 beside him, he described in horrendous detail the brutalising treatment and torture meted out to the hundreds of thousands or more slaves who were transported each year in English vessels, including the ones he captained: the Brownlow, the Duke of Argyle and the Africa.
In his autobiographical Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars, published in 1764, Newton had lamented the sins of his youth but not mentioned the slave trade. Many at this time, evangelicals included, had not considered the slave trade wrong. It was viewed by the faithful and wider society alike as morally unexceptional. In addition, Christians paid little attention to the matter. It was also profitable. However, some 25 years later, in his Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, Newton described the trade as ‘a commerce, so iniquitous, so cruel, so oppressive, so destructive’.[16] In this work, published less than two months after Wilberforce’s announcement that he would take up the parliamentary mantel, Newton caught a moment. The Abolition Society purchased some 3,500 copies, distributing them to the members of both Houses of Parliament.
Hannah More (1745–1833) was born near Bristol and hence will have observed the British end of the slave trade and indeed the prosperity which it brought. Motivated also by her faith and links to the Clapham evangelicals, like Newton she was moved to campaign against the human evil of slavery. She too later regretted that she had not acted sooner. However, hot on the heels of Newton’s Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, in 1788 she published Slavery: A Poem. In it she uses the techniques of poetry, rhyme and alliteration to convey her anti-slavery message. Here is one example:
Does then th’ immortal principle within
Change with the casual colour of a skin?[17]
William Cowper (1731–1800), friend of Newton, poet and hymn writer, also wrote against the slave trade. His poems were widely read. This literature was instrumental in mobilising evangelical opinion.
The close collaboration between religious groups around abolition was not restricted to the Anglican evangelicals and the Quakers. Baptists and Methodists were also heavily involved in the assault on the slave trade. The General Baptists were first out of the blocks, after the Quakers, and declared their support for abolition in 1787. The Calvinistic Baptists had preachers in Bristol – Caleb Evans (1737–1791) and Robert Hall (1764–1831) – writing to the press and raising funds for the abolitionist campaign. Other influential Baptist ministers in London and Cambridge also preached against the trade. Wesley, too, in 1788, preached an abolitionist sermon in Bristol. In Manchester, hundreds of Methodists signed the city’s great abolitionist petition ‘in the Chapel at the Communion Table, on the Lord’s Day’.[18] Samuel Bradburn (1751–1816), a Methodist preacher, exhorted his readers in a powerful address on the slave trade to petition Parliament, pray for abolition and boycott West Indian sugar.
The movement was a popular one, bringing evangelicals, other Christians and a wider moral concern together. The above-mentioned Thomas Clarkson travelled 35,000 miles between 1787 and 1794, setting up branches of the Abolition Society, orchestrating petitions, gathering evidence and publishing testimony. In 1789 over 100 petitions were sent to Parliament; in 1792 over 500. By this time at least 300,000 Britons had stopped consuming sugar and rum. The churches were central. Petitions, meetings, sermons and boycotts: these were the staple diet of the popular campaign. There was also a medallion, produced by the potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), with a kneeling slave in chains and the inscription ‘Am I not a man and a brother’. Wedgewood was a member of the Abolition Society, though a Unitarian.
From the foundation of the Abolition Society in 1787, things began to move quickly. The publications of Cowper, Equiano, More, Newton and others were making a real impact. In the three years prior to October 1787, only four items appeared in The Times relating to abolition. In the 15 months following, 136 such items appeared. With the popular campaign gaining strength, what was now needed was a worthy advocate in Parliament.
In autumn 1786, Wilberforce had been urged during a stay with Sir Charles Middleton (1726–1813) – a Tory MP, admired naval commander and abolitionist – to take up the mantle. By late 1786, Wilberforce was seeking to educate himself around the issues of slavery. Then, early in 1787, Clarkson called on Wilberforce in the first meeting between the two men. The final piece in this bit of the jigsaw was when, at a dinner in March 1787, Clarkson, Middleton and others formally asked Wilberforce to act and, in the absence of any better alternatives, Wilberforce agreed.
Wilberforce could not have known at this point of the years of toil ahead; indeed, he seems to have thought a quick success likely. An early decision was that the parliamentary campaign would seek the abolition of the trade in slaves rather than slavery itself, as a more achievable objective.
On 11 February 1788 the king directed that a Committee of the Privy Council should investigate the African slave trade. Wilberforce summoned Clarkson to London to help prepare the abolitionists’ case. It was soon clear that many vested interests were arranged against them and there was a dearth of witnesses willing to testify in the cause of abolition. Rather, witnesses claimed that the trade was a blessing, and that those slaves who ended up in the West Indies were doubly fortunate in being alive and removed to a better life. Some denied outright that kidnappings took place, claiming there was great happiness on the journey which constituted the Middle Passage. It was clear, even at this early stage in the inquiry, that the matter would need Parliament’s direct attention. Pitt announced in May 1788 that there would be a debate in the following session of Parliament, and subsequently set a date of 12 May 1789.
Prior to that debate, a Bill limiting the number of slaves that could be carried was successfully moved in the Commons but heavily amended in the Lords. It was simply an early skirmish. In the first months of 1789, Wilberforce, now assisted by the lawyer James Stephen, continued to amass evidence.
The Committee of the Privy Council which was commissioned to investigate the slave trade presented its report shortly before the 12 May debate. The arguments of the proponents of the trade were essentially, first, that life in Africa was terrible and slaves were grateful to be rescued; second, that slaves were well treated on the Middle Passage; and third, that the loss of labour without slavery would destroy the commercial position of the colonies and the nation as a whole. To give just one example from the evidence to the committee, Vice-Admiral Edwards, a former naval commander, gave evidence that
he knows of no instance of the slaves being ill-treated on Board … [and] the Negroes usually appeared cheerful and singing.[19]
In many ways, bringing the evidence together in one place helped the overall cause of abolition, although Clarkson had to work hard to put witnesses and evidence together. Despite everything, the report did leave the general impression that there were vile conditions on many, even if not all, slave-trading ships, and that there was extensive use of kidnapping and warfare as methods of securing slaves.
John Newton was, of course, a key witness before this committee – and, indeed, at roughly the same time as his Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade was published and circulated. Newton affirmed that kidnapping and warfare between tribes and nations were key means of securing slaves for onward sale to the traders. Clarkson brought other witnesses before the committee too.
Clarkson himself also gave evidence. He had spent at least two months in Liverpool and a further two in Bristol investigating the slave trade. He concentrated on two things: first, the quality of the produce available from Africa itself, which rendered the use of slaves to produce the same in the West Indies unnecessary, and second, the conditions faced by the crews of the slave-trading ships. He reported findings from investigating 88 ships which had returned to Liverpool and around 24 ships to Bristol in 1786 and 1787. It was a subtle approach. Direct trade with Africa would improve conditions on the African coast and it was not only slaves who suffered but also the crews. Clarkson was playing the long game.
On the day of the debate, 12 May 1789, the well-organised opponents of abolition delivered petitions from Bristol and Liverpool warning of the ruin of thousands and the loss of employment. Petitioners from Birmingham joined in as manufacturers of the goods exported to Africa; thousands were employed in these industries, other markets were not available, and the abolition of the trade would hand these markets over to the Dutch, French and Spanish.
Wilberforce had been unwell. He said that he had not prepared his speech, or even gone over all aspects of the matter, though he was well acquainted with the subject. Yet, with divine grace as he saw it, he was able to speak to the House of Commons for three and a half hours – a length neither unusual nor considered inappropriate at the time. Wilberforce was a natural, fluent and eloquent speaker. He had assiduously worked the committees and procedures of Parliament and was at ease with both the processes and the use of oratory. He relied primarily upon the testimony of others and, he argued, if this case was not fully presented and fully explained upon the floor of the House, many members would never hear the case; they would not read the material from either side.
Modern writer William Hague summarises Wilberforce’s impact:
Wilberforce would cast off his physical fragility that afternoon to deliver a speech which, even set against the centuries of debates in the House of Commons, stands out as one of the true masterpieces of parliamentary oratory.[20]
Appeals to Christian morality were very unlikely to work. Rather, Wilberforce needed to persuade the House that the abolition of the slave trade was not merely desirable but consistent with the interests of a commercial, trading, seafaring nation and empire.
