What we need now is a spiritual hunger for justice

This morning we remembered in our church service the life of William Wilberforce, British politician and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade, who died on July 29th in 1833.
And that reminded me of the piece I wrote in Healing this Wounded Earth about what we could all learn from the slavery abolitionists who hungered for justice in the world and thereby became catalysts for sweeping changes. Here is an excerpt:
On 30 July 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and for the subsequent ‘Jim Crow’ discriminatory laws. In the previous year the Virginia General Assembly had acknowledged ‘with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans,’(Larry O'Dell Washington Post 2007) and called for reconciliation among all Virginians. Virginia became the first of the 50 United States to recognize through their governing body the state's negative involvement in slavery.
In that same year the UK celebrated the 200-year anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade. The Church of England have since offered a full apology for profiting from the slave trade, and Prime Minister Tony Blair offered deep sorrow ‘that it could ever have happened’ and said that we could ‘rejoice at the better times we live in today.’
Among the media attention in both the United States and the United Kingdom, much was made of whether we should now be apologizing at all for what our ancestors did all that time ago, and whether any compensation was due.
Rather less publicity or thought was given to the feelings of those in the original abolition movement. What motivated them?
The prominent American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said in a talk delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, 14 February 1854: I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, ‘that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable social rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ Hence, I am an Abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form, and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing, with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of Slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul.
In the UK, a group known as the Clapham Sect drove the abolition movement. Taking their name from the Surrey village where they mostly lived and held their meetings, this group of evangelical Christians saw the treatment of slaves as an affront to their own dignity.
It was the overwhelming spiritual hunger for justice that drove these and other abolitionists, often among controversy and even violence, to strive towards making a real and permanent difference to the lives of so many. 
Sadly there is still slavery in today’s world, alongside so many other inequalities and human suffering, even in so-called ‘civilized’ Western societies such as ours.
So how can we make a difference today to alleviate the many injustices in the world?
As it was then, so it needs to be now if there is to be any real change in the lives of so many who still suffer. We need to feel again that degradation of humanity, the affront to our dignity, that staining of our souls.

Inside the Mount of Beatitudes church
commemorating the Sermon on the Mount
overlooking the Sea of Galilee

We need to find again that hunger for justice that the abolitionists felt. In the Beatitudes that Jesus preached to his followers in the Sermon on the Mount, He spoke of the happiness and joy, or blessedness, that would be felt if we ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness.’(The Gospel of St Matthew chapter 5 verse 6)
The then Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams in his New Year message for 2007 spoke of the need for us to feed our own spiritual hunger. For real change to be made, to put right the injustices of the world, we have to follow, he says, the example of the Clapham Sect. We must realize that such issues are indeed an affront to our own dignity. In some way they make each of us less of a person. We will be fed and nourished spiritually only when we really and honestly wake up to the needs of our fellow human beings, learning together to reach out to them, to heal, feed, and befriend those less fortunate than ourselves. Then we will discover what it really means to be truly human.

From Healing This Wounded Earth: with Compassion, Spirit and the Power of Hope 

Chapter 4 Hope For Our Destiny

A New Era of Responsibility