By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
How exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?
The way the Obama campaign has answered the question was simply hard work and student loans.
But new questions have been raised about Obama’s student loans and Obama’s ties to a radical Muslim activist who reportedly was raising money for Obama’s Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991.
The allegations first surfaced in late March, when former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a former business partner who was “raising money” for Obama had approached him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School.
In the interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about twenty years ago from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Muslim and Black Nationalist who was a “mentor” to the founders of the Black Panther party at the time the party was founded in the early 1960s.
Sutton described al-Mansour as advisor to “one of the world’s richest men,” Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Prince Alwaleed catapulted to fame in the United States after the September 11 attacks, when New York mayor Rudy Guiliani refused his $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan, because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks.
Sutton knew Al-Mansour well, since the two men had been business partners and served on several corporate boards together.
As Sutton remembered, Al-Mansour was raising money for Obama’s education and seeking recommendations for him to attend Harvard Law School.
“I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,” Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. “The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas.”
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that Sutton’s account was “bogus” and a “fabrication that has been retracted” by a spokesman for the Sutton family.
He referred Newsmax to a pro-Obama blog published on Politico.com by reporter Ben Smith.
In a September 3 blog entry, Smith wrote that “a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally” said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments about Obama and Khalid Al-Mansour.
Smith suggested the retraction “put the [Obama/Al-Mansour] story to rest for good.”
Wardally told Smith that the “information Mr. Percy Sutton imported [sic] on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairman’s closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview.”
Asked which parts of Percy Sutton’s statements were a “fabrication,” LaBolt said “all of it. Al Mansour doesn’t know Obama. And Sutton’s spokesman retracted the story. The letter [to Harvard, which Percy Sutton says he wrote on behalf of Obama], the ‘payments for loans’ — all of it, not true,” he added.
Newsmax contacted the Sutton family and they categorically denied Wardally’s claims to Smith and the Politico.com. So there was no retraction of Sutton’s original interview, during which he revealed that Khalid Al-Mansour was “raising money” for Obama and had asked Sutton to write a letter of recommendation for Obama to help him get accepted at Harvard Law School.
Sutton’s personal assistant told Newsmax that neither Mr. Sutton or his family had ever heard of Kevin Wardally.
”Who is this person?” asked Sutton’s assistant, Karen Malone.
When told that he portrayed himself as a “spokesman” for the family, Malone told Newsmax, “Well, he’s not.”
According to a 2006 New York magazine profile, Wardally is part of a “New New Guard” in Harlem politics that has been challenging the “lions” of the old guard, Charles Rangel and Percy Sutton. That makes him an unlikely candidate to speak on behalf of Sutton.
Sutton maintains an office at the Manhattan headquarters of the firm he founded, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. ICBC owns New York radio stations WBLS and WLIB.
Sutton’s son Pierre (“Pepe”) runs ICBC along with his daughter, Keisha Sutton-James. Malone told Newsmax that she had consulted with Sutton’s family members at the station and confirmed that no one knew Kevin Wardally or had authorized him to speak on behalf of the family.
For someone claiming to be a “spokesman” for the Sutton family, who was authorized to call Percy Sutton a liar, Wardally even got Percy Sutton’s age wrong.
Sutton is not 86, as Wardally said, but close to 88. He was born on Nov. 24, 1920.
Wardally responded to a several Newsmax phone messages and emails with a terse one-line comment, maintaining his statement that Percy Sutton “misspoke” in the television interview.
“I believe the statement speaks for itself and the Sutton Family and I have nothing further to say on the topic,” he wrote in an email.
Asked to explain why it was that no one at Inner City Broadcasting Corp. knew of him or accepted him as a family spokesman, Wardally responded later that he had been retained by a nephew of the elder Sutton, who “is in our office almost every week.”
Wardally works for Bill Lynch Associations, a Harlem political consulting firm. The nephew, Chuck Sutton, no longer works with the elder Sutton at Inner City Broadcasting, but for a high-tech start-up called Synematics.
“Percy Sutton doesn’t go out idly on television saying things he doesn’t mean,” a well-connected black entrepreneur who knows Sutton told Newsmax.
Ben LaBolt’s claim that “Al Mansour doesn’t know Obama” was contradicted by Al Mansour himself in an extended interview with Newsmax.
Comparing the revelation of his ties to Obama to the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Al Mansour said that he was determined to keep a low profile to avoid embarrassing Obama.
“In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him… I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation,” he told Newsmax.
Al Mansour said he was deliberately avoiding any contact with the candidate. “I’m not involved in any way in celebrity sweepstakes,” he said. “I wish him well, anything I can do if he lets me know, I’ll let him know what I think I can do or can’t. But I don’t collect autographs. I wish him the best, and hope he can win the election.”