His opening was disarming, referring to the magnitude of the task and his own inadequacy. He asked only for cool and impartial reason to be displayed, promising in a rather powerful paragraph that he would resist accusing others of guilt:
I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty – we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others.[21]
He went through the leading features of the slave trade: in Africa many innocents were condemned into slavery, and wars were instigated and fought in order to gain slaves to sell to the traders. He deferred to the authoritative judgement of his fellow MPs and then turned to describe the Middle Passage:
This I confess, in my opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject. So much misery condensed in so little room, is more than the human imagination had ever before conceived.[22]
As to the singing and dancing of the slaves referred to by some witnesses to the committee, this, said Wilberforce, was only under the threat or actual use of the whip. He also added some explicitly Christian observations:
How strange it was that providence, however mysterious in its ways should so have constituted the world, as to make one part of it depend for its existence on the depopulation and devastation of another. I could not therefore, help distrusting the arguments of those, who insisted that the plundering of Africa was necessary for the cultivation of the West-Indies. I could not believe that the same Being who forbids rapine and bloodshed, had made rapine and bloodshed necessary to the well-being of any part of his universe.[23]
He sought to reassure the planters: they had nothing to fear from abolition as the population in North America was now growing and further importation of slaves was not necessary. He referred to Clarkson’s statistics on the losses among the crew, and appealed to the ideal of an honourable trade in natural products replacing the slave trade. He also appealed to justice, to international leadership and to the idea of free trade upon true commercial principles. He presented a choice to the House:
The nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance, we cannot evade it, it is now an object placed before us, we cannot pass it; we may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we cannot turn aside so as to avoid seeing it; for it is brought now so directly before our eyes, that this House must decide.[24]
Wilberforce then set out 12 statements to the House concerning the slave trade and invited the MPs to agree. These resolutions described the kidnappings, war and deaths that were occurring; the evils of transportation; and the possibility of honourable alternative trades. He avowed his end to be the total abolition of the slave trade. He was followed immediately after his speech by the two members for Liverpool, who forecast ruin and destruction. The battle was just beginning.
Biographer Robin Furneaux describes Wilberforce’s speech as ‘a rousing patriotic oration’ and ‘a polished and masterful performance’.[25] Hague describes it as ‘a comprehensive statement of the arguments’.[26] At the time, statesman Edmund Burke (1729–1797) praised the speech as ‘masterly, impressive and eloquent’,[27] and declared that it contained principles so admirable that he had never heard the like in modern oratory. The Speaker of the House praised Wilberforce, as did Pitt.
The pro-slavery forces had been thrown off balance by the tone of the Privy Council report and by Wilberforce’s speech. Now, late into the evening, the House adjourned debate until 21 May. Wilberforce’s opponents took the opportunity to regroup, realising that they would not be able to defeat his motions in a straight vote. On the resumption on 21 May, member after member rose to argue that the Privy Council report was inadequate and the House must hear its own evidence. Pitt was frustrated and Wilberforce agreed to a delay (potentially misplaying his hand). And so the long journey through Parliament began. Even if he had won the vote, Wilberforce himself subsequently pointed out that abolition would still have required an Act of Parliament. In reality, abolition was not going to happen quickly.
Parliament resumed hearing evidence later in 1789 and the process continued until April 1790. Wilberforce remained ever vigilant during this period, with his life full of political activity. Clarkson was constantly alongside him, analysing, checking and exposing their opponents’ evidence. Sometimes Clarkson was despatched on long journeys to investigate or clear up a particular piece of vital evidence. In one instance he boarded 320 ships and interviewed 3,000 seamen in order to track down a single witness. Wilberforce described his own house – in Palace Yard, Westminster (he had not yet moved to Clapham at this point) – as a hotel.[28] Pitt dined there regularly; the Abolition Society, Clarkson and others worked on the campaign; and constituents, petitioners, missionaries and preachers all crowded into his house from early morning onwards. The presentation of more evidence, the continuing distribution of pamphlets and poems across the country, and the impact of Clarkson’s circulation of a drawing of the slave ship Brookes all led the abolitionists to think that, once again, the tide was turning their way.
On 18 April 1791, Wilberforce moved in the House of Commons a motion for the abolition of the slave trade. This time he spoke for four hours. He sought to show how the evidence presented to Parliament supported the claims he had been making. Of course, even more evidence had now been amassed. The anti-abolitionists largely dropped their claims that the trade was humane and argued instead for its expediency. Wilberforce dealt with the arguments of commercial ruin faced by the planters and the ‘nursery for seamen’ argument (that the trade trained up seamen for war), as well as presenting the moral arguments for abolition. Pitt and the Whig statesman Charles James Fox (1749–1806) both spoke in support. However, as Furneaux comments:
Wilberforce’s speech was a powerful indictment of the Trade and many of his arguments were unanswerable; this did not, of course, prevent them from being answered.[29]
The opponents rehearsed their arguments. Delay had given them momentum. The new MP for Liverpool, Colonel Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833), claimed that at least 5,500 seamen depended on the trade. Other speakers, while accepting that the trade had undesirable aspects, asserted that abolition was not in the national interest. Wilberforce, deep down, knew he would not carry the day. He closed his speech with:
Never, never, will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our prosperity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.[30]
The House was divided. Wilberforce was defeated by nearly two to one: 88 votes for abolition, 163 against.
Wilberforce reiterated that he would never abandon his work and that he was confident the slave trade would ultimately be abolished by the people of Great Britain. He cannot have known that abolition still lay some 16 years ahead.
The defenders of the slave trade celebrated Wilberforce’s defeat. In Bristol church bells were rung, bonfires lit and a half-day holiday declared. It seemed like four years of toil for nothing. Yet, this was not the case. The marshalling of the evidence, the changing moral mood in the nation and the increasing strength of the campaign across the country all played to the strengths of the abolitionists. The argument from the pro-slave-trade side was now increasingly reliant on the claim that the time was not right for abolition, rather than the idea that the trade was moral and humane. This probably meant that the moral arguments of the abolitionists would eventually win the day.
Petitions began to flow in. Some 500,000 people signed one petition or another out of a population of some 8 million, meaning that one in sixteen appended their signature. There was renewed hope. William Grenville (1759–1834), a noted abolitionist, became Pitt’s foreign secretary in 1791.
There was now pressure on Wilberforce not to bring forward his motion again. Pitt himself thought it could not proceed. But Wilberforce pressed on with his abolition motion, on 2 April 1792. Here he linked faith and liberty, the latter springing from the divine essence. It was, once again, a masterful speech. In the early hours of 3 April, Pitt rose in support of Wilberforce. In a marvellous piece of oratory, Pitt set forth a vision of a free, prosperous and trading Africa, arguing that Britain had a responsibility to ensure the continent could enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that Britons did.
Tactics set in again. Pitt’s tacticians moved an amendment to insert the word ‘gradually’ into Wilberforce’s abolition motion. The amended motion passed the Commons by 230 votes to 85 – the Commons for the first time voting for abolition – but it was bittersweet, and Wilberforce described himself as hurt and humiliated while being congratulated from all sides of the House.[31] He resolved that ‘gradual’ must be as quick as possible, but in the event ‘gradual’ was to mean ‘very gradual’. He later described this word as a cloak under which the defenders of the trade hid.[32] The government proposed abolition of the slave trade from 1 January 1800. Wilberforce opposed this and managed to get the date changed to 1 January 1796, which he thought a good achievement, though one of his bishop supporters did not as he feared it would lead to the loss of the entire Bill. There was a further problem: the House of Lords, which forced a delay by demanding that they hear evidence directly at the bar of their own House.
It was around now that the Clapham group came together. In 1793, Wilberforce’s motion to effectively renew the 1796 abolition date was defeated in the Commons by 61 votes to 53. He tried to bring in alternative Bills but was defeated either in the Commons or in the Lords. His motion for abolition in 1795 also failed. Pitt was distracted by war with France.
Thomas Clarkson, exhausted by the campaign, retired from public life. The ‘saints’ gathering at Clapham now brought some resilience to the campaign. As modern writer John Wolffe has noted, their campaign against the slave trade ‘exploited their respective talents: Wilberforce’s parliamentary eloquence, Stephen’s legal acumen, Thornton’s business skill, and Macaulay’s capacity for gathering and ordering evidence’.[33]
Yet they had to be patient and tenacious. Wilberforce brought abolition Bills to Parliament year after year between 1794 and 1799 only to see them rejected. The Lords remained opposed and now Pitt and his administration had become somewhat less sympathetic. Wilberforce did not bring abolition Bills between 1800 and 1803 and the Abolition Society ceased to meet.
