'The fact is that slavery was ended in England by Evangelical Christians, and in America by Republicans.'
I fully agree with your sentiments, but I must point out a small fact that has not been mentioned yet in this thread - slavery has never been legal in England itself. It has always been illegal under English common law and was actually first written specifically into statute in 1102. Slaves brought into England could not be bought or sold and effectively had the status of indentured servants or employees until the case of James Somerset in 1772 who ran away from his 'master' who intended to send him to work on his Jamaican plantations. James didn't want to go and the Lord Chief Justice ruled that as slavery was illegal, he could not be made to. This technically freed between 10 and 14 thousand 'slaves' in England, though most carried on as they were, not considering themselves slaves, certainly their working conditions and rights were no worse than the indigenous population at that time.
So, good as Wilberforces work was, he only outlawed slavery in the semi-autonomous colonies, not in England.
Must admit I am looking forward to seeing the film!
Yes. Very true.
In fact, I would take this further. Slavery disappeared all across Christian Europe during the "dark" and middle ages. There were serfs and peasants tied to the land, but not slaves.
What ended slavery was, in short, Christianity. When the Conquistadors went to South America and enslaved the Indians they found there, the Pope held a meeting and decreed that these slaves would have to be freed. So, the Catholic Church was opposed to slavery.
In other words, what Steyn says is true, but what he leaves out is that slavery vanished all over Europe and then was REINTRODUCED during the Renaissance, when explorers went out and encountered the slave trade in Africa. Slavery was universal in all places and times except where real Christianity was dominant, whether Catholic or Evangelical.
There was slavery during the middle ages, but it was imposed on captured Christians by Muslims. Christian nations did not have slavery, as such, until the early modern period.
Wilberforce represented a pure strain of enthusiastic Christianity, and you might say that awoke the souls of Christians who had gone to sleep during the Renaissance and the so-called Age of Reason.