He repeatedly declined to comment on the Percy Sutton allegations, either to confirm or to deny them.
“Any statement that I make would only further the activity which is not in the interest of Barack, not in the interest of Percy, not in the interest of anyone,” Al Mansour said.
Unanswered Questions
Sen. Obama has refused to instruct Harvard Law School to release any information about his time there as a student, or about his student loans.
Newsmax contacted the Dean of Students, the Director of Student Financial Services, the Registrar, and the Bursar of Harvard Law School. None would provide any specific information on Barack Obama’s time at Harvard, except for his dates of attendance (1988-1991) or his year of graduation, 1991.
A spokesman for the law school, Michael Armini, said it was Harvard policy not to divulge information on alumni without their approval.
“There are lots of reporters nosing around the library,” he acknowledged. So far, none had turned up any new information.
Law professors Lawrence Tribe and Charles Ogletree have both said publicly that they were “impressed” by Obama when he was a student.
Sources close to the Sutton family told Newsmax that Percy Sutton wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama to Ogletree at Khalid Al-Mansour’s request, but Ogletree declined to answer Newsmax questions about this.
Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Armini said that Harvard was “very generous” with financial aid, but only on the basis on need.
The Obama campaign told Newsmax that Obama self-financed his three years at Harvard Law School with loans, and did not receive any scholarship from Harvard Law school.
LaBolt denied that Obama received any financial assistance from Harvard or from outside parties. “No - he paid his way through by taking out loans,” he said in an email to Newsmax.
At the time, Harvard cost around $25,000 a year, or $75,000 for the three years that Obama attended. And as president of the Harvard Law Review, he received no stipend from the school, Harvard spokesman Mike Armini said.
“That is considered a volunteer position,” Armini said. “There is no salary or grant associated with it.”
So if the figures cited by the Obama campaign for the Senator’s student loans are accurate, that means that Obama came up with more than $32,000 over three years from sources other than loans to pay for tuition, room and board.
Where did he find the money? Did it come from friends of Khalid Al Mansour? And why would a radical Muslim activist with ties to the Saudi royal family be raising money for Barack Obama?
That’s the question the Obama campaign still won’t answer.
Michelle Obama Speaks Out
Speaking at a campaign event in Haverford, Pa, in April of this year, Michelle Obama claimed that her husband had “just paid off his loan debt” for his Harvard Law School education.
In an appearance in Zanesville, Ohio, in February she bemoaned the fact that many American families were strapped with student loan payments for years after graduation.
“The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books,” she said. The first of those best-sellers netted the couple $1.2 million in royalties in 2005.
In response to Newsmax questions about the Obama’s college loans, a campaign spokesman cited a report in The Chicago Sun claiming that Obama borrowed $42,753 to pay for Harvard Law School, and “tens of thousands” more to pay for undergraduate studies at Columbia.
The same report said that Michelle Obama borrowed $40,762 to pay for her years at Harvard Law School.
But a Newsmax review of Senator Obama’s financial disclosures found no trace of any outstanding college loans, going back to 2000.
As a United States Senate candidate, Barack Obama was required to file a financial disclosure form in 2004 detailing his assets, income, consulting contracts, and liabilities.
Obama listed “zero” under liabilities in 2004 and in all subsequent U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms.
Under the Senate ethics rules, he is required to disclose any loan, including credit card debt, of $10,000 or more. The only exception to the reporting requirement is mortgage debt on a principal residence.
The Senate reports also directly contradict Michelle Obama’s claim that the couple had “only just” paid off their student loans after receiving book royalties paid out in 2005 and 2006 – well after her husband had been ensconced in the Senate.
Apparently, Michelle Obama misspoke, according to the version provided by the Obama campaign.
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt now tells Newsmax that the loans Sen. Obama took out to pay for Harvard Law School “were repaid in full while he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate [in 2004], and under the rules, the modest outstanding balance he repaid was not reportable as a liability on his personal financial disclosure reports.”
The Senator repaid the loans on “the expectation of a significant increase in family income” as a result of the paperback edition of his 1995 book, Dreams of My Father, LaBolt said.
Obama acknowledges that sales of the hard cover edition of the book were “underwhelming.” But in the spring of 2004,when Obama won the Democrat U.S. Senate primary in Illinois, Rachel Klayman, an editor at Crown Publishers in New York, read an article about Obama and became interested in his memoir, only to discover that Crown now owned the rights.
She asked Obama to write a new forward, and Crown then decided to re-issue Dreams as a paperback in July 2004, just as Obama made his historic speech to the Democrat National Convention.