The ‘saints’ had not given up. In May 1804, the Abolition Society met for the first time since 1797. The attendees consisted of Wilberforce and Sharp with eight other evangelicals and Quakers, including Stephen and Macaulay, and Clarkson (who emerged from retirement). The Anglican evangelicals assumed a more dominant role and, in truth, they were probably better placed than the Quakers to drive abolition through Parliament. The addition of Irish members to the Commons was helpful to Wilberforce. These members helped a Bill through in 1804, but it lapsed before it could reach the Lords, who remained unlikely to pass it in any event. Appeals were made again to the public. Clarkson set off on the road once more in search of evidence, and in 1805 Macaulay issued a pamphlet, The Horrors of Slavery. However, Wilberforce and Clarkson were both pragmatists and wanted to keep the focus on the slave trade, rather than slavery itself, as a more achievable target.
Stephen came up with a new tactic: the ingenious idea of introducing abolition by stealth and perhaps gaining government support. His plan was to move against foreign ships which sailed under neutral flags, arguing that the flags of neutral nations lent support to Britain’s enemies in the Napoleonic Wars, especially France and Spain. The hidden genius in the scheme was that it would also debilitate much of the trade in slaves. If Britain’s navy moved against French, Spanish and neutral shipping, then a significant proportion of the slave trade would be disrupted as all three of these methods were used to transport slaves, including some British slaves. With Pitt’s death in 1806, there was a new ministry, known as the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’, under Grenville and Fox, both committed abolitionists. The government agreed to introduce the Slave Importation Bill. The abolitionists simply treated the Bill as a piece of ordinary government business. In May 1806 it passed into law, removing up to 75% of the slave trade.
The abolitionists now resurfaced and went for the kill. The tide was turning. They announced their intention of introducing an abolition Bill. Pamphlets flowed again from the pens of evangelical abolitionists, who now sounded ever more loudly the idea of divine judgement upon the nation. Sharp referred to hurricanes over the Caribbean plantations as judgements from God. Stephen, too, referred to the threat from France as a sign of divine anger against Britain for its involvement in the slave trade. France’s own punishment had been the revolution. A government motion in the remaining days of the 1806 session – which stated, ‘This House … will, with all practical expedition, proceed to take effectual measures for abolishing the said trade’ – passed 114 votes to 15 in the Commons and 41 votes to 21 in the Lords. Wilberforce put forward an address to the king calling for general abolition, which was carried without a division.
In 1807 Wilberforce published his Letter on the Slave Trade, summarising his arguments of 20 years:
Providence governs the world. But if we are not blind to the course of human events, as well as utterly deaf to the plain instructions of Revelation, we must believe that a continued course of wickedness, oppression, and cruelty, obstinately maintained in spite of the fullest knowledge and the loudest warnings, must infallibly bring down upon us the heaviest judgements of the Almighty.[34]
Grenville himself introduced the abolition Bill in the Lords. Wilberforce listened in the gallery. Grenville paid effusive tribute to Wilberforce:
I cannot conceive any consciousness more truly gratifying than must be enjoyed by that person, on finding a measure to which he has devoted the colour of his life, carried into effect – a measure so truly benevolent, so admirably conducive to the virtuous prosperity of his country, and the welfare of mankind – a measure which will diffuse happiness amongst millions, now in existence and for which his memory will be blessed by millions as yet unborn.[35]
The die was cast. The last bastion would fall. Grenville thought he had enough votes: 56 he reckoned, or perhaps 70, and in the event the Lords carried the abolition Bill by 100 votes to 34. In the Commons, there was now a sense of inevitability. At one point the solicitor general, Sir Samuel Romilly (1757–1818), contrasted Napoleon and his responsibility for so much bloodshed with Wilberforce, responsible for the continued life of so many of his fellow beings. The House erupted in applause and cheering while Wilberforce sat, head in his hands, tears streaming down his face.
Wilberforce summed up in debate, closing with the plea that Parliament
must shew to the people, that their legislators … were forward to assert the rights of the weak against the strong; to vindicate the cause of the oppressed; and that where a practice was found to prevail, inconsistent with humanity and justice, no consideration of profit could reconcile them to its continuance.[36]
The triumph was overwhelming. The vote passed by 283 to 16.
They were nearly there but not quite. Some sought to move rapidly against slavery itself, but Wilberforce counselled caution. The abolition Bill still faced amendments to iron out inconsistencies, and there was a potentially dangerous moment when the government fell from power over Catholic emancipation, which was supported by Grenville but not the king. But there was no going back for any reason and no real threat from the new administration. On 24 March 1807, William Grenville, on his last day as prime minister, obtained the consent of George III for the abolition Bill. At noon on Wednesday 25 March 1807, the Speaker of the House of Commons announced the enactment of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. From 1 May that year, its provisions would take effect. The trade which had taken millions of Africans to the colonies of the British Empire was now outside the law.
The 1807 Act was a stunning achievement for the abolitionists, but it was, of course, far from the end of the story. Illegal slave trading and enduring exploitation of slaves continued apace. It was not until 1833 that Parliament legislated to emancipate 800,000 slaves. This was just three days after Wilberforce’s death, but he had lived to hear of the likely passage of the Bill.
[10] Captain Drake of the Gloria, quoted in Furneaux, Wilberforce, p. 62.
[11] Olaudah Equiano, An Interesting Narrative, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 125.
[12] John Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 131.
[13] Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Epistle of Caution and Advice (1754). Online at https://digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/object/hc135442
[14] Furneaux, Wilberforce, p. 69.
[15] John Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (London: Buckland & Johnson, 1788), p. 2.
[16] Newton, Thoughts, p. 41.
[17] Hannah More, Slavery: A Poem (London: Cadell, 1788), lines 63–64.
[18] Samuel Bradburn, quoted in John Coffey, ‘Evangelicals, Slavery & the Slave Trade: From Whitefield to Wilberforce’, in Anvil, vol 24, number 2 (2007), p. 109.
[19] Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council Appointed for the Consideration of All Matters Relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations (London, 1789), part II.
[20] Hague, Wilberforce, p. 178.
[21] Wilberforce, speech, 12 May 1789, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 179.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Wilberforce, speech, 12 May 1789, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 181.
[24] Ibid., p. 183.
[25] Furneaux, Wilberforce, p. 88.
[26] Hague, Wilberforce, p. 184.
[27] Quoted in Furneaux, Wilberforce, p. 90.
[28] Furneaux, p. 94.
[29] Furneaux, Wilberforce, p. 101.
[30] Wilberforce, speech, 18 April 1791, quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 198.
[31] Quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 235.
[32] Ibid.
[33] John Wolffe, quoted in Coffey, ‘Evangelicals, Slavery & the Slave Trade’, p. 113.
[34] Quoted in Hague, Wilberforce, p. 352.
[35] Lord Grenville, Slave Trade Abolition Bill, Hansard, col 664 (5 February 1807).
[36] William Wilberforce, Slave Trade Abolition Bill, Hansard, col. 994 (23 February 1807).
Wilberforce was never very healthy. He married Barbara Spooner in May 1797 after a whirlwind romance. His friends were alarmed but the couple had 35 years of deeply happy marriage and six children. The Clapham group largely disbanded in the period after 1807 and in 1813 Sharp died, followed two years later by Thornton. Wilberforce handed over the leadership of the anti-slavery movement to the evangelical Quaker and MP Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786–1845). He retired from Parliament in 1825 and died on 29 July 1833.
How might we assess Wilberforce, his work and his faith? He was a man of real depth of Christian faith and character, with a broad range of public, moral and Christian concerns. He was tenacious in his campaigning, his painstaking gathering of evidence and his parliamentary tactics. He deployed secular and Christian arguments and collaborated across many divides.
William Wilberforce was a giant on the British public stage without whom the slave trade would not have been abolished when it was. He was, under God, a great statesman.
There are a myriad of books, academic articles, blogs, consultants’ websites, etc. that focus on leadership and explain how to be a good leader of people and organizations. Many of us who teach in the field of leadership can spout off the names of those who have created concepts, theories, and models of leadership. We can talk about when and how to use a transformational or transactional style and what characteristics make a good leader. In his book, Rooted Leadership, Johnson proposes a different perspective on leadership – he refers to all these styles and behaviours of past authors and researchers but enhances these concepts by introducing a theological perspective on leadership. He goes beyond the focus on servant leadership, that many Christians espouse as the best leadership style, and provides a greater biblical grounding for how we should lead. He states that leadership studies don’t generally embrace a theology of leadership, and thus, as a theologian, he feels this knowledge gap needs to be corrected. For those of us who teach in Christian colleges and universities, and those who are Christians holding down a leadership role in an organization, a theological perspective on leadership is what we should be understanding, integrating in our teaching, and demonstrating in our behaviours. In his introduction to the book, Johnson states: ‘without a solid theological foundation, Christians will continue to buy into a sociological basis for human leadership, one that can become a functional heresy’ (page xv).
