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Not long ago an A.M.E. Christian activist and member of the American Anti-Slavery Group reported redeeming, or buying back, 6,000 persons held in slavery in Sudan. The Boston group is part of a network of organizations, Christian and otherwise, dedicated to ending slavery in Africa and throughout the world. Anti-slavery is once again a Christian cause because slavery's main perpetrators, at least in Sudan, are Arabs from the north who prey on and enslave Christians and traditional African religionists in the south. The resurgence of slavery appears to offer a clean line of demarcation between persecutors and the persecuted. But even in Sudan, where Christians are suffering mightily, the conflict has twisted historical roots and does not yield a simple answer.
The practice of buying back slaves, or, as the Sudanese government calls them, "prisoners of war," has been severely criticized by un agencies and various religious groups, who charge that buying human beings has only encouraged the further taking of slaves and fueled the growing arms trade as well. A spokesman for Christian Freedom International calls the practice of buying slaves "a debacle." Whatever the solution, no one, save for a few offending regimes, denies the continued existence of worldwide slavery or slavery-like practices, which include the sale of children, child prostitution, the female sex-trade, forced labor, and the arming of children. In Mauritania, Amnesty International reports that 90,000 blacks are held as property in relations from which they may not withdraw. Worldwide, 100 million children are exploited for their labor. More than an issue dividing two world religions, slavery is an abiding human scourge that has been perpetrated by and visited upon all the religious people of the world.
Thus the strength of David Brion Davis's new book, In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery, is not merely the accuracy of its data but its witness to the terrible continuity between historic and contemporary practices of slavery. Davis, who is Sterling Professor of History at Yale, is best known for his books The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, which won a National Book Award and the Bancroft Prize, and The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, which won a Pulitzer Prize. The present book is a collection of review essays from the past 15 years, ranging from studies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Andrew Hacker's Two Nations and the first women's movements in America.
But most of all, his book is about the history of worldwide slavery and the slave trade. Davis has amassed a wealth of information not only on the details of the everyday lives of slaves but also on the vast, interlocking systems of finance, commerce, geopolitics, agriculture, religion, and philosophy in which North American slavery occupied a late but significant place. His book offers multiple testimonies to the haunting power of history over contemporary events. It helps us understand why we are—all of us—reaping the whirlwind in race and religious conflict. Davis explores the history of slavery in all its competing and coexisting incarnations—Christian, Jewish, traditional African, and Muslim—but never by simplifying the record or giving in to popular cultural stereotypes. In his book, the facts speak for themselves. When he discloses that the Muslim practice of African slavery predated that of the Christian West, he concludes, "[S]uch knowledge can be gained only by abandoning the search for historical villains, by seeking a mutual understanding of Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, and by acknowledging the shared guilt and moral blindness that led to centuries of immeasurable suffering for African peoples."
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