British Transatlantic Slave Trade—Barbaric Commerce: Holocaust-Genocide-Massacre-Catastrophe-Tsunami-With the Covering of White Christianity

By Dr. Robinson A. Milwood

This thesis is the result of a number of difficult waters and climates I have been encountering theologically and philosophically that have had an impact on my faith, avocation, vocation, and academic journeys in life. The syndication and combination of these are the main processes of my intellectual, historical, and theological formation in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524682736

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© 2017 Dr. Robinson A. Milwood Ph.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/22/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8263-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8273-6 (e)

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Chapter 1: Uprooting of Africans forcefully. (Africans dis-connections)

Chapter 2: Rough Crossing-Middle Passage-Kebuka and Maafa

Chapter 3: Definition of theology

Chapter 4: British theologians and the Transatlantic Chattel Slave Trade in African bodies.

Chapter. 5: The paradox and ambiguity of moral evil

Chapter. 6: British crimes committed against Almighty God and African humanity in the context of the transatlantic slave trade in African.

Chapter 7: Plantation slave trade system in the Caribbean region

Chapter 8: The Slave Trade as Moral Evil (Dr. Eric Williams)

Chapter 9: Slave Forts and Castles in Ghana

Chapter 10: Slaves resistances and insurrection (the impact on abolition)

Chapter 11: British African community and British semantic cultural Christianity

Chapter 12: African identity and its meaning.

Chapter 13: Reparations for historical injustices

Chapter 14: Epilogue

Bibliography

Thesis 5. For 2016

Kebuka–—Maafa

British Transatlantic Slave Trade -barbaric commerce: holocaust-genocide-massacre-catastrophe-tsunami-with the covering of White Christianity.

These sufferings of (Africans) were inflicted by the hands of those who created a covering of civilization heavily larded with the preaching of Christianity to justify behavior that one would not expect even from the animals inhabiting the forests of this planet. Dr. Eric Williams- British Historians and the West Indies.

By Dr. Robinson A. Milwood, P.hD.