The paperback eventually sold over one million copies, which under the standard industry royalty for trade paperbacks of 7.5%, earned him $1.2 million. However, Obama didn’t report income from the book until 2005, so it’s unclear how he was able to repay his student loans in 2004.
Responding to attacks from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the primaries, Obama released seven years of tax returns on March 25 of this year.
The returns, dating back to 2000, indicate that the couple paid no interest on their student loans. The interest from such loans would have been deductible on their joint income tax returns.
For 2000 through 2004, taxpayers declared student loan interest as a deduction on line 24 of federal form 1040. After 2004, the deduction can be taken on Line 33.
But the Obamas never declared a dime of interest in student loans on their return, most likely because they simply earned too much money to be able to take the deduction under the IRS rules.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt had no answer as to why the Obamas’ failed to declare the loans, stating the obvious that “because interest on the loans was not deducted, it would not appear on the Obamas’ personal return.”
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Democrats are Responsible for Our Economic Crisis
Democrats in Washington continue to show their true colors. As more and more information comes out, it becomes clearer who is to blame for wrecking our economy: partisan Democrats in the Congress who blindly defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and stood in the way of increased regulations over the two troubled entities earlier this decade. This list includes Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Barack Obama and multitudes of other Democratic representatives.
Here are some of the actual hearings and arguments while the legislation was being debated on the floor of Congress.
Notice which party continues to warn of the pending crisis and which party continues to defend the practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which have now derailed our country’s economy. Unbelievable.
I wish it ended there. Moments before one of the biggest bills to pass through Congress in years was voted upon, our esteemed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gave a speech that was one of the worst, offensive and disgusting displays of partisanship I’ve ever witnessed. Way to put country ahead of politics, Madame Speaker.
So, I forget, what party represents change this November?
Here are some of the actual hearings and arguments while the legislation was being debated on the floor of Congress.
Notice which party continues to warn of the pending crisis and which party continues to defend the practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which have now derailed our country’s economy. Unbelievable.
I wish it ended there. Moments before one of the biggest bills to pass through Congress in years was voted upon, our esteemed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi gave a speech that was one of the worst, offensive and disgusting displays of partisanship I’ve ever witnessed. Way to put country ahead of politics, Madame Speaker.
So, I forget, what party represents change this November?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
My Ancestors Did Not Own Slaves; Obama's Did!
Seriously! The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.
He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.
What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.
Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. My ancestors weren't even slave owners, and I'm the white guy. Obama's ancestors were. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.
Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it.
The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it because it is absurd.
Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain
Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.
His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.
He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.
What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.
Let that sink in: Obama is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners. My ancestors weren't even slave owners, and I'm the white guy. Obama's ancestors were. Thus he makes the perfect Liberal Messiah.
It's something Hillary doesn't understand - how some complete neophyte came out of the blue and stole the Dem nomination from her. Obamamania is beyond politics and reason. It is a true religious cult, whose adherents reject Christianity yet still believe in Original Sin, transferring it from the evil of being human to the evil of being white.
Thus Obama has become the white liberals' Christ, offering absolution from the Sin of Being White. There is no reason or logic behind it, no faults or flaws of his can diminish it, no arguments Hillary could make of any kind can be effective against it.
The absurdity of Hypocrisy Clothed In Human Flesh being their Savior is all the more cause for liberals to worship him: Credo quia absurdum, I believe it because it is absurd.
Thank heavens that the voting majority of Americans remain
Christian and are in no desperate need of a phony savior.
His candidacy is ridiculous and should not be taken seriously by any thinking American.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Monday, September 1, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Black Pride isn't Racism but White Pride is
Caution this may give you pause to think.
Perhaps we should get rid of the term "racist" all together and just live Our lives...
Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TV's Seinfeld.
This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his Comedy act. He makes some very interesting points.
"Proud To Be White"
Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to This?
There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab-Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans.
You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You Call me "White Boy," "Cracker," "Honkey," "Whitey," "Caveman" .. And that's OK.
But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel
Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ...You call me a racist.
You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the Ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi. You have the NAACP.
You have BET.
If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) we'd be racists.
If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.
If we had White History Month , we'd be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to "advance" OUR lives we'd be Racists.
We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, andThen we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that?
A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but anyColor can be in the Miss America pageant.
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships you Know we'd be racists.
There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US. Yet if There were "White colleges" THAT would be a racist college.
In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your Race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us Racists.
You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not Afraid to announce it. But when we announce Our white pride, you call us racists.
You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police Officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running From the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.
I am proud.
But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists?
Perhaps we should get rid of the term "racist" all together and just live Our lives...
Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TV's Seinfeld.
This was his defense speech in court after making racial comments in his Comedy act. He makes some very interesting points.