The book is divided into eleven chapters that answer different questions that leaders may ask about leadership. Each chapter provides many scholarly references that support his perspective, in addition to scripture that reinforces his thoughts and comments on a theology of leadership. Johnson refers to many of the well-known, and regularly cited, concepts and models, such as Kouzes and Posner’s transformational leadership model, Hershey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model, and Jim Collins’ examples of transforming a good organization into a great organization. He also refers to many Christian authors, such as Robert Greenleaf, Mark Buchanan, and John Maxwell, and their writings on leadership, in addition to respected theologians such as J.I. Packer, Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, and N.T. Wright, explaining scripture. (A quick view of the 15 pages of bibliography demonstrates the depth of reading Johnson did before composing this theology of leadership.) He ends each chapter with a practical case of how a person in scripture demonstrated the leadership characteristic or challenge which the chapter is discussing.
Chapter 1 provides a framework for understanding a theology of leadership. Johnson begins by explaining why universities, colleges, and seminaries refer more to a secular view of leadership rather than a theological view. He discusses the impact that culture has had on our desire for a more pragmatic understanding of the world around us. This desire for the practical understanding of leadership has pushed the research and teaching of leadership studies into an anthropological and sociological study. He further indicates that philosophy and theology have been pushed aside for these other areas to be the demonstrators of knowledge and wisdom; due to this fact, he believes that an understanding of correct leadership will be skewed. He takes many pages in this chapter to expound upon our need for knowledge of the divine. He quotes from Shepherds After My Own Heart by Timothy Laniak, by stating: ‘True leadership, rooted leadership, can be understood only in terms of a fully integrated theological vision of God and his work on earth’ (page 13).
Chapters 2 through 4 define what leadership is, why leadership is necessary, and how one becomes a leader. Johnson focuses on how Jesus led His disciples in His ministry on earth – He was a servant. Johnson clearly defines servant leadership as one that does not diminish the authority of the leader and that our servanthood begins with service to God. He identifies that leadership is always present when decisions need to be made and when change is occurring around us; Johnson indicates that leaders are an integral part of God’s design and purpose. He further discusses how one becomes a leader, stating that ‘there is no such thing as chance, destiny, or luck in God’s kingdom . . . theology declares that God determines the course’ (page 74). The theological perspective of leadership is that it is a summons.
Chapters 5 through 7 explain the character traits and skills that good leaders possess. Of all the chapters in this book, these are probably the chapters that most current and future leaders will want to read and focus their thoughts upon. Johnson begins by stating that all the best leadership traits are focused on the heart of a leader – he indicates how failed leadership has everything to do with ‘unprincipled hearts’ (page 99). He explains the five traits that are critical for principled leadership – these are love, justice, humility, integrity, and diligence – and discusses the importance of God’s wisdom in understanding how and when to demonstrate these traits. With this guidance from God, the leader’s abilities to follow, to think, to see, to shape, to communicate, to manage, and to implement will be easily and effectively demonstrated.
Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the roles leaders play and how power and influence should be used. The focus is on how a leader needs to fulfill an organization’s mission and ensure that its values are exemplified. The challenge with these two chapters is that the discussion centres around organizations in which the mission and values are in accordance with Christ. These chapters do not clearly address how leaders fulfill their mission and vision achievement role in organizations that don’t have a Christian foundation and are not focused on how to minister to the world around them. The discussion in these chapters, however, provides much guidance to leaders working within the church and Christian communities.
Chapter 10 acknowledges the importance of suffering when in a leadership role and how it can be beneficial to developing a good leader. Johnson discusses many things that those of us in leadership experience – setbacks, misunderstandings, alienation, loneliness, personal failures, adversaries, loss – and provides guidance on how to manage our way through these challenges. This chapter provides much encouragement to help us endure through these times of suffering.
Chapter 11 ends the book with how leaders end their responsibilities and roles as a leader, and how a positive transition can occur. Johnson acknowledges the difficulties leaders have when letting go of this important part of their life; for some, their identity has been their leadership role. He explains the need for developing successors and discusses why good leaders should be sharing of their gifts and talents for ensuring the next generation of leaders are leading as God would have them do. Johnson goes on to provide many scriptural references on leadership in God’s future kingdom, which are good to contemplate, but the discussion is lacking in how past leaders, those who are followers of Christ, can effectively manage their future roles (no longer as a leader) while still here on earth.
To conclude, this book definitely adds to the field of leadership studies and fills a gap in our understanding of leadership from a theological perspective, which is greatly needed in Christian universities and colleges. The only reference that most of us use when teaching leadership is Greenleaf’s and Blanchard’s explanation of servant leadership, so having more scripture to refer to when explaining Godly leadership is imperative. The areas of the book, however, that are lacking in advancing the study of leadership are in the discussion of leaders in secular organizations; the addition of this would make this book a great book for Christians in the marketplace.
‘Rooted Leadership: Seeking God’s Answers to the Eleven Core Questions Every Leader Faces’ by John E. Johnson was published in 2022 by Zondervan (ISBN: 978-0-310-120872). 282 pp.
Andrea Soberg is a retired professor of human resource management from Trinity Western University in Canada. She continues to be active within the global academic and business community by researching, writing, and assisting organizations that have a focus on business as mission.
The first time that I read a serious academic work about Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations, I recall being stuck by just how compatible his metaphor of the invisible hand was with the Christian doctrine of providence. It seemed to me then that a project that sought to harmonize the two would be a worthy undertaking. Of course, Smith and his works have been the subject of significant scrutiny and debate by both philosophers and economists, and this has resulted in myriad theories about his own personal religious beliefs and how those religious beliefs may have factored into his work. Some insist that Smith was an atheist, others insist that he was a devout Christian bordering on modern evangelical fervor, with dozens of positions falling in between.
Long takes on this issue with erudition and clarity. The opening chapters provide helpful overviews of several preliminary issues. First, the author surveys the state of the academic conversation that has accompanied a resurgence of interest in Smith. Next, he moves on to summarizing the various philosophical and theological influences on Smith and the various perspectives among scholars as to the nature of Smith’s faith. Only at this point does Long make his own argument regarding the Christian faith and Adam Smith’s thought.
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It is important to note that this particular field of Smith studies has been defined by what is known as the ‘Adam Smith problem.’ Given that his two most notable works, Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, are central works of two different fields—philosophy and economics, respectively—it is easily lost on even academics engaging in one field or the other that Smith’s tone, references, and methodology engage with Christian theology in very different ways. Many within the field have attempted to bridge the gap and provide a universal theory that harmonizes the two approaches. Frankly, my own engagement with Smith has been quite siloed, so I found Long’s discussion of this issue to be quite helpful and enlightening.
But, who cares? Are Smith’s theories any more or less helpful as a result of the role that religion played in his own thinking and intellectual formation? Prior to engaging in his own analysis, Long argues that it does matter: ‘side-stepping…Smith’s theism has led to an impoverishment in Smithian studies.’ Only when we understand the origin of Smith’s thought can we appreciate the unitary goal of his writing, which according to Long, ‘is ultimately an attempt to produce a coherence theory of human nature that deals with the tension between altruistic love of neighbour, a Christian interpretation of morality, and the reality of self-love through a complex narrative of unintended human action which is part of a providential plan written into the moral fabric of human relationships.’ Teleologically, Smith’s project is anthropological in nature before it is either philosophical or economic. Understanding it rightly, Long argues, ‘represents a call for contemporary philosophy of economics to return to its source in the moral philosophy which is a complex synthesis of the individual’s moral constitution and the role that it plays in the development of the common good.’
Long convincingly argues that the ‘Adam Smith problem’ is solved by recognizing ‘a unifying philosophical core’ in Smith’s diverse works rather than a common methodology, as others have attempted. According to Long, the ‘underlying and organizing principle is…a particular reading of the human as an ethical person.’ Smith understands people to be moral agents who are complex. Self-interest, a theme in Smith’s work that is often criticized as being incompatible with Christian ethics, can be rightly understood as a complex concept with moral and material concerns interwoven when Smith is read through this lens.
