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Radio 4,2 mins

Rev Dr Michael Banner - 14/07/2022

Thought for the Day

Available for over a year

Good morning. Mo Farah's story is almost only bearable because of its ending. Sir Mo is a double Olympic gold medalist twice over, holds countless national and international records, has been knighted and is a sporting legend. But the beginning of his story was bleak beyond words: Mo - or Hussein Abdi Kahin, as he then was - was, at the age of 9, taken from his family in what is now Somaliland and trafficked to London, a victim of modern slavery. Unfortunately, for every such tale with a happy ending, there is an untold number of untold stories of slavery, present and past, which begin and end in misery, loneliness and exploitation. I have to say, as a Christian, that the story of Christianity and slavery is itself almost unbearable. When I am teaching a university class on the subject, nearly all the students insist that - of course - Christianity is and always was against slavery. Sadly the facts are otherwise. It really isn't until the middle of the 18th century that significant numbers of Christians became critics of slavery. Until then, they and just about everyone one else took slavery for granted as a fact of everyday life. And even in the 19th century, there were still plenty of Christians who defended slavery - look down the lists of those who received compensation from the British government when slavery was abolished, and you will find significant representation of this and that Reverend gentleman. Defenders of slavery relied very heavily on the fact that Jesus hadn't condemned slavery even though it was current throughout the world of the New Testament. Strikingly, however, Christians had for a long time thought that slavery was a bad thing when it happened to people like us - religious orders were created to ransom Christians who had been captured in the Mediterranean by the notorious barbary pirates, even while ships sailed from Christian countries to collect cargos of human beings from the west coast of Africa. Christians and non-Christian alike, didn't need to discover that slavery was wrong, as much as to discover that these 'others' were indeed, just like us. The Metropolitan Police commented on Sir Mo's story, that they believe that there are victims of modern slavery, including children, 'in every borough across London.' Here's a hard truth. If it was my children who were at risk of being trafficked, I would care more about trafficking and modern slavery. So, thank you Sir Mo for having the courage and honesty to share your story; let's just hope his story impresses upon us all that trafficking and slavery are terrible wrongs, no matter where the story starts or ends.

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