Slavery of Ignorance: The History of Slavery You Were Never Taught | Grey Matter with Leighton Grey

Slavery is often presented as a uniquely Western crime. But does that tell the whole story? In this Grey Matter commentary, Leighton Grey examines the global history of slavery, Christianity’s revolutionary understanding of human dignity and the abolitionist movement that ultimately turned against one of humanity’s oldest evils. From the slave systems of the ancient world to the transatlantic trade, Indigenous slavery in early Canada, other international slave trades and modern human trafficking, Leighton argues that slavery was once nearly universal. What was not universal was the conviction that slavery itself was sinful and had to be abolished. The commentary explores the influence of Scripture upon Christian abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, Britain’s costly campaign against the international slave trade and Canada’s place in the history of abolition and the Underground Railroad. Leighton also addresses difficult biblical passages concerning slavery, the distinction between chattel slavery and indentured servitude, and why regulating a broken human practice does not necessarily constitute moral approval. This is not an argument that European Christendom was without sin. It is an argument that honest history must remember both its participation in slavery and the extraordinary moral campaign it eventually led to destroy it. Christianity does not erase history. It calls humanity to repentance, truth and recognition of the equal dignity of every person made in the image of God.