What churches can bring to the battle against servitude

 

IF YOU have an eye for the quirky, you might have raised a smile over the notice-board that greeted people entering the lobby of one of Istanbul's newly-built hotels earlier this week: the English word "SINS" in capital letters, pointing the way to a conference room where two of the world's most eminent Christian leaders (Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, and Patriarch Bartholomew I, who enjoys primacy of honour in the hierarchy of Orthodox Christianity) were co-leading a rather intensive debate.

Unfortunately the topic of the deliberations was anything but funny. The two clerics and numerous researchers, aid workers and police officers were brought together by concern over the multitude of scourges now described as modern slavery: bonded or indentured labour, human trafficking, prostitution rackets involving trafficked persons, and the criminal exploitation of vulnerable people on the move. The title of the gathering, "Sins Before Our Eyes", drove home the point that anybody who consumes a product made with bonded labour, or patronises a business which is used as a front by traffickers, bears some responsibility for human misery.

Among Christian dignitaries, Pope Francis has led the way in defining human trafficking as one of two global policy challenges which spiritual and political leaders must urgently address. The other one is climate change. For the pope, these woes are related: environmental degradation is one factor driving forced migration. Now the leaders of the Anglicans (numbering around 80m round the world) and the Orthodox (numbering up to 200m if you count generously) want to join Francis in throwing their full moral heft into the battle against human bondage.

Neither can command a top-down global structure comparable to the Catholic hierarchy. But they can still offer a lot more than good intentions if they deploy their full resources and co-operate in an intelligent way with humanitarian agencies and law enforcement. Some of the nastiest human trafficking routes run through the historic heart-lands of Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. One links Orthodox countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria and Greece; another connects the Anglican stronghold of Nigeria with Britain.

Clergy learn a lot about the travails of the victims. The religious are often keen to share their insights, without betraying confidences. For example, a recent spike in the numbers of trafficked Nigerians arriving in Britain turned out to be traceable to a region which also happens to be a bastion of Christianity. As a result, the church grapevine was a good source of information on what exactly was causing the problem.

The offer to listen may be among the most important roles of the Church when dealing with victims of trafficking. As people with experience of police operations and religious networks told the gathering, many are too traumatised to talk to anyone who represents authority. But they may be willing to tell their story to an empathetic pastor or a female member of a religious community.  Perhaps the most important thing religious leaders can do is urge their flocks not to use goods and services which servitude makes possible. That doesn't merely mean resisting the temptation of sexual favours offered by the unfree; it can also mean steering clear of car-washes and beauty parlours which traffickers may be using to launder money.

The fastest-growing scourge identified by the gathering was the exploitation of minors who have gone astray in the vast migration movements which have swept through Europe and Latin America. At least 5,000 migrant children are missing in Italy and 1,000 in supposedly well-organised Sweden. In Greece, criminal networks that used to procure child labour from abroad now find an ample supply among newly arrived migrants. Youngsters are induced to engage in petty crime or offer sexual services in return for false promises to speed up their journey to Europe's wealthy heart.

Both the patriarch and the archbishop acknowledged that the historic role of their churches in fighting servitude has been ambivalent. Christian doctrines have sometimes been used to justify slavery. In Tsarist Russia, church teaching provided moral arguments for the liberation of the serfs, but plenty of serfs toiled on church lands. Under South Africa's apartheid system, Christian teaching was used both to justify racial oppression and to inspire its bravest enemies.

With the vast historic memory which their offices personify, both Bartholomew I and Archbishop Welby are well-placed to delve into their respective heritages and emphasise what is noblest: from the socially-reforming Greek church fathers to the British hero William Wilberforce, who led the fight against human bondage in the Victorian era. It's a depressing fact that despite the best efforts of all their would-be liberators, spiritual and otherwise, there are probably more slaves, in the broadest sense, today than at any time in human history.