Long asserts that ‘in the world of contemporary economic theory people are reduced to variables in a system of linear algebra and differential calculus.’ While most economists, especially Christian ones, would likely take issue with this assertion, it is undeniable that most quantitative research in the field requires the reduction of complex circumstances, motivations, etc. to very narrow, specific, and measurable variables. The value of this type of research is certain, but also limited. It often provides a snapshot of just one narrow aspect of a much more complex issue. That type of work shouldn’t be abandoned. Long’s proposition, however, is that understanding Smith’s work on its own terms, which includes certain theological and philosophical assumptions, has explanatory power that a ‘ruthless mechanistic system’ simply does not have. A recovery of a right understanding of Smith’s work will provide a framework for understanding the economic decisions made by moral agents who ‘operate in a complex world of interpersonal subjectivity driven by a combination of personal and social motivations and by ethical principles.’
One weakness of many approaches to harmonizing Smith’s works is that many seem to be hampered by anachronisms of one variety or another. Smith wrote before the dawn of modern psychology and died well before the emergence of various religious movements. As a result, attempting to square any of his thought with these subsequent developments presents problems. Long, however, has carefully avoided this. I expected to find some indicators of bias driven by the author’s prior assumptions, but these are absent in this work. His analysis is clear, serious, and without any obvious bias to make Smith ‘say’ what Long might hope he would say. His work is not driven by a desire to land at a place with a particular bent toward or against capitalism or Christian theology, but proceeds from what is commonly known about Smith’s life and influences and remains closely tied to the text of Smith’s various writings. Long has contributed something quite helpful to those interested in the fields to which Smith studies belong.
‘Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand of God’ by Brendan Long was published in 2023 by Routledge (ISBN: 978-1-03-207336-1). 178pp.
Trey Dimsdale is an associate fellow with CEME as well as the Executive Director of the Center for Religion, Culture, & Democracy (CRCD), the educational and cultural initiative of First Liberty Institute. He is also an contributing editor at Providence, a magazine focused on Christianity and international relations. He holds a law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, as well as degrees in ethics and political science.
Andrew Hartropp, an Anglican Minister with doctorates in both theology and economics, has written this introductory book to help equip people to ‘live and speak for Jesus Christ in today’s world’ with the underlying conviction that doing economic justice is indeed part of this living and speaking for Christ. Its arguments are laid out clearly and the book is well written and accessible.
The balanced tone is set in the opening chapter which recognises that there are alternative foundations for justice (rights, needs and merits) and that in a pluralistic world an agreed understanding of justice can be elusive. Accordingly, Hartropp outlines a biblical understanding of economic justice which provides the framework for the book as a whole. It’s an understanding that rests on the claims that justice, including economic justice, is rooted in who God is, that God has built justice into creation and that the Bible discloses to us what justice is (page 12).
Hartropp identifies four key aspects of a biblical understanding of economic justice. ‘It means treating people appropriately, according to the norms and principles given by God; it requires a special concern for people who are poor, needy and economically weak; it emphasizes the quality of relationships – notably one-to-one relationships; and it means that everyone participates in God’s blessings, including material blessings’ (page 148).
Part One of the book looks at how we do economic justice in our own relationships as consumers, in the workplace and in local church communities.
The reader is challenged to look critically at the dominance of consumerism in today’s culture and to be aware of how this is at variance with God’s values before considering how their money should be spent. In the workplace, the emphasis is on the relationship with the whole person and the requirement for employees to be treated with respect, to have a fair wage, good working conditions and opportunities for personal development. At the same time the responsibility of the Christian employee to work hard and give of their best because their work will be pleasing to the Lord (Colossians 3) is a valuable reminder that doing economic justice entails mutual obligations between employee and employer (page 66) and also between borrower and lender (Psalm 37.21 page 25). The prompt settlement of invoices could have been included amongst these mutual responsibilities.
The second part of the book focuses on doing economic justice in wider society and the influence ‘that followers of Christ can have in and through the organizations and structures of which they are a part’ (page 89). In successive chapters, Hartropp looks at what this might mean in firms and corporations, banks and financial institutions and the place of government both nationally and globally.
The principles that were earlier espoused in the workplace are played out again on a larger scale when looking at firms and corporations. There is an admirably even-handed discussion about flexible working and zero hours contracts (page 108) and disquiet at, though not outright condemnation of, the levels of Chief Executive Officer pay in UK companies and the huge pay ratio between them and the average employee – 148:1 in 2014 among FTSE 100 CEOs (page 111).
When looking at banks and other financial institutions, the author includes a useful summary of the run-up to the 2007-8 financial crisis and helps us see excessive lending, borrowing and debt as a failure of the kind of relational justice that biblical economic justice requires. He seeks to adapt and apply the ancient biblical principle of Jubilee as a way of restoring relationships and offering hope for those trapped with burdensome debt and he is realistic about the way that a prevailing culture preys on fallen humanity’s susceptibility for greed, pride and folly. Wisely, there is no guide for a banking policy but rather the chapter aims to equip people with ways of thinking about some of the major challenges of finance (page 142).
This same caution is displayed when exploring the role of government in tackling the challenges of poverty and inequality both in the UK and globally. Returning to the four principles of biblical economic justice, Hartropp writes, ‘The call to do justice is to all people. Therefore it is not intrinsic to doing economic justice that the state must have a part to play’ (page 148, my emphasis). At the same time, he does not adopt a libertarian position but rather argues that, adhering to biblical principles, leaders should uphold relational economic justice, focus on the poor and act against economic oppression (page 163), an oppression which may or may not have been caused by market failure. In a brief section towards the end of the book, there is reference to Catholic Social Teaching and how its notion of subsidiarity can challenge the centralizing tendency of modern government (page 167).
The book introduces the reader to complex subjects and never over-reaches itself. It is balanced and has plenty of reminders not just of the obligations that fall on the economically advantaged, but also the responsibilities that remain with the disadvantaged. It is aware of prevailing culture and calls on Christians to counter aspects of it, not least by daring to believe that all work is for the glory of God.
Since, as the author says, ‘Much of what the Bible teaches about economic justice is common sense’ (page 19), it is not entirely clear who the book is for. Even if our common sense does sometimes desert us, the thoughtful reader – Christian or otherwise – will surely have worked out already many of the principles espoused in the first part of the book.
The second part of the book, looking at wider society or the ‘Public Square’, avoids any attempt to be a manual, but to help people in their thinking would have benefitted from a deeper consideration of economic forces at work. In particular, the potentially idolatrous nature of money, the way it is ‘made’ and the way it functions makes it such an important part of today’s culture that it cannot be ignored. Likewise, the ever-expanding role of the state and the consequences of government debt are matters that need illumination.
The author can rightly point out that this was deliberately beyond the remit of the book and also that this review in 2024 is of a book first published in 2019. The prevailing culture which so shapes us has changed considerably since then, all of which would encourage an updated and expanded second edition of this introductory book which the author is well qualified to produce.
‘God’s Good Economy: Doing Economic Justice in Today’s World’ by Andrew Hartropp was published in 2019 by Inter Varsity Press (ISBN: 978-1-78359-764-2). 215pp.
Rev Canon Andrew Studdert-Kennedy is Team Rector of Uxbridge in the Diocese of London. Before ordination, he studied PPE at Oxford and during the 1980s worked in the City and as a Researcher for two MPs. He has retained his interest in such matters.
‘Nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist – and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger.’
― Friedrich Hayek
Economists often lament the general public’s lack of economic understanding. Yet only a small fraction of economists sacrifice their own scarce resources to change this. Philip Booth and André Azevedo Alves are part of those few, and their efforts to apply economic insights engage the oldest institution in human history: the Catholic Church.
In Catholic Social Thought, the Market and Public Policy, the authors combine their knowledge of economics and Catholic social thought (CST) to contribute to today’s most challenging policy discussions. This ends up being a powerful marriage, as economics and CST contribute very different yet complementary insights. Where economics assumes that people act rationally toward an end, CST adds that this end is ultimately union with God, so some choices bring us closer to this goal than others. Where economics can identify the effects of specific policies, CST helps us to weigh these effects as good or bad.
This edited collection consists of fourteen essays, six of which are authored or coauthored by Booth or Alves, with the other essays contributed by experts in related fields. The topics of these essays center upon policy debates related to Catholic social thought, such as globalization or the state’s role in education. The final chapter attests to the earnest practicality of the collection’s editors, as it provides a list and reference for the various sources of Catholic social thought so that the reader can continue to engage with these ideas himself.
For the remainder of this review, I will focus on the four principles of Catholic social thought – human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good – as they relate to the topics of these essays. Unsurprisingly, each of these principles makes an appearance in all of the essays as the authors apply them – in addition to a good dose of economic facts and literacy – to the often thorny policy questions at hand.
