Electoral Reform

[kandrathe]

Religious dissenters played a huge part in the end of the slave trade in Britain. But religious dissent, of all forms, from quakerism through deism to freethinking, were part of a larger explosion of unorthodox thought that occured at that time. To describe this as "christian" ethics, is to miss that this was not accepted by most christians, and that it included other kinds of dissenting thought, including atheism.

I would say that the slow death of traditional christian dogmatism led to a series of new lines of ethical thinking about slavery, some of which were evangelical, others barely christian or unitarian, and yet others deist or outright atheist. That any given person in the opposition to slavery was of a certain church or not binding upon the whole movement.

-Jester

The Quakers were instrumental in getting slavery banned everywhere, but from what I can tell, in Britain, it was really Thomas Clarkson who persevered, and along with MP William Wilberforce eventually turned the tide of public opinion to the abolitionist side. Can you name a deist or atheist that anything significant to do with the abolitionist movement?