"Proud To Be White"
Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to This?
There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab-Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans.
You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You Call me "White Boy," "Cracker," "Honkey," "Whitey," "Caveman" .. And that's OK.
But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel
Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ...You call me a racist.
You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the Ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi. You have the NAACP.
You have BET.
If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) we'd be racists.
If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.
If we had White History Month , we'd be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to "advance" OUR lives we'd be Racists.
We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, andThen we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that?
A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but anyColor can be in the Miss America pageant.
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships you Know we'd be racists.
There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US. Yet if There were "White colleges" THAT would be a racist college.
In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your Race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us Racists.
You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not Afraid to announce it. But when we announce Our white pride, you call us racists.
You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police Officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running From the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.
I am proud.
But you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Why black Republicans support Obama
by Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson
I don't necessarily like his policies; but … history thrusts me to really seriously think about it [voting for Obama]. … Black conservatives tell me privately it would be very hard to vote against him in November.
– Armstrong Williams, talk show host
Recent comments by well-known black Republicans J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams that they're conflicted about the upcoming presidential elections and are contemplating voting for Barack Obama have sent shock waves through the Republican Party.
I'm hearing many black Republicans echoing similar sentiments. They say that because of the historical significance of casting a vote for the first legitimate black presidential candidate, they may cross party lines.
These statements don't surprise me.
So, how did black Republicans get to a point where they're willing to abandon their own "values" to vote for a socialist?
To get an understanding of this phenomenon, I recently interviewed several black Republican leaders on my radio program.
Calvin Stephens, chairman of the African-American Republican Leadership Council in Texas, said that he's voting for Obama because this is a "black pride moment!"
Can you imagine if a white person in a similar position even hinted at voting for a candidate because it was a "white pride moment"? That person would be castigated, labeled a "racist" and fired.
Other black Republicans came on my program and repeated the Obama mantra of "change" without defining what that change meant.
I understand now that there's a major difference between a black conservative and a black Republican. A black conservative votes Republican because the party agrees with his values: pro-life, lower taxes, strong defense and strong families, etc.
A real black conservative could never vote for Obama. On the other hand, a black Republican could vote for Obama because he identifies more with color than character.
Because black Americans have long been catered to by liberal Democrats, most still feel like they're owed something. Even the staunchest black Republican believes that his party owes him.
A new breed of black Republican has infiltrated the GOP with the intent to wield black influence over both the parties. They may agree with the Republican Party on taxes and other economic issues, but that's it! At their core they're dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats.
Until some 20 years ago, I used to be a liberal Democrat too. I followed Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and the NAACP. In my anger I believed what these so-called "black leaders" told me: that white racism was keeping me down.
I became a conservative after a deeply profound spiritual awakening at which point I repented of my anger, and God allowed me to see reality. I was then able to recognize that these liberal black leaders were no friends of decent black Americans. I could no longer identify with the liberal Democrat platform or their Godless "values."
I identified with conservative values and I joined the Republican Party to promote those values. I didn't join seeking to find what the party could do for me.
Understandably, white conservatives are bewildered and upset about the prospect of black Republicans voting for candidates based on race rather than values.
The Hispanic community already outnumbers blacks, and they're competing for representation within the GOP. Black Republicans' support of Obama will no doubt create a bigger rift between Republican leadership and blacks, and serve to close the window of opportunity blacks have had open to them to gain leadership in the party.
But what about "history"?
Let's examine the "history" argument. Is it right to vote for Barack Obama to make "history" while ignoring his record? Consider that Sen. Obama:
* believes in abortion on demand, and has told Planned Parenthood that sex-ed for kindergartners is "the right thing to do" (as long as it's "age appropriate");
* has announced his intention to gut our defenses including our nuclear arsenal and strategic missile defense programs;
* has said he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran and others without preconditions;
* wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, which would lead to chaos in the region and endanger Israel;
* seeks to raise taxes across the board including on oil company profits, yet opposes drilling domestically.
It would be nice to have a black president. But shouldn't it be someone who believes in the values that made this country great and is ready to protect and serve the American people?
I hear many blacks say that an Obama presidency will be the dawn of a new day for black America. Really?
Americans have elected black members of Congress as far back as the late 1800s.
We've had two black Supreme Court justices. We have blacks represented in the highest stratosphere of private and government sectors. Trust me, if all these accomplishments haven't persuaded and uplifted the masses, electing the first black president won't do it either.
