It was published less than a month before the British Parliament voted overwhelmingly to abolish the slave trade, and it encapsulates two decades of relentless effort by Overforce. One historian aptly described that parliamentary vote as quote, one of the turning events in the history of the world, and it was. Slavery has always existed at every time and in every culture. But it was William Overforce who single-handedly started to turn this tide, and he did it because of his Christian principles. And that’s the point of this article, to talk about how effective and how necessary it is for Christians to hold to those principles.

It’s not just about winning. It’s not about that at all. The whole reason he did this fight, and understand, take the biggest things that are out there. This is like one guy taking on all of the technocracy, or one guy taking on all of the oil industry, or all the military industrial complex, or all the pharmaceutical, or roll those all together. Big pharma, big food, the military industrial complex, roll those all together. That was slavery at the time, in his country. He took all that on and he won. And he won because he stood on principle.

Overforce’s work is not merely historical. It provides a timeless model for how Christians can and should engage in public life. It calls us to integrate faith, reason, and courage into our engagement with public policy. Wilberforce’s approach to public policy was unapologetically grounded in Christian morality. By the way, this article is from the Christian Post. He spoke boldly as a Christian and Parliament, addressing his nation’s accountability to God. Even in a society that might appear more receptive to Christian values on our own, such declarations were not always welcome. Yeah, not even in Britain at that time, which is far more accepting of Christian values than America is now.

Wilberforce begins and ends with a solemn warning. He said the slave trade was an abominable evil that placed the British Empire under the judgment of God. His moral clarity cut through the political expediency, challenging his contemporaries to see the slave trade, not as an economic necessity, but as a profound moral failing. Same thing is true of abortion today, isn’t it? And so many other issues. We always have culture is downstream from religion and politics is downstream from culture. Wilberforce paired his moral convictions with meticulous research and evidence. He often spent 14 hours a day studying and gathering facts about the slave trade, a pace that he eventually moderated for the sake of his health.

The rigorous preparation, though, allowed him to systematically counter every objection raised by his opponents. Folks, if you don’t read, you can’t lead. You got to lead with the facts, especially if you’re going to do things on the name of in the name of truth and the name of morality and do things in the name of God. You’ve got to lead with the truth and you’ve got to know what that is. In his letter on the abolition of the slave trade, Wilberforce methodically dismantled pro-slavery arguments, presenting a case so thorough, so compelling that it could not be ignored.

This work underscores the importance of combining moral passion with intellectual precision and a lot of hard work. He said it’s not enough to simply declare what is right, we have to also engage in reasoned, evidence-based advocacy. Whether the issue is religious freedom, the sanctity of life, or justice for the marginalized, we must be prepared to make our case with clarity and convictions for us today. He faced fierce opposition from powerful interests tied to the slave trade and to colonial economies, and at one point he was challenged to a duel by a slave ship captain, and he received multiple death threats that he pressed on with unwavering determination.

Wilberforce confronts his opponents head on in his book, arguing that the abolition of the slave trade would ultimately benefit the economy. He declared that even if economic losses occurred, the moral imperative to end, quote, the most enormous crime of slavery outweighed everything else. You know, we have to understand, and the founders of this country understood, that prosperity, like liberty, are a blessing from God, and that should be our first concern. Our first concern should be to seek God’s blessing, and that means that we follow the principles that he laid out. As I say here in the Christian Post for Christians today, engaging in public life often means standing against cultural tides, enduring criticism, and hostility.

Wilberforce’s example challenges us to speak the truth in love regardless of the cost. Transformational change is possible when Christians engage the public square with conviction and perseverance. That is the legacy that was taught to us by William Wilberforce. The Wise Wolf himself, Tony Arterburn. He knows where to look to find silver and gold. [tr:trw].

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