Trading Places

There are times when you have to stand up and be counted. Times when you know that something is right and you have to say it. You can choose the moment of course, because the right time may not be right now. The right time is the time when the greatest impact will be achieved as the long term effect is what to aim for.

For all those reasons it seemed right to respond positively when the Baptist Union Council was faced with the request for an apology for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It was 200 years since the abolition of that trade and about 50 years since large scale immigration from across the Atlantic began. It was also a time when the Baptist Union Council members were receptive to an idea that they would be able to take back to their Associations, Churches and Colleges. That reporting back for HEBA happened at the last Strategic Forum in December and a copy of the Council’s resolution appeared in the Ministers’ Mailing at the time. It can now be seen and downloaded from the Baptist Union’s website The next phase will be to enable the Churches of HEBA to go on the same journey and experience the same sense of God’s encouragement and timing.

Our Association’s Family Day will be held at Gorsley Baptist Church, Herefordshire on Saturday 7th June 2008. That will be our moment. Over the next few months every Ministers’ Meeting and Church is asked to consider their own response to the request so that we can all be ready for the 7th June.

Do you think that there is a sufficiently strong Biblical warrant for an apology to made to God and to the descendants of traded people by the descendants and beneficiaries of the trading people?

Do you sense the ongoing legacy of that trade among the descendants of the traded people? Can you identify that legacy in the people you know?

Do you sense the ongoing legacy of that trade among the descendants and beneficiaries of the trading people? Can you put yourself into the shoes of the trading people and imagine what they thought of the traded people? Can you identify similar thought patterns that operate today?

If we are going to live up to our value of being a prophetic people. Maybe now is the time to speak out about the evils of the past so that we might never do the same again.

Rev'd Barrie Smith, Regional Minister