Friends of God and Slaves of Men

Kevin Bales is Professor of Contemporary Slavery and co-founder of the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham, and the American NGO, Free the Slaves. His book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy has been published in twelve languages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the book 'a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery.' The film based on Disposable People, which he co-wrote, won the Peabody Award and two Emmys. Michael Rota is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. He has authored scholarly articles on the definition of slavery and on the relevance of moral psychology to the history of abolition, as well as numerous contributions to the philosophy of religion.

• 1. Introduction; Part I. Religious Responses to Slavery – Historical Patterns: 2. Justifying slavery; 3. Ameliorating slavery; 4. Restricting slavery; 5. Rejecting slavery; Part II. Religion and Contemporary Slavery: 6. Slavery in the modern world; 7. False prophets: exploiting faith to enslave; 8. Religion's role in freeing slaves today; Bibliography; Index.

'Using person-centered storytelling and probing analysis of religious writing, Bales and Rota's ambitious and accessible work is chronologically expansive and truly global. Today, as in the past, religious belief both enables and challenges slavery and herein the authors call us all to be abolitionists.' Catherine Armstrong, author of American Slavery, American Imperialism: US Perceptions of Global Servitude, 1870–1914