2007 will mark the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, and the Evangelical Alliance is promoting an Advent Prayer Guide in 2006 in acknowledgement of the role that the Church played in the maintenance as well as the abolition of the slave trade.

The prayer focus for the guide has been firmly put on modern day slavery and addresses the importance of the issue in today's era. The EAUK hopes to reveal the modern day versions of slavery, including bonded labour, as well as 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 with thousands of others across the UK, on one issue of great importance; this year the focal theme is slavery.

The 2006 guide has been written by the Rev Arlington Trotman, Director of AW Trotman Associates and former CEO of the Racial Justice Commission, Churches Together in Britain & Ireland.

Rev 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.