FOREWORD

This thesis is the result of a number of difficult waters and climates I have been encountering theologically and philosophically that have impacted on my faith, journey, my avocation journey in life, my vocation journey in life and academic journey in life. The syndication and combination of these are the main process of my intellectual, historical and theological formation in life. My first encounter was reading postgraduate studies under Prof. John Hick and Dr. Liptner in the department of theology and philosophy of religion at Birmingham University where I majored in the Problem of Suffering and Evil in Religions of the world- namely Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. I surveyed the full spectrum of my subjects as a full-time student and at the end I was more intellectually, theologically, spiritually and psychologically (traumatize) disturbed in my spirit than when I began my studies. Rather than being transformed, I was deeply unsettled in my mind and spirit. What caused this inner turbulence was the fact that with all the volumes of books I read and the additional academic guidance from my professors there was absolutely nothing said even in passing about the Transatlantic Chattel Slave Trade in Africans as a moral evil and experience of Africans executed by European Christian nations. (the attested period is 430 years of unparalleled sufferings, systematic dehumanization, inferiorizations, animalization, relegation of Africans to beast of burden with oppressions, exploitations, being trampled underfoot, sexual exploitations of African women, nefarious punishments, relegation of African men, women and children to that of (it) and a (number) by white so-called Christians under the cloak of Christianity with the concepts of a white God and an invented Caucasian Jesus Christ as Redeemer of the world without any historical evidence. And the world of Europe, Britain and America were blinded, unconscious and without moral and religious guilt holding human beings in human bondage for economic developments was a major problem to me morally, ethically and theologically. Under morality and ethics the slave trade was not seen as moral evil and a contradiction of the dharma of humanity. Second, reading Church History 1517-present day the slave trade was not included in the scheme of studies. But the actual historical facts are that the churches were the main vehicle behind the slave trade in Africans. The 66 slave forts and castles dotted along the west coast of Africa are hard evidence of the slave trade and Christianity as integral. At Elmina Castle Cape Coast there is the Catholic Church Holy Communion table placed on top of the slaves dungeon. With audacity, I raised the topic of the Slave Trade with Professor Hugh Mac-Loud and he rudely replied that the Slave Trade was not important. At that point my blood rushed to my head at boiling point. I had hoped that I would leave the theology and religion department at Birmingham University intellectually and spiritually transformed but my departure was mixed with ruefulness and determination to research and study the transatlantic slave trade and Europeanized Christianity. I vowed that I would make my future research program contextually on the Slave Trade in Africans. Doctorate research into Liberation Theology diverted my immediate worry until much later I discovered that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was an irrepressible concern and anxiety in my life. I planned a short visit to West Africa-Ghana in search for evidence and answers to my inner and intellectual consternation. On visiting Elmina Castle Cape Coast I immediately found the answer. The answer was the connection between Europeanized Christianity-the- Church- and the Slave Trade. The emotional, psychological and theological complexities became an academic crusade from avocation to vocation, to conviction to absolute dedication. Third, when researching for my volume on African Humanity I encountered along the way the treatments, punishments, sufferings, relegations, denigrations, humiliations, systematic dehumanization and inferiorizations of Africans by the churches, theologians, bishops, Archbishops, Catholic Church and slave merchants who were paradoxically labeled to be Christians. That fact added more to my inner consternation. The philosophy of dominance and submission of Africans physically, spiritually and psychologically moved my inner being with deep emotions and mental unsettlement. The Moravian Church, Catholic Church, the Quakers and Anglican Church. From African Humanity, I moved on to my research on European and British Barbarity, Savagery and Brutality executed in the slave trade by European and British Christians through the ministers of religion, theologians and philosophers of religion. I discovered that the slave trade was a deliberate systematic invention by European Christian nations with White semantic cultural Christianity as a massive cover of the enormity and abomination of the slave trade in Africans under the guise of civilization and Christianization of Africans. Fourth- In my research into Western European and British barbarity, savagery and brutality, I read Professor Bishop N.T. Wright book on- Evil and the Justice of God. No- where, Professor Wright mentioned the transatlantic chattel slave trade in the slightest passing but he viewed the European domestic Jewish holocaust as a great moral evil. If his book was presented to me for an M.A. degree thesis for academic assessment, his thesis would be a straightforward failure on many counts. Rather, I would comment that his thesis is a complete dissipation of time and nothing more than plain intellectual stultification without ethical, moral and theological contextualization. Course, I have looked at several European and British scholars on the subject of Christianity, theology and philosophy of religion and they are all in the same barrel of intellectual stultification. How the hell they write, wrote, teach and taught Christianity, theology and philosophy of religion without the concretization and contextualization of the transatlantic chattel slave trade in African is beyond rational and theological belief? (It is not possible to teach or write ethical and moral theology without the contextualization of the nefarious transatlantic chattel slave trade in African that literally shaped the world we live in today theologically, economically and technologically. Despite the academic encomium of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and Karl Bath, they were not able to connect with the African Americans experience of racism and slavery in their various writings on theology and philosophy of religion. At this point in my journey I began to understand the phraseology and terminology of psychic distance". White theologians and philosophers of religion have applied psychic distance in dealing with ethical, moral and theological issues without enveloping the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans. Put another way in simple terms- it is impossible to talk or teach theology about God without the slave trade because the slave trade was planned and executed in the name of Almighty God and the belief biblically that God sanctioned the brutal forced enslavement of black people. They based this false concept on the Bible literally. Next, it is impossible to teach or talk about Jesus Christ without connecting with the slave trade. Jesus Christ, the slave trade criminals claimed was the redeemer of the world and that African slaves should only seek salvation for their souls and accept their racial brutal enslavement as part of God’s salvation history according to Prof. Roger Anstey from Kent University. Combined theologically both Almighty God and Jesus Christ as Redeemer of the world cannot be talked about or lecture about without God as Supreme and Jesus Christ as symbolizing sacrifice, African suffering in terms of connection and moral theology. The slave trade and European and British Christianity are intramural, analogous and synonymous in intention, plan, function, theology and stratification and symbolism for Judaism and Christianity. The suffering of Jesus is connected with the sufferings of Africans in slavery. What is desperately needed is that we must make coherent theological critique of history, God, Jesus Christ and our world and that does include the transatlantic slave trade in African theologically. Theologians must recognize the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and engage critically and theologically the transatlantic slave trade and Christianity, ethics, morality and moral theology.

