excerpts from an article in Christianity Today:

"Wouldn't it be ironic if Western Christians were more excited about what God did through William Wilberforce to fight slavery in 1807 than about what God wants to do through us to fight slavery in 2007?

The question would seem absurd if not for the fact that there are more slaves in the world today than were extracted from Africa during 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade. More than 25 million human beings are slaves in 2007. They are not slaves in a metaphorical sense. They are held in forced servitude by other human beings.

Today, many North American Christians who have entered the joy of God's passionate global mission embrace evangelism and compassion ministries that bring food, housing, microloans, and medicine to the poor. Yet many are also beginning to see the true basis of slavery, which is another source of suffering for the poor—aggressive violence. That is the core reality of forced labor: coercion and terror. Poverty, ignorance, and spiritual darkness are all part of a complex set of social factors that exacerbate slaves' original vulnerability, but once enslaved, they need someone to rescue them from the brutal hand of their oppressor.

For Nagaraj and his family, who worked 16 hours a day, six days a week, making bricks, there was no mystery about what kept them and 80 other slaves inside the four walls of their compound. It was the vicious beatings unleashed upon those who tried to run away. For Elisabeth, a 16-year-old girl held inside a brothel in Thailand, it was money for Bible college that lured her into the hands of a sex trafficker who lied about a job across the border. Once inside the brothel, however, it was sheer violent terror that forced her to submit to multiple rapes by the brothel's paying customers.

Hundreds of millions of poor people in the developing world today are suffering under an epidemic of violence—domestic abuse, sexual violence, slavery, illegal detention, police abuse, land seizures, and extortion. In their moment of greatest need, Nagaraj and Elisabeth and these millions of others are not crying out for a sermon or food or medicine or housing or microloans. In due course, they may. But right now, they are crying out for someone to restrain the hand of the oppressor. They are crying out for the ministry of justice. You can give all kinds of goods and services to the poor in the name of Christ—but if you have not restrained the hand of the oppressor from simply taking these things away, you have not done much that is significant or sustainable."