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The first and foundational principle of CST is human dignity: ‘A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person. The person represents the ultimate end of society, by which it is ordered to the person’ (Compendium of the Catholic Church, para. 132). This principle helps to explain the Church’s consistent condemnation of communism since it values the collective over the individual. It is also the reason the Church defends the right to private property and a just wage, as Alves, Chelo, and Gregorio explain in their chapter on the economic thought of Thomas Aquinas and the Late Scholastics. Importantly, human dignity helps explain the natural limits of the right to private property. Because the right to private property exists for the sake of human life, the right to life has superiority – in extremis, a parent is permitted to ‘steal’ food to feed his starving child. Fr. Schlag’s chapters deal with the principle of human dignity as well, as he argues that virtuous business practices embody respect for the dignity of all employees, clients, and customers. Moreover, he reminds readers that the dignity of the human person is closely linked to the dignity of work: ‘[the excellence in Jesus’s public ministry] must also have defined the level of effort Jesus put into His work as a carpenter. His professional vocation so much shaped Him that even His redeeming death was perpetrated with hammer, wood and nails, the tools of His profession’ (page 164).
The next principle of Catholic social thought is solidarity, which might also be understood as ‘friendship’ (Compendium, para. 103). This is the natural communion that arises between persons when they treat each other with dignity and the harmony of society that results. While the principle of solidarity is woven throughout each chapter, there are three topics in particular where it features more prominently: globalization (Booth), cronyism (Richards), and government debt (Booth, Numa, and Nakrosis). Booth points out in his chapter on globalization that the Catholic (meaning universal) Church has a special appreciation for globalization while also warning about its negative consequences should human dignity and solidarity not guide these relationships. In the words of John Paul II: ‘Globalization must not be a new version of colonialism’ (‘Address to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences,’ 2001). When reflecting on cronyism, Richards illustrates how artificial constructions of solidarity, such as the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, may ultimately be misguided because of how special interests can shape well-intentioned policy. Finally, if there is to be any natural communion in society, we would expect it first to arise within the family. As Booth, Numa, and Nakrosis show in their chapter on government debt, current generations tend to indulge in governmental overspending, which places undue burdens on their children and future grandchildren, thus disrupting the solidarity between generations.
Subsidiarity is the third principle of Catholic social thought, in which the Church clearly teaches that the voluntary institutions of civil society should be respected and supported in their respective domains. In the words of the Compendium: ‘Subsidiarity, understood in the positive sense as economic, institutional or juridical assistance offered to lesser social entities, entails a corresponding series of negative implications that require the State to refrain from anything that would de facto restrict the existential space of the smaller essential cells of society. Their initiative, freedom and responsibility must not be supplanted’ (para. 186). The book’s chapters on the environment (Booth), healthcare (Sparkes), and education (Franchi) all apply this principle to important areas of contemporary policy. For example, Booth shows how the communal management of natural resources discussed in the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom illustrates the power of subsidiarity in promoting the care of the environment. With respect to healthcare and education, the fierce controversies over what constitutes healthcare (e.g., abortion or euthanasia) or education (e.g., religious education) might be ameliorated to some extent if the role of civil society in providing these goods was supported rather than supplanted by the state.
Finally, I was struck by the fact that nearly every chapter cites the principle of the common good: ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily’ (Compendium, para. 164). The chapters on the right to migrate (Yuengert), taxation (Kennedy), and finance (Gregg) provide interesting applications of this principle. For example, Yuengert’s chapter wrestles with the question of how to pursue the common good when the needs of particular groups (e.g., native and migrant workers) seem to conflict. Crucially, the principle of the common good contains the national common good but extends beyond it. When considering taxation, Kennedy points out that the three purposes of taxation – revenue raising, behavior modification, and redistribution – have different merit when assessed from the perspective of the common good, the former having a clearer justification than the latter. The common good must also inform the Church’s approach to the financial sector, as Gregg emphasizes, since finance does provide a legitimate function in society and ‘by nature, the fundamental functions are the financial sector are, potentially, very “pro-poor”’ (page 227).
In conclusion, economics has never been nor will ever be enough for policy discussions. It does not proscribe ends—only a system of values can do that—and Catholic social thought offers one such account. I cannot recommend Catholic Social Thought, the Market and Public Policy highly enough for anyone interested in intelligent conversations about pressing public policy issues. My only regret is that it did not include chapter on what I would argue is the most important policy debate in the coming years: assisted reproductive technologies. Beyond its intellectual contributions, the book is a much-needed reminder of the religious insistence that civilizations exist to serve humans, not the other way around. In the words of C.S. Lewis: ‘Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors’ (The Weight of Glory, 1941).
‘Catholic Social Thought, the Market and Public Policy: Twenty-First-Century Challenges’ edited by Philip Booth and André Azevedo Alves, was published in 2024 by St Mary’s University Press (ISBN: 978-1-9167-8600-4). 302pp.
Clara Piano received her Ph.D. from George Mason University and will be joining the Economics Department of the University of Mississippi in Fall 2024. Her research and teaching focus on family economics and law and economics.
In Capitalism and Christianity, Luigino Bruni provides a sweeping overview of various strands of Christian thinking about economic and, to some extent, social matters over the past 2,000 years and seeks to assess their impact. The book is short, comprising only 109 pages, but it covers a significant amount of ground and needs to be read slowly and reflectively. It is not for the casual reader or someone who is only interested in down-to-earth everyday economic issues but those who are interested in the history of ideas and want to think about their impact today will find much in it that is worth pondering.
Bruni accurately describes his work as an essay and some of its strengths and weaknesses reflect its nature. In particular, Bruni does not seek carefully to support all of his assertions and many of his statements are highly contentious (e.g. is it really true that ‘Christianity was not the mass culture of the Middle Ages’, [page 90] and that ‘we had to wait until the second part of the second millennium for Christianity to become, at least a little, popular culture in the countryside’ [page 97]?). He also has a tendency to make statements that sound impressive without their meaning being clear (e.g. the statement that: ‘The medieval man was in general much poorer than we are, but he lived in a richer world, denser with life’ [page 36]) and he does not define his terms closely, the most serious omission being his failure to explain precisely what he means by ‘capitalism’. However, the other side of this point is that Bruni makes suggestive links between things that might otherwise be regarded as discrete and draws attention to long-term trends that might otherwise be missed.
He briefly considers the teaching of the New Testament but focuses primarily on that of Christian thinkers down the ages, starting with an interesting contrast between the economic thinking of Augustine and that of Pelagius before taking in that of well-known figures such as Dante, Luther, Calvin, Hobbes and Smith. There is plenty to take issue with in his analysis (e.g. his suggestion that, thanks to Hobbes, ‘European society…went from the community without individuals, to the individual without community’ [page 72], surely attributes far too much influence to Hobbes). However, much of what is said is thought provoking and a lot of it relates to matters that are only rarely covered in English language publications.
His discussion of medieval monasticism is a good example of this. He rightly points out the significance of the monasteries to the medieval economy and the long-term impact of the Benedictine motto ‘Ora et Labora’ (prayer and work), particularly as taken up and applied to everyday life in Lutheran thought. As often, Bruni is guilty of some exaggeration (e.g. the statement that ‘capitalism was not only generated by monasticism, but would not have been borne without it’, [page 14]) but his contention that, at least as originally conceived, the monastic emphasis on the value of work for a free person helped generate a wider acceptance of the value of work in society as a whole is well worth considering.
Bruni’s discussion of the late medieval Monti di Pieta is also interesting. Few Anglo-Saxon readers will know much (if anything) about them but they deserve to be taken into account in any consideration of historic models of the use of credit in the alleviation of poverty. Franciscan friars provided the impetus for their creation as not-for profit organisations which, nonetheless, were not charities and which sought to make credit available to the poor whilst still charging interest and seeking sustainability in their business model. Bruni clearly sees some lessons for today in this model, although he does not give detail of precisely what these lessons might be.
It is also good to see a discussion of the now largely forgotten contribution of Jansenists to the theological and economic debate. Jansenist theology was in many ways similar to Calvinism (albeit located within Catholicism) and it is interesting that it produced some recognisably similar economic thinking. This in some ways anticipated Adam Smith and classical liberal economics. For example, Pierre Nicole, writing a hundred years before Adam Smith, noted that those who served travellers did not act from charity but nonetheless provided the assistance that travellers required, whilst Pierre Boisguilbert, writing slightly later, commented that ‘All the trade of the land, both wholesale and retail…is governed by nothing but the interests of entrepreneurs who have never thought of doing someone a favour’ (cited by Bruni on page 60).
