I skipped Quaker meeting to worship at Mind on Fire today.

We took the family to watch Amazing Grace Friday evening. The movie follows one British MP’s efforts to outlaw the British slave trade around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. I highly recommend it to MoF regulars. In fact, I’d love to organize a viewing (and an after-movie discussion) in Orange County in mid-April if there’s sufficient interest.

Watching the movie was a powerful experience for all sorts of reasons, but above all, it’s helped to focus a number of thought-threads that have been blowing around in my head for the past few weeks. I’m going to break these concerns into at least four separate posts (one a day for the next few days). Here’s a taste of what’s to come:

Why are all of the famous social reformers religious?

Should we be conventional or radical when advocating social change?

What should our life priorities be in a world of such suffering?

What forms of slavery still persist?

In keeping with all of these themes, I’m announcing the next Mind on Fire official book selection (look out, Oprah!):

Presenting Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves.

I’ve changed the format of the Mind on Fire book group, based on my experience with the last two books.¬† I think that Ehrman dragged on way too long (I’m going to try to wrap him up by the end of this week), and I know that a number of MoF regulars simply weren’t interested in the subject matter.¬† I’d like to get around these problems by having a new book each month.¬† This way, if you don’t find this month’s book interesting, the next one is just a few weeks away.¬† I will continue to link to others who choose to write about each book (and related subjects), and hope to create an inter-blog book discussion.¬† I’d like to set up a face-to-face or virtual meeting for each book (including one in Salt Lake City in August).

Bury the Chains describes the past but is completely relevant in the present.  Hochschild promises to tell the story of how a handful of concerned British citizens transformed the world within a generation or two.  In the introduction he says,

Looking back today, what is even more astonishing than the pervasiveness of slavery in the late 1700s is how swiftly it died.  By the end of the following century, slavery was, at least on paper, outlawed almost everywhere.  The antislavery movement had achieved its goal in little more than one lifetime.  This is the story of the first pioneering wave of that campaign.

Slavery still exists today, to be sure.¬† This story is more about how perceptions of slavery were transformed from accepted norm to abomination.¬† It is a story of the first citizen’s movement.¬† We have a lot to learn from these pioneers.