In anticipation of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 2007, the Advent Prayer Guide 2006 acknowledges the role that the Church played in the maintenance, as well as the abolition, of the slave trade.  The prayer points address modern day slavery, including bonded labour and the exploitation of women and children.

Over 25,000 copies of the Advent Prayer Guide 2006 have already been sold. The guide is in its sixth year of production and gives an opportunity to engage daily in prayer on an issue of importance; this year the theme is slavery.

This year’s guide is written by the Reverend Arlington Trotman, Director of AW Trotman Associates and former CEO of the Racial Justice Commission, Churches Together in Britain & Ireland.

Reverend Trotman said: “The Advent Prayer Guide is a timely reminder that evangelicals have an important stake, through earnest prayer and focussed action, in the bicentenary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act. The prayer guide serves as a tool of inspiration for challenging us, assuring the ends of modern forms of slavery and its legacies such as trafficking in human beings, unlawful racial discrimination, negative racial stereotypes and poverty.”

The guide supplies daily bible readings, reflections and prayer points from the start of Advent on 27 November to its end on 24 December and can be ordered through the Evangelical Alliance.