Between Apologetics, Emancipation and Imperial Paternalism

Abstract

Abstract Scholarship on the abolition of the slave trade and slavery has given little attention to specifically theological factors behind the movement. This article seeks to interrogate three themes that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely, deliverance/liberty, love of neighbor, and imago Dei. These are examined, first, within their own biblical-theological frame of reference and, second, in relation to other intellectual currents of the era as well as, anachronistically, in the light of some key features of liberation theology. The article considers whether the British abolitionists, whose rhetoric oscillated around apologetics and emancipation and was marked by imperial paternalism, developed a form of proto-liberation theology.