I do love our faith community, even the wooly thinking that sometimes erupts. We're all aware of our idiosyncrasies. We balance them against our good qualities and, after all (and here's an often unsaid but loudly thought bit of self-congratulation) - didn't we do a good job on slavery! And, it's true, we led the early movements, invented ethical consumption, and were critical to bringing legal slavery to an end.

And then ... we dropped the ball. Slavery never stopped, like most crimes making it illegal simply pushed it into the shadows.

My main job for the past twenty-five years has been getting people out of slavery. Does that sound anachronistic? It shouldn't, because Friends made a commitment a long time ago to bring slavery to an end. When I became aware of the extent of slavery today, I was shocked and outraged, of course, but also felt strongly that as a Friend I should have known more and done more. So now my job includes talking to Friends about slavery, both historical and modern, and hoping we might re-kindle some of the fire that led Friends to invent the "NGO", human rights campaigning, and all the other tools of social change that are commonplace now, but arose in our early anti-slavery movements.

OK, that's the special Friendly preamble to introducing my new book and why I had to write it....

For years I traveled the world meeting people in slavery trying to understand the depth and truth of their lives. What I saw, heard, and learned changed me, and led me deeper into the work of ending slavery, but I was missing something important. Where there are slaves, the environment is under assault, forests are being destroyed, endangered species are dying, and climate change is worsening – and all of this destruction is driven by profits from products we buy.