Let me explain immediately what I mean by theology and Christianity. The transatlantic chattel slave trade in African was homologated by the churches, royals, scientists, theologians, parliament, slaveholders, slave traders, merchants, historians, anthropologists, Quakers, slavers, planters who were the ministers of religion, The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts, The Anglican Church Union, and philosophers of religion. But they formulated a bent theology and misleading hermeneutics of ethics, morality, moral theology and moral Christianity. It was generally perceived that the racial and forced brutal enslavement of Africans was a divine commission to Europeans and British white people as their eternal right and privilege. They created a theology of convenience to fit in nicely with their warped thinking and in a world academically that made them feel safe and comfortable. Extraordinarily they created a theology based on obliquity and this type of theology is permeating Christianity today. Europeanized Christianity is warped. British semantic cultural Christianity is profoundly fraudulent and unconnected to the black experience of the transatlantic slave trade in Africans. They based their theology on the Anglican Church and Catholic Church doctrine of ‘infralapsaranism." The doctrine of the elect and the condemned. The Evangelicals believed the Bible literally without any theological tools of understanding the Bible. They used biblical quotations conveniently. They deliberately avoided biblical quotations such as the prohibition of man-stealing is well-settled in the Bible in Timothy 1:10, Exodus 21:16. Deuteronomy 24: 7, 1Corinthians 5: 11, 1 Corinthians 6: 10 and Timothy 1:10-1.That the Vatican was in the forefront of the struggle from at least 441 CE to prohibit and abolish the enslavement of and trafficking in Christians, Europeans, the Indigenous Peoples of the Western Hemisphere and Africans; and that slavery and the slave trade were and are crimes against God, and were and are crimes against humanity. Pan-African Roots. The slave trade is the foundation of capitalism, industrialization and globalization. White scholars have all failed morally and theologically to engaged the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans theologically. Christopher Leslie Brown has tried not theologically and politically to engaged the slave trade or human bondage both politically and with Christianity and culture. Christopher Leslie Brown- Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism.

Because of the egregious failure, I came to the conclusion that Africans and Caribbean folks have the moral and theological right and authority to write their own contextual stories. As Dr.NA’IM Akbar, P.hD. reminded us thus in his highly appreciative and seminal book- Breaking the chains of psychological slavery that black people have the moral right to critique the people and institutions that blatantly and brutally forcefully enslaved black people for 500 years for their selfish and rapacious ends avariciously and economically. The transatlantic slave trade in Africans was for the economic imparadised of Europeans and British in Europe. Hon. Frederick Douglas in his Preface to –A Red Record Tabulated Statics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892-1893-1894 to Miss Ida B. Wells said- If the Southern people in defense of their lawlessness would tell the truth and admit that colored men and women are lynched for almost any offence, from murder to misdemeanor, there would not now be the necessity for this defense. But when they intentionally, maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story. White scholars past and present that I have corresponded with, they have refused a conversation-dialogue with me on the theological connection with the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans and they are only perpetuating what I have called British philosophy of ensconced silence and unsullied conscience in relation to the heinous transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans . Theology is not a closed subject, book or shop but rather an open subject waiting for the openness of tomorrow. Theology is the exposure of one’s faith in situations of conflicts, tensions and challenges morally, theologically and ethically. Theology must relate meaningfully to all the doctrines and ethics of the Church in contextualization of that which formed and shaped the world theologically which is the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans. The slave trade in Africans is White Christianity in fullness. Caucasian White Christianity is based on semantic cultural Christianity designed as and for a massive cover-up. It is Europeanized semantic cultural Christianity. It is White Christian theology as perceived by the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, the Moravian church, the Quakers and the Methodist church. (We often forget that John Wesley was an ordained minister of religion in the Anglican church before he left the Anglican communion). John Wesley was tied to the Anglican Church doctrines and policy that forced and brutalized with enslavement of Africans was the Anglican Church mission, policy, philosophy, theology and paradigmatic Christianity of the Anglican Church. Semantic Cultural Christianity". (The Anglican Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts and the Anglican Church Colonial Union were powerful arms of the Anglican Church during the slave trade regime in the West Indies.). The planters who were the Anglican Church ordained ministers of religion along with their overseers and slave masters looked upon slavery as their eternal right, ordained by God and they went to great length to justify slavery by biblical quotations says Eric Williams. They also thought it was their righteous duty to defend the enslavement of Africans. John Wesley continued his connection with the slave trade with his association with the Moravian Church and in accepting the instructions of the Moravian Church theology and spirituality, which he never knew before his encounter with the Moravian Church. George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, Sr. both co-founders of the Methodist church with Charles Wesley and John Wesley were slaveholders and they supported the institution of slavery. John Wesley felt himself deeply inferior to the dynamic Rev. George Whitefield and Rev. Jonathan Edwards. John Wesley had no influence doctrinally, theologically, politically, economically, and morally over his two co-founders of Methodism in relation to their involvement in the slave trade and slaveholding of Africans in human bondage.

