The Protester, Priest and Politician: Effective Altruists before their time

Portrait of Benjamin Lay (1790) by William Williams.

By Nick Laing | 1,800 words | Reading time 8 minutes

Contents

• Benjamin Lay—The Protester

• John Wesley—The Priest

• William Wilberforce—The Politicians

• What they had in common

• What we can perhaps learn from them

Benjamin Lay—The Protester

Benjamin Lay, only 4½ feet tall, stood outside the Quaker meeting house in the heart of Pennsylvania winter, his right leg exposed and thrust deep into the snow. One shocked churchgoer after another urged him to protect his life and limb—but he only replied
“Ah, you pretend compassion for me but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad.”¹

In 1700 Lay’s moral stances were more than radical.² He thought women were equal to men, was anti-death penalty, pro animal rights and an early campaigner for the abolition of slavery. In the Caribbean he made friends with indentured people while he boycotted all slave produced products such as tea, sugar and coffee. I thought Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute³ was ahead of his time for going vegan in 1987—well, how about Lay in the 1700s? Many of these moral stances might seem unimpressive now, but back then I would bet under 1% of people held any one of them. These were deeply neglected and important causes, and Lay fought against the odds to make them tractable.

His creative protests were perhaps as impressive as his morals. He smashed fine china teacups in the street saying people cared more about the cups than the slaves that produced tea. He yelled out “there’s another Negro master” when slave owners spoke in Quaker meetings. He even temporarily kidnapped a slave owner’s child, so his parents would experience a taste of the pain parents back in Africa felt while their children were permanently kidnapped. These protests stemmed from a deep spiritual devotion to do and proclaim the right thing – people’s feelings and cultural norms be darned.

Extreme actions like these have potential to backfire, but Lay chose wisely to perform most protests within his own Quaker church. Perhaps he knew that within the Quakers lay fertile ground to change hearts and minds – despite it taking 50 years to make serious inroads. When the Quakers officially denounced slavery In 1758—perhaps the first large organizations to do so—a then feeble Lay, aged 77, exclaimed: “Thanksgiving and praise be rendered unto the Lord God… I can now die in peace.”

John Wesley—The Priest

“Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all men!” —John Wesley

A key early insight of the “Effective Altruism” movement was the power of “earning to give” – that we can do great good not just through direct deeds, but by earning as much money as possible and then giving it away to effective causes.

Yet one man had the same insight with similar depth of understanding 230 years earlier, outlined clearly in just one sermon derived almost entirely from biblical principles.⁴

John Wesley preached extreme generosity as a clear mandate from Jesus. His message was simple but radical. Earn all you can, live simply to save money, then give the rest to good causes. Sounds great but who actually does that?

He also had deep insight in the pitfalls of earning to give. We should keep ourselves healthy and not overwork. We should sleep well and preserve “the spirit of a healthful mind”. We should eschew evil on the path to the big bucks. And don’t get rich while you’re earning the big bucks, as you risk falling away from your faith and mission. He also understood that earning to give wasn’t a path for everyone.

Where he differs from the current “earning to give” zeitgeist is that living simply was core to his philosophy. He wanted his lifestyle to identify with the poor and always kept a tight lid on expenses, living on just 28 pounds annually for years on end. In one early year he earned 30 pounds, so he gave away just two, while at the height of his ministry he donated 98% of the 1400 pounds he earned that year, the equivalent of $300,000 today—and that not including all the money he raised directly for church and charity. He was also anti-savings and gave everything away as he went, reasoning that Jesus was interested only in building up treasures in heaven. “Leave nothing behind you! Send all you have before you into a better world!”

It fascinates me that a modern atheist philosopher (Singer), and an old conservative preacher came to nearly the same practical conclusion about giving—one through utilitarian philosophy and the other through deep biblical insight. Wesley was also a vegetarian⁵ and anti-slavery advocate after Lay and before Wilberforce. Eight days before he died, he penned an extraordinary letter to a young Wilberforce, just before he introduced the first anti-slavery bill to parliament.

“…Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”

William Wilberforce c.1790 (after John Rising) Stephencdickson, Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

William Wilberforce—The Politician

“If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.” —William Wilberforce

Elected a member of Parliament while only 21 years old and still in University, Wilberforce was described by a London socialite as “the wittiest man in England” and Prime Minister Pitt  once remarked that he had “the greatest natural eloquence of all the men I ever knew.” That he was a once in a generation prodigy isn’t in doubt, but early in his parliamentary career he seemed unlikely to change the course of history. During his first four year term he spent much time partying, drinking and gambling, and was often disorganized in his parliament duties. 