Barack Obama is not black America's messiah. But the only way for black Americans (including those who identify themselves as Republicans) to see that reality is to drop their un-American identification with race and be willing to hear the truth about the issues from any American, regardless of color.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner
by Sherard Burns
In his book A Dream Deferred, Shelby Steele writes that loneliness “is no doubt a risk that trails every effort to define one’s beliefs. Most people could empty half of any room simply by saying what they truly believe.”1 I, like many of you, have felt this kind of “loneliness,” and, in many ways for the cause of Christ and truth, I have come to expect it. When one deals with the issue of race or race relations, past and present, one enters into a realm of discussion that is tense, filled with emotion and assumptions and all kinds of feelings that make discussion difficult. But if endured, the discussion can often be fruitful. The content of this chapter deals with such an issue—namely, Jonathan Edwards and his understanding of slavery.
Nothing has been more of a stain on our history than the institution and cruelty of slavery in America. Try as one may to undermine its unspeakable evil, the present existence of varying worlds in the United States in particular (the world of the white, black, Hispanic, etc.) finds its roots in the mentality and social ideals that promoted and perpetuated slavery—namely, European ethnocentrism. The driving
principle behind this institution was not simply economic prosperity, since to enslave anyone for financial gain one must first assume a moral right to enslave, as well as suppose the lack of freedom of those they would hold in bondage. Thus what formed the very heart of slavery was the belief that some had the authority to impose their rights on others in such a way that stealing men, women, and children from
their native land, tearing families apart, and systematically dehuman-izing them was condoned and rewarded. Hence merchandise was made of oppression.
One of the most troubling facts concerning slavery was its association with Christianity. Not only those who were deemed unregenerate and heathen owned slaves; those who professed to have met the true Liberator, Christ, also refused such liberty to men. This was then, and remains today, a difficult barrier for many to traverse. Yet it is our history, and if we affirm with the Scriptures that God is the Lord of history and long to honor Christ with the whole of our understanding of reality
and desire to love one another as we ought, we must look through the lens of heaven if we are to make sense of it and glorify God in all things.
In preparing this chapter I wanted to understand how Edwards, with his intellect and theological understanding and love for God, could own slaves and do so till the day of his death. It was clear to me that in order for African Americans, or any other person of color, to hear and appreciate Edwards, that question had to be answered since it represents one reason for hesitation. I do not suppose that I will answer every question that will arise from the reading of this chapter. The topic is so vast
and varied that it may raise additional questions that, I hope, will compel each of us to dig and find what is there to be explored and attained.
EDWARDS ON SLAVERY
The only known treatment by Edwards on this topic is his recently discovered “Draft Letter on Slavery.”2 In it we find not only his view on slavery, but also the rationale behind his condemnation of the slave trade. Its contents are not readily discernible due to the typical style employed by Edwards as he sought to get his mind around a topic or an issue. Kenneth Minkema writes:
As of today, no fuller treatment of this draft has been discovered, if indeed it ever existed.
THE OCCASION OF THE DRAFT On the occasion of this draft, Edwards biographer George Marsden writes:
The writing of this draft reveals several things about Edwards and his view on slavery. First of all, it is interesting that Edwards would even consider writing in defense of a man who opposed him theologically and who held opposing views with regard to awakenings. Noting this oddity, Marsden comments: “That he would do so is striking because he probably shared the suspicions that Doolittle had unorthodox and Old Light leanings.”5 The implication is that Edwards was engaged in theological compromise on this issue. The evidence of this is recognized when one considers the fact that “Doolittle was reputed to be an anti-Calvinist ‘Arminian,’ and in other contexts, would have been Edwards’ staunch foe.”6 If what Marsden writes is accurate—namely, that Edwards knew of Doolittle’s theological persuasions and negative feelings toward awakenings—we come to see how socially ingrained and acceptable the oppression of Africans in America had become. That Edwards would
defend Doolittle, a man who opposed everything he stood for theologically, on this issue of slavery betrays a more immediate concern with the existence of the institution of slavery than with theological consistency.
This compromise demonstrates the impact that a culture and its accepted norms can exert upon the church. That a man of Edwards’s learning and convictions could defend Doolittle on the issue of slavery demonstrates the ongoing battle the church wages with the cultural ethics in which it exists and the ethics of the home for which it strives. “Here, as in other places, we see how experience could shape and transform
theology in most scientific ways.”7
R. C. Sproul has said that when he disagrees with the giants of the Christian faith, he does so with fear and trembling. I feel the same way as I write this concerning Edwards. It is a difficult thing to posit that Edwards compromised theologically when what we have known of him in virtually every other case is theological precision and conviction. Yet the facts remain. However, though such compromise happened, we must
be careful to remember that, though he was a brilliant thinker, he, like all of us, still fought against the remaining effects of sin. This should not leave us thinking only of the culture’s influence over Edwards but should raise in our own minds the question of whether or not some of our assumptions and perceptions are culturally driven rather than theologically driven. If a man of great learning and religion such as Jonathan Edwards could be driven by culture’s influence, how much more might many in the church today, who are not given to the same biblical and theological precision as Edwards, be similarly influenced?
