How We Learned That Slavery is Wrong - Professor Alec Ryrie

00:00 // Introduction: Protestantism and Modernity
01:32 // The Horror of Atlantic Slavery
04:17 // The Normalization of Slavery in Christian History
06:41 // Protestant Entry into the Slave Trade
08:58 // Resistance and Justification Among Protestants
11:33 // Missionaries and the Gospel to Slaves
15:51 // Racial Justifications and Emerging Doubts
20:25 // African Voices Begin to Shift the Narrative
23:33 // The Rise of English Abolitionism
27:00 // Britain Bans the Slave Trade
30:48 // National Guilt and Religious Repentance
34:01 // From Trade Abolition to Emancipation
36:56 // Slavery in the American South
40:30 // Black Abolitionist Voices and Moral Conversion
43:41 // The Limits of Biblical Arguments
45:45 // The American Civil War and the End of Slavery
48:36 // Abolitionism's Legacy in Protestantism
51:09 // Final Reflections on Moral Transformation

Professor Ryrie explains how Christian involvement in the Atlantic Slave trade caused a profound crisis for followers and how it has shaped the Protestant Faith: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/how-we-learned-that-slavery-is-wrong

It seems obvious now, but it hasn’t always. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the old consensus that slavery was a mere fact of life, a tolerable evil, broke down, as Protestant activists opposed slavery ever more forcefully – and as other Protestants defended it ever more idealistically.

As this lecture will explore, the result was not only the end of legal slavery but profound changes in Protestant Christianity which resonate to the present.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/how-we-learned-that-slavery-is-wrong

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