Bruni is Professor of Economics at the Università di Roma LUMSA, which states that it was ‘formed on Catholic principles’ and, in some places, his Catholic background shines through his writing. However his views on the impact of Catholicism on economics will not make comfortable reading for many of his Catholic colleagues. Although he is critical of the impact of the Reformation, he reserves his most strident criticism for the Counter-Reformation. He attacks both its theology and practices (suggesting that it was so concerned to react against Luther that it failed to deal with the aspects of Catholicism that were the most in need of true reform [page 44]) and sees its influence on the economy in almost wholly negative terms: ‘the Counter-Reformation blocked the process which had started in the middle-ages and which resulted in civil humanism, a capitalism that was both personalist and communitarian, which was able to fuse together individual freedom and common good’ (page 87) and ‘the Counter-Reformation set the moral evaluation of economic activities back a few centuries’ (page 88). Overall, he has very little positive to say about the contribution of Christian thought to appropriate economic structures over the past few hundred years.
It is less easy to be sure of what Bruni favours. He often quotes other authors without being clear of the extent to which he agrees with them. However, he is no other-worldly theorist. For example, he refers to ‘An entirely biblical and evangelical secularity…which still leaves all those who (like me) believe that there are few things more “spiritual” than double-entry method and a construction site, breathless’ (page 24). Furthermore, his most favourable tone is reserved for what he refers to as ‘civil economy’. He quotes at length from Fénelon’s ‘Les Abeilles’ (the precursor of Mandeville’s more famous Fable of the Bees) and he contrasts what he understands Adam Smith to be saying unfavourably with a different approach in which ‘the fundamentally economic principle…is instead that of “mutual assistance”, where each individual, in addition to his own interest, intentionally wishes for the interests and well-being of the other party as well’ (page 79).
Bruni writes openly from the perspective of Catholic Southern Europe and he clearly feels personal involvement in the matters about which he is writing. Capitalism and Christianity is not a mere academic essay: Bruni cares deeply about his subject and, as the book draws towards its conclusion, he begins from time to time to write in the first person.
Sadly, he is not able to offer much hope for himself or others. Referring to the people of the South (and, one suspects, primarily, Italy), the book concludes: ‘the capitalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the capitalism based on the factory and labour, could not then be seductive enough to buy our souls. But that of the twenty first century based all on consumption and finance, seduced us to a point that we did not need to buy our souls because we gave them for free’ (sic; page 108).
This is perhaps a surprising conclusion, especially from a writer who clearly regards Augustinian theology as much too pessimistic about human nature. It may be influenced by the slightly Romantic tendency that may be detected in some of what Bruni says. However, Bruni might fairly counter by saying that his essay is not intended to offer a way forward but merely to enable people to think about how we have arrived where we are and thus be able to pose questions that will facilitate the fashioning of the future.
Much of what Bruni says is contentious and one might take strong exception to his negative assessment of particularly early Protestant thinking, Adam Smith’s views and more recent Catholic social teaching. However, the issues that he raises deserve careful reflection and Capitalism and Christianity is a serious and worthwhile contribution to a vital debate.
‘Capitalism and Christianity: Origins, Spirit and Betrayal of the Market Economy’ by Luigino Bruni was published in 2024 by Routledge (ISBN: 978-1-03-252401-6). 109pp
Richard Godden is a Lawyer and has been a Partner with Linklaters for over 25 years during which time he has advised on a wide range of transactions and issues in various parts of the world.
Richard’s experience includes his time as Secretary at the UK Takeover Panel and a secondment to Linklaters’ Hong Kong office. He also served as Global Head of Client Sectors, responsible for Linklaters’ industry sector groups, and was a member of the Global Executive Committee.
In Faith in Markets, Benedikt Koehler (PhD), a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs, has brought together a series articles that consider the ways in which Christianity, Judaism and Islam have encouraged adherents ‘towards behaviours that tended to market economics’ (page 7). The collection discusses the three major Abrahamic faiths and also a contains a chapter looking at eastern religious traditions more broadly, but the focus in this review is on the Judaeo-Christian tradition specifically. The first part of the book considers the mutual influences of religious practice or belief and the market, with three of the chapters in this section being written by the volume editor himself. One of these shows how the teaching of Moses revolutionised the economic behaviour of the Israelites and was unique in basing economic norms on theology. Extending the Sabbath principle to economic life, together with a ban on usury, Moses implemented what amounted to an egalitarian approach to commerce and a de facto system of welfare. Of particular interest in this part of the book was Koehler’s chapter addressing the development of property rights in early and mediaeval Christianity. This piece provides a fascinating overview of the dispute between the Franciscans and the Papacy on the subject of ownership, showing how Pope John XXII established a view, supported by scripture, that grounded property rights in the divine will, independent of and prior to any rights granted by the state – a view which contrasted with the earlier tendency among both pagan and Christian thinkers to link property rights with human convention. Esa Mangeloja and Tomi Ovaska continue the examination of Christian thought in their discussion of the common-property-based economic and political system of Thomas More’s Utopia, showing that the work is in fact full of economic concepts and that Utopia lends itself to a proper analysis in economic terms, just like other economic systems.
The second part of the book consists of chapters that highlight difficulties or paradoxes in the teaching of each of the Abrahamic faiths as they interpret or apply ancient authorities and again, my focus is on the Judaeo-Christian context. David Conway’s contribution examines the manner in which, by rigidly applying the provisions of the Pentateuch regarding poor relief and education, Israel’s ultra-orthodox communities (Haredim) have created an unsustainable welfare burden for the state. This is the result of low labour market participation caused in part by publicly funded specialist schooling, in which men engage in near-perpetual religious study while ordinarily core subjects such as mathematics are not taught – thus exacerbating the employment problem. This arrangement is traced to the requirement in the Hebrew scriptures that those without means be provided for and that the Levites be supported by a tithe in return for their provision of education in national history and divinely mandated law. As honoured in contemporary Israel, however, these obligations place a huge strain on the public finances and ignore the spirit of the original laws themselves, which favoured economic activity, required recipients of poor relief to work where possible and sought to restore those who had fallen on hard times to economic independence and liberty as soon as possible.
In a very engaging chapter, Martin Rhonheimer considers the subject of social justice, beginning with the modern tendency to use this concept in the criticism of inequalities of wealth. The author agrees with F.A. Hayek, that the notion of ‘justice’ makes no sense when applied to the outcomes of economic systems because they are simply outcomes of a particular order and are not aimed at by any individual or group. However, he adds that it does make sense to talk about the systems themselves as just or unjust, insofar as they are devised or at least allowed to persist by human beings. In short, if the rules of the system are unjust – for instance by discriminating against a particular group such that that group cannot engage in economic activity on equitable terms – then we can change the rules in the interests of fairness. Moreover, we quite legitimately use the term ‘just’ in relation to freely acting individuals, insofar as their actions have some positive bearing on society. Rhonheimer’s point is that ‘social justice’ refers to the social or common good, and we would consider businesses, charities and voluntary organisations who contribute to this as being involved in the exercise of social justice as virtue. Thus, while the term ‘social justice’ might have no purchase in distributive terms (with reference to ‘outcomes’), it certainly can be applied to economic orders, organisations and individuals – and it is here that the tension in Christian thought emerges. Rhonheimer contends that the teaching of the Catholic Church has moved away from an understanding of social justice that is broadly compatible with this perspective, towards a view that is closer to the contemporary ‘distributive’ attitude. As such, it has in recent decades become more inclined to favour redistributive social policies and seems less inclined to take account of the very real benefits of a market economy in contributing to the common good. Thus, the Church’s traditional teaching recognised social justice as a moral virtue from which actions conducive to the common good flow, but we must now wonder how easily this sits with its increasingly ‘(re-)distributivist’ view of ‘social justice’ and the statism that this implies.
Overall, this collection contains several interesting studies and for the most part, the writing is very accessible, though some chapters – such as that considering Utopia – would require a degree of prior knowledge in order for the reader to fully appreciate the proffered analysis. More difficult is identifying a general argument or unifying narrative that runs through the book. The individual chapters have previously appeared in the journal Economic Affairs and some reflect the brevity of the article format, but more significant is the overall feeling that they have not been entirely integrated so as to compose a single, unified volume. As can be the way with edited collections, while each chapter is interesting, the book as a whole lacks a clear sense of overall purpose to pull the individual studies together. Perhaps, however, given the subject, this would be to ask too much in this case. Since it deals with three of the world’s largest religions and is not limited to a particular historical period or geographical region, it would be impossible to give more than a series of studies demonstrating different ways in which the Abrahamic faiths have steered their adherents towards practices that tend to market-oriented behaviours and outlooks. A unified account that shows how this occurred frequently and consistently over the centuries would require a much longer book – most likely in several volumes.
