British Abolitionism and Christian Fervor

In the latest Books and Culture, John McGreevy of Notre Dame reviews Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, which John finds "a riveting history of the British anti-slavery movement" that secured the abolition of the slave trade in the Empire in 1807.  But John also finds that the book has a significant blind spot.  Surprise, surprise, it's the centrality of Christian religious fervor to this "first global human rights campaign."  (NOTE: The sarcasm there is not aimed at John; rather it's because this is hardly the first time that modern proponents of human rights have overlooked the role of religion in their development.)

Unfortunately Hochschild's first lesson is to make an anachronistic distinction between religious (bad) and secular (good) reform. The anti-slavery moment, he opines, marks the moment when reformers moved from reliance on "sacred texts" to "human empathy." High praise goes to Thomas Clarkson for writing a report "more like a report by a modern human rights organization" instead of a "moralizing tract." . . .

[W]e must banish the image Hochschild perhaps inadvertently forwards: of anti-slavery activists as proto-Amnesty International members straining to escape a culture blighted by religious obscurantism . . . .

In all this Hochschild reflects our own time. Arguably the most important religiously based "reform" effort of the last generation has been the anti-abortion campaign, a movement not high on the agenda of most professional human rights activists. (It's not coincidental that "reproductive rights" has become a pro-choice slogan.) If the achievement of Bury My Chains is to offer a gripping account of the campaign to eliminate slavery in the British empire, its limitation is to read current cultural divisions into a more complex, even alien past.

Tom

P.S.  It's terrific to see John, a great historian who is Catholic, writing in the evangelically-based Books and Culture.