The apology, slavery, and the Bible reconciled

Abstract

"In a recent edition of the bmj,1 Ted Hale commented on slavery and the 2007 BUGB apology to the Jamaican Baptists for the transatlantic slave trade. As ever, he writes thoughtfully and provocatively, taking the BU to task over an apology which, he suggests, was unbiblical, strategically and pastorally dangerous, and bears the ‗them and us‘ hallmarks of the acts for which it sought to apologise. The antidote to the concerns of the Jamaican Christians should rather have been a greater awareness of their ‗freedom in Christ‘. I suggest, however, that Hale has undervalued the effects of our history on our present, and oversimplified the means by which those suffering ‗imprisonment…in the present by their past experiences,‘ may be set free.2 In particular, the issue of human slavery should not be spiritualised (and thereby marginalised), but requires a concrete response in the manner seen in the Bible. I therefore want to offer a pastoral model that makes some sense of such apologies, and points out the biblical precedent for engaging with our history in this way"