White theologians and philosophers of religion have written and published in volumes millions of books on different aspects and branches of theology and philosophy of religion and they have not engaged the transatlantic chattel slave trade in African theologically. Politicians have done the same thing as in the argument of British Prime-minister Mr. Tony Blair that the heinous and barbaric transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans was legal and morally right. It is hereby stated by the writer of this Foreword and thesis that European and British transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans was a moral crime and theologically a moral violation of Almighty God and African humanity. (If brutal forced enslavement was legal and morally right, why Britain abolished their forced brutal enslavement of English people to North America?). The transatlantic slave trade in African was a moral wrong. Based on immorality it was also very illegal and furthermore under international law the transatlantic slave trade was illegal and morally wrong. (Lord Anthony Gifford statement on reparations). The big problem with Tony Blair and others like him is that culturally they believed that Britain had the moral, legal and religious rights to create and define the canons of life, humanity, civilization and Christianity. That mentality and culture is inherently inappropriate and based on introspective-ism, selfishness, arrogance and priggishness which is double wrong. The transatlantic chattel slave trade in African was the (Maafa) African holocaust, it was the African genocide, it was the African massacre, and it was the African catastrophe unparalleled in the history of the world. The transatlantic chattel slave trade in African was a man made tsunami of Africans created by Europe, Britain and the West for economic reasons for their development of capitalism and the inverse-development of Africa with the strangulation of dependency on Britain, Europe and the West.

It is with this awareness, consciousness, connection and conviction that this thesis is written and presented to the world to demonstrate and to state emphatically that the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans that was invented, executed and perpetuated by the countries mentioned above was a moral crime. They committed an Holocaust, genocide, catastrophe, tsunami and a massive massacre of African people. The world has a right to hear the collective voices of black people’s experiences and this thesis is giving a voice to the millions of silenced Africans. Black theologians and historians must be the cadence of the silenced forced voices of Africans who willfully perished brutally during the fiend transatlantic slave trade in Africans. Rev. David Haslam-Methodist minister rudely and racially said to me one day in London that I should not tell people in Methodist congregations in London about my experiences of racism in the Methodist Church as a black Superintendent minister of religion. His suggestion to me was an affirmation of white racism and at a public meeting he declared that he was a recovering racist. Europe and Britain in acts delineating their violence, bestiality, savagery and barbarity in the forceful and brutal enslavement of Africans racially, economically and theologically under the covering of White Christianity by the hands of those that were themselves the ultimate expressions of evilness, wickedness under the guise of a White God and a White plastic Jesus Christ with the Bible in the left hand and the gun or whip in the right hand, they must face the critique of African and Caribbean scholars. White missionaries, ministers of religion, bishops, Archbishops, merchants, theologians and philosophers of religion relied on their cultural DNA lies in the slave trade until this twenty-first century. These lies must be challenged and exposured radically. Africans must tell their own story. Whites cannot and should not be allowed to write the African experiences of racism, the enslavement of Africans and pandemic injustices past and present.

In 2010 Easter I was watching the (Stations of the Cross- The Passion of Jesus) the program was presented by two German New Testament scholars and when they got to the story of Simon carrying the cross of Jesus, they literally cut out that part played by Simon. Only blacks can write their authentic story. It is the moral responsibility of Africans and African descendants to write their own stories and history. Finally, emphatically and unequivocally what Britain and European theologians and philosophers of religion have written down over the many year as theology is not theology but only the perpetuation of intellectual theological vacuous stultification. Moral theology must have the concretization and contextualization of the nefarious transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans at the top of any theological discourse and curriculum. Birmingham University Department of Theology and Religion have an M.A., and P.hD. research program on the Jewish Holocaust but there is no course on the transatlantic chattel slave trade in Africans in the department of theology and religion. (In May 1752 the Jewish Captain Freedman departed from the coast of Africa with 9, 000 gallons of rum, a supply of foot and hands shackles, inferior tin ornaments, pistols, gunpowder, sabers, under his personal control).

It is academic racism and blatant disrespect for the most egregious and un-paralleled African holocaust in man’s chronological history. (British and European people consistently pretend that the transatlantic slave trade in African never happened. In British schools the European domestic Jewish Holocaust is part of the school curriculum, while the slave trade is only laconically touched on with grudge and envy in one lesson when it is remembered). But castigation is not only for Europe and Britain. What of African countries and governments? Africans are afraid of their true history. In Ghana many of the indigenous has never been to Cape Coast Castle or Elmina Castle. Next, the subject is not taught in schools. African political leaders are paralyzing Africa and they are politically and psychologically divided. There is no United States of Africa as with the United States of America. Thanks, however, to the West Indies and Jamaica in particular. The slave trade is a compulsory subject in schools in the Caribbean. Theology without the contextualization of the transatlantic chattel slave trade that shaped the world we live in today theologically cannot be authentic moral theology. Nor even vital theology or vital religion. The slave trade was grounded and perpetuated and executed on the foundation of the Bible and European and British semantic cultural Europeanized Christianity. Religiously, white Christians believed that it was their responsibility to brutally enslaved Africans for their nemesis and that white people were divinely commissioned with the task of enslaving Africans. White