While perhaps lacking a sustained argument to bring the entire book together, as a collection that provides thematically organised snapshots of certain strains of thought and practice within major faiths, while considering tensions that have arisen in relation to market principles, this volume will appeal to those with interests in the overlap between religious and economic thought and practice.
‘Faith in Markets: Abrahamic religions and economics’, edited by Benedikt Koehler, was published in 2023 by the Institute for Economic Affairs (ISBN: 978-0-255-36824-7). 240pp
Neil Jordan is Senior Editor at the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics. For more information about Neil please click here.
In this final article, I will draw from two stories in the Bible that will be well-known to many readers, to give an example of how those who read the Bible as scripture can draw from those stories in developing modern economic ethics.
The first story is of the Garden of Eden, and of the two trees about which God commanded Adam and Eve. One tree is said to be that of the knowledge of good and evil, and the other the tree of life. There is little dispute about the idea of the tree of life, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has occasioned considerable debate. One widely rejected interpretation, which was popular in the church for a long time, was that this knowledge was of concupiscence, that is, sexual desire.
Instead, a simpler interpretation is better, which is that the idea of the tree was to do what it says, that is, to give knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2.9), and to make a person wise (3.6). The question then is, why would the text portray the idea of becoming wise as a moral failure? It is this interpretive instinct that has led so many people to seek an alternative idea, largely based around the speculative suggestion that some side-effect, unmentioned in the text, is the key to understanding it.
My view is that Ellen Davis is correct in Opening Israel’s Scriptures when she identifies the issue as human wisdom needing proper bounds. The garden is described as a place where an abundance of economic goods are available — admittedly, it is a rather bucolic scene, where humans exist by eating fruit from trees, rather than an advanced economy. Nevertheless, it does paint a striking contrast to the reality of most ancient human life, because the primeval couple are not portrayed as slogging it out in a brutal effort to maintain life in the face of a harsh planet, scratching out a meagre subsistence. The picture is of ease and plenty. Little human effort is required, and great human flourishing is offered.
Why, then, is wisdom withheld? The key insight is that wisdom is being held alongside law, in this case represented by God’s singular commandment. Wisdom in scripture is often taken to be the ways in which a thoughtful person might prosper in God’s world. In the case of Eden, this was fairly straightforward: eat more fruit. We must not make the mistake of imagining this in the context of modern life with its calorific fountain and epidemic of obesity. Unlimited food, and luxurious food at that (when most people subsisted on a dull diet of grains) was a happy picture. So to flourish in the garden meant to consume, and wisdom might well have been understood to have meant something like, “make the most of the opportunity.” Indeed, this is what Eve adduces when she examines the forbidden fruit. Not only does it make a person wise, it is good for food, and beautiful (Gen 3.6).
The critical point being made by Gen 3 is a moral one, which has economic implications. God’s command forbidding unlimited consumption is motivated neither by a desire to avoid the irreplaceable use of resources (the garden has no such limits in the story), nor by potential impact on others with fewer resources (there are no other people to compete with).
The moral point being made is that there are proper limits to mortals, and that to pursue wisdom beyond the restraint which the law enjoins is to attempt to exceed mortality. In this, the story finds its place alongside the story of Babel, where humans attempt to climb to divine status through a skyscraper, and the story of manna in the desert. In relation to the latter, Ellen Davis, drawing on Gregory of Nyssa, is right when she states:
the first virtue that informs a godly food economy (and probably a godly economy altogether) is restraint in how we meet our most fundamental need. Our culture does not celebrate the virtue of restraint; witness the rampant popularity of “Let It Go,” Elsa’s song from the Disney film Frozen: “It’s time to see what I can do / To test the limits and break through / No right, no wrong, no rules for me—I’m free!” Contrast that sentiment with the instruction that the apostle Paul gave to the Roman governor Felix, who had inquired “about faith in Christ Jesus” and then was unnerved by Paul’s gospel lesson on “justice and self-restraint and the coming judgment” (Acts 24:24–25). The connection that Paul sees between justice and self-restraint, basic also to the manna economy, is the principle that all get what they currently need, and no more. Abiding by that limit requires trusting that God will provide “our daily bread,” enough for everyone. Moreover, that practice of self-restraint is essential to there being enough; our trust in God turns out to be part of the dynamic whereby God’s promise is fulfilled for the whole covenant community. That is why obedience to these two simple rules is a critical test of Israel’s ability to become a covenant community, of their willingness to walk in God’s torah, or not.
She goes on to explicitly link this to the Eden “story about eating within a divinely set limit—a limit that the first humans violated, with the result that they were expelled from Eden. Putting together these two stories of beginnings—of humanity as a whole and of the people Israel—we might infer that eating modestly and mindfully is one of our chief obligations to the God who created us and keeps us alive.”
Davis also alludes to a key aspect of the possibility of restraint: a belief or at least hope that in God’s world, there will in fact be enough. In combination with the mandate for humans to multiply, this suggests that there is a basic optimism which informs the viewpoints of the biblical world, an optimism that there is potential for growth and expansion in economic resources. This idea of growth is critical to seeing the world as having the capacity to support creative endeavour, entrepreneurial activity, and risk-taking which is not at the expense of other humans.
A more pessimistic view of the world often lies behind the idea that economic life is a zero-sum game, and that the solution to the woes of many is to redistribute the limited resources available. In my view this tends to in practice reduce the world to an equality of misery, and I think that part of the reason why the Bible as a text has continued to hold an evocative power in cultures with a historic connection to it is that it does hold out an idea of future growth which invites an optimistic participation in human endeavour.
So the cautionary stories about exceeding the proper limits of mortal humanity, in the context of divine commands, need to be read within the wider framing of a story of abundance, growth, and plenty. There is no need to exceed the bounds of restraint proper to humans, in at least one thread of biblical imagination, because there will be plenty for everyone and even some left over.
This dual possibility informs another story, the one which rounds out the book of Genesis. The story of Joseph as the archetypal wise administrator is well-known. What has not always been observed is the clever storytelling, which highlights the limits of wisdom. Joseph does indeed demonstrate that in God’s world, there is such an opportunity for growth and abundance that a wise person can produce vast growth of economic resources — enough, it turns out, not only for Egypt to survive a famine, but to act as a source of food for other countries.
The way in which Joseph achieves this, however, is by doing precisely those things which the law will later prohibit: he takes away the possessions, land, and eventually the freedom of the Egyptians. These were all perfectly normal things for ancient Near Eastern rulers to do, but in the Bible these actions are contrasted with the divine commands prohibiting them in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy which immediately follow the story. Recall, too, that the end of Genesis is a narrative which establishes how the nation of Israel found themselves enslaved — it turns out, of course, that this situation follow’s Joseph’s actions. Joseph is indeed the archetypal wise administrator, but the story shows the limits of human wisdom to achieve moral economic outcomes.
In summary, I would suggest that these two themes of growth and restraint, not often seen as particularly economic in nature, are narrative threads which offer a productive way to approach economic ethics. In my view, they offer modern economic ethicists more to work with than a rigid attempt to apply specific rules around debt, interest, and land tenure. They also, I suggest, offer a framing for those laws and the stories that engage with the specific economic practices of the ancient Near East. The laws of gleaning, for example, presuppose a situation where a farmer can expect to produce so much growth that they do not need to extract everything, and where the overflow of their produce can support those less fortunate. The presupposition of growth motivates a restraint in enjoying the bounty of God’s good world, a restraint that has less to do with ensuring sufficient for everyone else, and is mostly a morally-oriented choice to recognise the proper limits of humanity.
Dr Lyndon Drake has recently completed a DPhil at Oxford on theology and economic capital in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He also has degrees in science and commerce (Auckland), a PhD in computer science (York), and two prior degrees in theology (Oxford), along with a number of peer-reviewed academic publications in science and theology. From the Ngāi Tahu Māori tribal group, he currently serves as Archdeacon of Tāmaki Makaurau in the Māori Anglican bishopric of Te Tai Tokerau. Lyndon has written Capital Markets for the Common Good: A Christian Perspective (Oxford: 2017, Oxford Centre for Enterprise, Markets, and Ethics). He is married to Miriam with three children. Until 2010, Lyndon was a Vice President at Barclays Capital in London.
