A Change Of Scene

We made it to Charleston after a long day and a bit of a fraught start in Jamaica at 4.30am!

Speaking of a fraught start has got me thinking about the journey so many others have made in the past to this city.

Charleston was a key port in the transatlantic slave trade and saw up to 150,000 trafficked Africans arriving through it's harbour. 

Some of the ships that arrived in Charleston across the middle passage had lost up to three quarters of their kidnapped personnel and many who arrived spent weeks on board the ships awaiting sale and transportation to their new places to live and work.

With the growth of the trade in enslaved people and the burgeoning plantation system, Charleston soon became one of the wealthiest regions in North America and by 1776 Charleston was home to 9 out of 10 of the wealthiest white people in North America.

If you want to read more of the history of Charleston's involvement in the slave trade check out the following link. It is sober reading of a dark period in the history of those involved in the trade of humans as objects to be bought and sold.

Charlestons History of Slavery

As you can gather from the above my talk of a fraught journey starting at 4am seems facile and shallow in comparison to the journeys endured by those transported to Charelston against their will in conditions that were inhumane.

Much of the talk of slavery and its misery in Jamaica has been based around issues of justice. My sense upon arrival in Charleston is where did the sense of love for ones neighbour

disappear to during this point in history? Apparently back in the 17th-19th Century the Europeans were much more ensconced in the Christian faith than they are now and yet the trade in people was at an industrial level. The sense of all people being created in the image of God doesn't seem to have been high on the agenda of those making decisions in positions of power.

A key message for us all today has to be to try to view all those we come across as created in the image of God and worthy of love, opportunity and grace.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

- Matthew 22:36ff