Article

Change

Justice

1 February 2023

5 min read

The 4th century social justice warrior

He was the first to condemn slavery, over 1,500 years ago. Gregory of Nyssa critically examined society, looking at the relationships and structures everyone takes for granted.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A mosaic shows a saint with a beard holding a bible and his hand held up in a blessing.

Gregory of Nyssa fresco.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In January 2023 the Church of England committed £100m to invest in communities affected by historic slavery. Rightly so. Research since 2019 shows that the wealth it accumulated through historic investment in a slave trading company and receiving gifts from slave traders, may still benefit its finances today. This past is, as the Archbishop of Canterbury says, shameful. So, it is only right that these actions are addressed.

This story also highlights the complex relationship between Christianity and enslavement. On one hand, inspired by their faith, Christians led the fight for abolition. But on the other, some Christians supported and benefitted from the enslavement of other humans. And, the further back we look in history, the more Christians seem to accept enslavement as part of the fabric of society.

There is, however, an exception. In the late fourth century AD, Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop and theologian, critically examined this practice of enslavement, which so many others did not even think to question, and explicitly names it as a sin, about a millennium and a half before the abolitionist movements. Gregory is, in this way, a light in the darkness and an inspiration to Christians today.

He is convinced, on a fundamental level, that the domination of one human being over another in slavery is incompatible with Christian belief. In one of his sermons on the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, delivered in Cappadocia (Turkey), he calls slavery a sin.

It is a ‘gross example of arrogance… for a human being to think himself the master of his own kind’: When someone…arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?'

It is wrong to dominate others, because all human beings share the same fundamental nature. That nature is being made in the image of God:

'God said, let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God , who is his buyer, tell me?'

Since we are made in the image of God, we share His freedom to choose our own path, be it good or evil. When you enslave another, you take away this fundamental freedom and treat them as if they are animals, lower than the image of God:

'Why do you go beyond what is subject to you and raise yourself up against the very species which is free, counting your own kind on a level with four-footed things an even footless things?'

Therefore, Gregory says it is a shameful arrogant pride to enslave another human being, because you treat that which is made in the image of God as less than human, denying them the freedom God has given them.

We see this conviction about slavery as domination playing out in his biography of his sister Macrina. As wealthy aristocrats, his family owned enslaved people. Yet, at the heart of his narrative about his sister’s life, he explains how she began to treat her family slaves as equals:

'Weaning her [mother] from all that she had been accustomed to, she led her down to her own standard of humility, showing her how to live in equality with the whole body of virgins (slaves), that is, by sharing with them the one table, the same kind of bed, and all the necessities of life on an equal basis, with every distinction of rank removed from their life.'

Gregory does not explicitly say she freed these enslaved people, but inviting an enslaved person to share one’s table was a way of freeing them called manumissio inter amicos. In these passages, he particularly praises Macrina for undoing destructive relationships of domination, where one human treats another as less than themselves and lower than the image of God.

Gregory isn’t perfect. His condemnation of enslavement centres on the enslaver: he encourages his audience to avoid the moral pitfall, rather than expressing concern for the enslaved people. In another text he says it is good to free slaves, but he does not appear to campaign to end slavery. As we saw in the biography of his sister, he is so concerned to undo the relationships of domination of one person over another, that he is less clear if these people are free to leave. Finally, there is no evidence from his contemporary theologians that Gregory persuaded anyone else that slavery was a sin. In these ways, from our perspective today we would want Gregory to go further to dismantle slavery, or shift his perspective.

But, we don’t need him to be perfect. He offers a light in the darkness, not the rising of the sun. Gregory is an inspirational example of critically examining the fabric of one’s society, looking at the relationships and structures everyone takes for granted, and having the clarity and courage to see and proclaim that they are fundamentally incompatible with what he thinks the Bible says about the worth of human beings.

Many Christians are inspired by this way of thinking today. Even if they don’t know Gregory of Nyssa’s name, they will be drawn to charitable giving, certain professions, or activism, out of a deep desire for all to be treated with equality, because all are made in the image of God. To name one example of many. In the UK, Christians were heavily involved in the real living wage campaign. Society at large told them it was impossible to pay a wage where one did not need to choose between feeding and seeing one’s children. But, they campaigned alongside other community groups so that workers are being paid enough to live on, because they were convinced, like Gregory, that all human beings are due the same dignity and worth.

Enslavement: Voices from the Archives.

Article

Change

Fashion

4 September 2023

5 min read

To buy or not to buy, that is the question

Fast fashion antidote brand, Yes Friends, set out to save the world one t-shirt at a time. Its founders’ defiant optimism is proving to be rather infectious, writes Belle Tindall.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

Olu and Funsho model Yes Friends t-shirts.

Photo: Yes Friends.

How seriously do you take your moral conscience? How much heed do you pay to your inner monologue?