A second observation gleaned from Edwards’s draft concerns what did not prompt him to write. It seems doubtful that Edwards would have ever written anything on the subject, since what occasioned the writing of the draft was not his own internal promptings concerning slavery and the slave trade but a controversy that had become prevalent in his day. Stout and Minkema comment:
This being the case, what was it that compelled Edwards to defend and side with an Arminian slave owner and write about a subject that, supposedly, he never cared to discuss? The prime motivation behind Edwards’s action was the reality that he himself owned slaves. It was not that he felt a great burden against the atrocities of slavery, if indeed he knew them at all, nor that there was great desire to see the institution abolished and men gain the freedom that he and others like him enjoyed
as gifts from God.
By many accounts Edwards was America’s greatest religious thinker and, according to Perry Miller, was “so far ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him.” Unfortunately, Edwards’ progressivism did not extend to the question of slavery. In fact, Edwards was a slave owner who purchased a number of slaves in the course of his lifetime . . . he bought his first slave in the auctions at Newport, Rhode Island, the major northern hub of the Atlantic slave trade.9
Minkema writes: “[I]n 1731 they purchased three: Joseph, Lee and a woman named Venus. . . . [L]isted in the inventory of his estate in 1758, [was] a ‘negro boy’ named Titus.”10 Whatever Edwards knew about slavery did not affect his participation in it. Stout and Minkema write:
While some have argued that he was ambivalent on this issue of slavery, the fact that he owned slaves until his death without any record of granting their freedom upon his death makes such an idea difficult to embrace. In his draft he “acknowledged slavery’s] inequities and dis-turbing implications,”12 yet continued to endorse and sanction its legitimacy. If by ambivalent we refer to Edwards’s wholesale view of slavery and the slave trade, this may be true. Edwards embraced slavery along with others, but unlike most, he denounced the slave trade (as we shall see below). This position “represents a transitional stage in the development of antislavery thought among elites between complete advocacy of slavery and the immediatism of his first generation, New Divinity disciples.”13
In Edwards’s day “slave-owning was an elite practice. . . . A significant number of ministers owned slaves as a symbol of social status.”14 Slavery had become so embedded in the fabric of society and so necessary for the prosperity of man and country that any confrontation to its legitimacy was to call into question an accepted way of life. So intertwined was the condoning of slavery by the church that “Edwards . . . perceived that such railings against the minister could be to the great wounding of religion.”15 Driven by a dual reality—namely, that he owned slaves and knowing that a threat to the slaveholding of any one minister was a threat to the slaveholding of any minister—Edwards dismissed theological differences and defended Doolittle, the Arminian.
EDWARDS’S DEFENSE OF SLAVERY Edwards was a masterful logician, and this ability is seen in the manner in which he defends slavery. “In characteristic fashion, Edwards began his defense with an unrelenting offense, charging the congregation with hypocrisy and an unbecoming resistance to clerical superiority.”16 Against such Edwards argued:
The argument is clear and consistent. Those who were opposing slavery were at the same time benefiting from what they opposed by continuing to profit from slave labor. “In this way they are partakers of a far more cruel slavery than that which they object against in those that have slaves.”18 From the quote above, Edwards conceived of three options these opposers could take.
One option would be for them to take slaves for themselves. In light of the conflict between Edwards and the opposers of slavery, this may appear to be an odd option, but in the mind of Edwards, to oppose slavery and yet to continue to benefit from and not condemn the slave trade was hypocrisy. Thus, “calling for the cessation of slaveholding while continuing to participate indirectly in the slave trade implied a never ending increase of enslaved people.”19 In such a case Edwards held that “They may have their slaves at next step.”20
A second option would be to admit that there was nothing morally evil in slave owning. This argument is dependent on the argument of the first option. If the slave trade necessitated slave owning, those who continued to benefit from the trade did not have to take slaves themselves but should, by reason of logic, close their mouths from speaking any further opposition.
A third option would be to refuse to benefit from slave labor and slave trading altogether. This was perhaps the most consistent position that the opposers could take, but at the same time it was difficult to almost impossible since “The whole economy of New England . . . depended on products produced by African slavery (a key part in New England’s trade was with the slave economies of the Caribbean).”21 What happened as a result of this draft with Doolittle and those who opposed him is not readily known. What we do know is that Edwards delivered an undeniably decisive blow to the arguments of those who opposed the institution by highlighting the contradictions inherent in their arguments. These same contradictions pointed out by
Edwards, however, are evident in his own logic in denouncing the slave trade.