We don’t know exactly what triggered Wilberforce’s sharp turn to faith at age 25, but we do know the sober repentance wasn’t easy. Years later he confessed to his son "I am sure no human creature could suffer more than I did for some months.” Wilberforce quit drinking, renounced his membership to five gambling clubs and rose early to read his Bible. He considered quitting politics completely⁶ but through providence sought advice from John Newton, the ex slave trader turned priest who wrote “Amazing Grace”. Newton convinced Wilberforce to continue, but to now use his influence to do good.

It’s easy to look back and see abolishing slavery as a no-brainer, but that wasn’t the case. The British public wasn’t particularly concerned about the issue, although the Quakers (Lay) and Methodists (Wesley) actively campaigned against the trade. In 1789, four years after his conversion, Wilberforce was the first to strongly speak out against slavery in Parliament but his anti-slavery bill failed 166 votes to 88. It took another 15 years for Parliament to legislate against the slave trade, and 43 years of hard work before in 1834 Britain finally abolished slavery completely and slaves were freed.

As terrible as it is to consider these numbers, between 1.2 and 2.4 million people out of the 12 to 15 million transported during the trade’s torrid history may have died on boat journeys. Counterfactual histories are tough, but if the work of Wilberforce and others brought abolition forward by 20 to 50 years, they may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented much suffering. Of course the credit is shared between many, including those like Lay who helped open the Overton window for abolition, and former slave Olaudah Equiano whose book opened the eyes of the British public.

Although abolition was his defining achievement, Wilberforce had a voracious ambition to reduce suffering and build the global church. He advocated for prison reform, founded perhaps the most influential international mission society of the day and to round off his EA credentials, in 1822 he even helped launch the first ever animal rights charity, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

“To live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish is truly a sin. It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach and so much misery we could alleviate” —Wilberforce

What they had in common

1. Devotion to biblical truth over cultural norms. They had an ability to ignore cultural norms and see the biblical truths that pierced through. Truths that in the right hands could transform society into something better.

2. Use of what power or privilege they had not to gain more power or wealth, but to further their causes.

3. Inspiring friends. Wesley had evangelist Whitfield. Lay had his incredible wife Sarah and… Benjamin Franklin. Wilberforce had the “Clapham sect” where influential Christian reformers planned their next steps.

4. They did one thing for a long time until they were good at it and they broke through. Wesley reportedly delivered 3 sermons daily for 50 years, Lay never stopped provoking his Quaker kin, while Wilberforce rallied Parliament again and again until slavery was finally abolished. 

5. Whole hearted love and devotion to God. I was struck by how often their writing gushed in a way we might today find cringe, or “over-the-top”.

“God’s grace is sufficient for us in time of need, as our eyes are single towards him and him alone for advice, counsel, and strength at all times. Glory endless is with him” —Lay

What we can perhaps learn from them

With great humility I gingerly offer these lessons I’ve gleaned from looking at the lives of these great humans. Many of these ideas might be difficult or even impossible at our current stage of life and I certainly don’t follow them all.

1. Surround yourself with inspiring people: This can be a tough task, but it helps if we have better people than us among our life partners, friends and mentors.

2. Start with the words of Jesus, not cultural norms: Stepping out of cultural norms can feel almost impossible, but the words of Jesus can free us from expectations and standard career paths into better ways of being and doing.

3. The importance of Spiritual Disciplines: We might not manage Wesley’s fasting twice a week or Wilberforce’s daily Bible reading, but maybe we can at least turn to God before our smartphone every morning? Even this simple task can be harder than it seems and I still fail most days.

4. There’s no set formula for doing good: These three men worked in wildly different ways. Lay through wild protest, Wesley through influencing individuals with preaching, Wilberforce through policy change. What advantages do we have in our current stage of life and work, however small, that we can leverage to do more good?

5. Don’t be discouraged—bearing fruit can take decades: Lay and Wilberforce only saw the progress they dreamed of on their deathbeds, and for Lay especially his victory was hardly overwhelming—barely even the first step to abolition. Who knows what impact whatever we do now might have years down the line?

1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quaker-comet-greatest-abolitionist-never-heard-180964401/

2. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/dM93vHvLTgpk8pLSX/celebrating-benjamin-lay-died-on-this-day-265-years-ago

3. An amazing guy with a compelling story which you can hear on the Christian’s for Impact Podcast

4. https://www.eaforchristians.org/blog/john-wesley-the-use-of-money-12

5. Mainly it seems for frugality reasons

6. It wasn’t cool or easy to be a serious Christian in parliament at the time