Sam Mabley, one of the founders of Yes Friends, was wandering around a shopping centre one day when his conscience told him that he couldn’t buy any item of clothing that was made un-ethically. Any garment which had in any way contributed to the exploitation of those who had made it was simply off limits.

To buy or not to buy: it was, and is, a question of justice.

It may be helpful at this point to remind ourselves why, to put such a thought in context.

The global garment industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. Having doubled in size in the past fifteen years (in terms of global revenue), it is predicted that by 2030, the industry will have grown by another 63%. What’s more, if it continues to operate at the speed and intensity we’re seeing at present, it will devour far more resources than the earth can possibly provide. This world of ours has never seen anything quite like this.

The garment industry has therefore, unsurprisingly, become the most labour-dependent industry of our age. In particular, the ‘fast’ fashion industry (a large swathe of the industry that relies on incredibly fast, cheap, and large-scale production) is being propped up by a vast and complex supply chain. It quite literally spans continents. And somewhere, often lost in the middle of it all, are the near sixty-million garment workers, the vast majority of whom are living in poverty.

Despite it being widely acknowledged as a Human Right, millions of garment workers are being denied a liveable wage. They are drastically over-worked and perpetually under-paid, working in notably dangerous conditions (the likes of which are often highlighted by news of factory fires that continue to take lives in Bangladesh) and denied any form of job security.

All of this is being relentlessly driven by our insatiable demand.

With this context in mind, back to Sam.

Their entire business model exists to be a correction of an industry that is so harmful it can be hard to fathom, and yet, there’s no doom present in the DNA of Yes Friends.

A few years after his conscience began to nudge him and he’d consequently set up an ethical clothing shop, Sam found himself unexpectedly stumbling upon Bible verses such as,

‘So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages’

And even,

‘Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.’

That can often happen. One finds themselves bumping into bible verses as one unexpectedly bumps into an old friend that they had just found themselves thinking about – just at the perfect time. You can consider it coincidence, or as Sam did, you can consider it confirmation.

Fast-forward to April 2021, Sam and a band of merry co-founders launched a strategically simple campaign that caught a huge amount of attention: they encouraged consumers to pre-order a plain white T-shirt for £7.99, thus showcasing that ethical fashion doesn’t have to be unachievably expensive. And two-thousand people did just that (many of whom doubled up, bringing in around 4,000 initial orders), they bought into a product and, more importantly, into an idea. With large scale, small margins, and the will to do things differently, our most foundational items of clothing don’t have to cost the (literal) earth. Yes Friends have proved it.

When chatting to Sam and Dan (another of Yes Friends’ original pioneers), I was struck by how their hopefulness had, and still does have, practical application. Their entire business model exists to be a correction of an industry that is so harmful it can be hard to fathom, and yet, there is no doom present in the DNA of Yes Friends. On the contrary, optimism and joy are baked into this brand. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Lord Micheal Hastings, a man who has spent his entire life ‘bending the power of the prosperous to the potential of the poor,’ who was a guest on the first season of the Re-Enchanting podcast. Lord Micheal met my gloomy admission that I so often feel too small to be any kind of solution to the world’s many injustices with the kindest and most profound telling off I’ve ever received. He said,

‘We’re too big not to be the solution. What fills the space of the problem should be our optimism. We should be willing to step into the breach where things don’t work and make them work’.

And that’s exactly what Yes Friends are doing. Sam’s words had that exact optimism in them when he simply said, ‘we can do this better, so why don’t we?’. He and his team have consequently stepped into the breach where things aren’t working and are showing that things can work in a fairer, non-exploitative, far more conscious way. They are working with a solar powered, water-positive, Fair Trade certified factory in Northern India. On top of this, Yes Friends has pioneered a bonus scheme, paying an additional premium directly to the garment workers, ensuring that they receive a good wage.

And what’s really striking about Yes Friends’ success, aside from the fact that they’re saving the world one t-shirt at a time, is that their defiant optimism is proving to be rather infectious.

As noted, it strikes me that when people are buying products from Yes Friends - as well as buying a beautifully crafted piece of clothing – they are purchasing a piece of this defiant hopefulness. People are buying into a better way, committing to making a better choice. It’s this way of innovating that can create a truly circular way of consuming: Yes Friends are serving their customer base, who are serving the garment workers, who are then re-serving the customer base. And on it goes.

The brand has cultivated such a good relationship with their customers that they have managed to incorporate their voices into the creative process. Their customers are continually encouraged to communicate their wants/needs and even have a say in the design of the clothing.

Yes Friends are making wonderful, high quality, clothes; and they’re dispelling any kind of ‘it just is the way it is’ myths along the way.

So, back to our key question. To buy or not to buy? When it comes to Yes Friends products, I should think the answer is obvious.