DENOUNCING THE SLAVE TRADE Edwards held that the slave trade was being continued on faulty grounds—namely, seeing God’s allowance of Israel to plunder the Egyptians before the Exodus as a parallel and justification for the slave trade.22 That is, in the mind of slavery’s defenders, the Exodus formed
the basis and rationale for taking slaves. For Edwards, however, to take people from their land and to hold them in bondage was an unjustifiable atrocity since it “would have a much greater tendency to sin, to have liberty to disfranchise whole nations.”23 Minkema writes: He used the word “disfranchise” to describe the practice, by which he meant depriving individuals of the freedom, rights, and privileges they
enjoyed in their native country. Thus he presented the question “whether Scripture warranted the enslavement of non Christians” and answered negatively. He queried “if God’s observing & Giving Leave for a thing prove it is not unreasonable in its own nature.” Again, the implied answer was “No.” One cannot, he held, make a “special”
injunction to God’s people (whether Israel of old or Christians under the New Testament) into an “Established Rule.” “A special precept for a particular act is not a Rule. . . .” For example, in Deuteronomy 15:6 God allowed Israel to plunder the Egyptians before the Exodus, but this, Edwards stated, “is quite a different thing from Establishing it as a rule that his People might borrow and not pay in all ages.”24
Edwards also argued against the trade on the basis of what it means to love one’s neighbor and examined who, in fact, “neighbor” refers to. [Edwards] took particular exception to a narrow definition of “Neighbor” as identifying only fellow believers. If neighbors were limited to Christians, then any sort of immoral behavior toward others was permissible. “This,” Edwards commented, “makes the SS. [Scriptures] Contradict it self.” Such a circumscribed definition of neighbor negated the moral law, which Christians were obliged to follow regardless of where they lived.25
The slave trade, according to Edwards, was against the moral law of God since it imposed on the liberties of men in their native land and, at the root of its execution, was a belief that such persons were not neighbors and thus did not deserve the love commanded in the law of God. Those who would condone the trade were “partakers of a far more cruel slavery than that which they object against in those that have slaves.”26 While Edwards was right in his understanding of the cruelty
of the trade, he did not carry the same logic to his understanding of slavery.
The argument used to debunk the critics of slavery—namely, that to participate in the trade was to necessitate the institution—now stood in the face of Edwards. To condone slavery contradicts condemning the trade since the existence of slaves in the States is owing to rejection of the moral law and also the fact that the institution demands the trade. The dichotomy in all of this is that Edwards would “oppose the overseas trade, even though he had hitherto purchased his slaves through it.”27 Thus, to condemn the trade and at the same time to participate in the selling and buying of slaves was a glaring contradiction. An illustration of this can be seen in a man who condemns the transporting of illegal drugs by cartels all over the world into the U.S. and at the same time is an active participant in the buying and distribution
of those drugs in America. No one, except other drug dealers, could ever buy such logic since the one (selling and buying drugs) necessitates the other (the transporting of drugs to the U.S.). It is on this basis that many after Edwards, including Edwards, Jr., Samuel Hopkins, and Lemuel Haynes, sought the cessation of not only the institution but the trade as well.
From where we sit today, looking back at that period of history and the subsequent influence that the thought of Edwards would have on America, it seems that with one strike of a pen, perhaps, Edwards could have exerted a radical influence on the way we view and understand race in American society. But he, like many before him and after him, did not rise to the occasion on this issue.
Another noteworthy point concerning the primacy of culture in slaveholding is the view of Edwards toward African and Native Americans. Marsden writes:
Edwards, Jr., son of Jonathan and a noted abolitionist, “grappling with his own family’s history and slave ownership . . . sought to exonerate them,” including his father, “by pleading at once their Christian sincerity and their ignorance.”29 Though arguments may and perhaps could abound against such reasoning, understanding Edwards’s view on revelation as being progressive, this may well be true. While Edwards could very well believe something different than what is stated, we find
nothing but words of equality as he understood equality in his day. “We are made of the same human race,” [Edwards] had written in a note on Job 31:1530 . . . perhaps soon after he became a slave-owner. “In these two things,” he wrote, “are contained the most forcible reasons against the master’s abuse of his servant, viz. that
both have one Maker and that their Maker made ’em alike with the same nature.”31
Interestingly enough, the logic Edwards used to diffuse the arguments of those who condemned Doolittle and others for owning slaves was not used in the seeming contradiction of Edwards—condemning the trade and yet owning slaves, keeping the trade alive, at least in the sense that his behavior in no way was a deterrent to others who might desire to purchase slaves.
HOW COULD HE OWN SLAVES? In an effort to help make sense of how Edwards could own slaves, Marsden calls us to “consider Edwards’ attitudes towards slavery in the context of his hierarchical assumptions . . . where it was assumed that higher orders of society would have servants to perform domestic and farm labor.”32 Before we can adequately move to any conclusions concerning
Edwards and slavery, we must battle the natural inclination of removing Edwards from his historical-cultural context and then viewing him through our modern assumptions. Perhaps for some in the African-American community this kind of cultural imposition has hastened judgment without due consideration for that kind of cultural understanding to which Marsden calls each of us.
In coming to the aid of his fellow minister and in owning slaves himself, another question that arises is, how could such behavior be justified by a man whose vision of God was as glorious as any in America? Robert J. Cameron, in his book The Last Pew on the Left, comments:
As stated above, Jonathan Edwards was a sinner saved by the grace of God, who still battled with the remaining effects of his fallen condition. This in no way stands to exonerate him for the role he played in sustaining slavery; rather it brings into perspective the way in which sin can have effect in our lives.
In the cosmic sense of reality, owning slaves is no different from any other sin, in that all sin is against God, and all of us are capable of the greatest of evils were God to release his restraining hand for his eternal purposes. What is interesting, however, is that while we must see sin as the cause of Edwards’s behavior, Edwards himself never called what he and his other colonists were doing “sin.” To Edwards, slavery was a necessary evil that served some positive good in the natural order that God had decreed—a thought his disciples would take up some years following his death. Yet if Edwards was wrong, it is not his God or his theology that is to blame—only his sin.34 Reformed theology did not produce a heart to own slavery.
A second way to understand how Edwards could own slaves is a matter of his own heritage. The only life that Edwards knew was one in which the enslavement of Africans was an acceptable practice. A rather lengthy quote from Minkema will demonstrate this point. As a clergyman and a member of the social elite, Edwards was representative of the slaveowning class in New England. . . . Many of Edwards’ relatives and friends owned slaves as a symbol of social status. Alternatively, they used slaves to augment their often tardy salaries by hiring them out as day laborers. Jonathan’s father, Timothy, owned a slave named Ansars. His wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, sought to purchase slaves of her own. The reverend Timothy Woodbridge of
Hartford, Connecticut, owned an Indian boy and African slave; Elisha Williams of Wethersfield, Connecticut, rector of Yale College from 1726 to 1739, owned an Indian woman. Both of these men were relatives of Edwards. In Massachusetts, such prominent ministers as Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College, and Nathan Webb of Uxbridge were slave-owners.35
By no means is this to be a justification for Edwards’s slaveholding, but it is an attempt to set him in his proper context. Marsden cautions us against the natural inclination to view men of history from our own contexts, stating that we should think about Edwards as an eighteenth-century figure and about how that context should shape [our] understanding of him . . . it would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate their outlooks critically.36 The grounds for such cultural imposition centered around two “ethical” premises of slave owning: (1) They were to be treated humanely, and (2) they were to be Christianized.
First, Edwards held that slaves could be rightly owned if they were treated humanely. On the assumption of humane treatment Edwards could not be found at fault. There is in fact no record of any abuse or ill treatment by Edwards toward his slaves. “In 1740, Jonathan and Sarah cosigned to guarantee the financial support of ‘Jethro Negro and his wife Ruth,’ who were manumitted in the will of Sarah’s step mother.”37
It is true, perhaps, that the majority of northern slave owners treated their slaves with much more respect and dignity, though still not as fellow image bearers of God, than their southern counterparts did. Having said that, while humane treatment was a justification for slavery, it was not at all a valid one. Throughout history that has been the dominant cry of the white church in seeking to minimize the horrific
consequences of slavery, even in our day, appealing that many were treated well. In response, listen to the words of one of Edwards’s disciples to whom he was most connected (his son):
Edwards, Jr.’s statement is better grasped by an illustration to the point. Let’s say that someone came to your home and took away your child. For years you searched and after much agony found her location and her captor. You then say to him that you are going to press charges against him because he kidnapped your child, broke up your family, and caused much grief and despair. To your charge he responds, “But I treated her well.” It is doubtful that this would be an acceptable explanation to drop the charges and continue life, business as usual.
This is what Edwards, Jr., is asking, and the tone of his argument suggests that the slaveholders—none in that day, and for certain no right-minded person in our day— would be satisfied with the claim that their kidnapped loved one was treated humanely. The issue is not how slaves were treated, but the fact that they were slaves in the first place. While Edwards held that the slave trade was cruel and an abomination to God, those who followed him would condemn both slavery and the
trade as great evils and causes of divine retribution from God upon the nation — namely, the Revolutionary War.
On a similar note, Hopkins added that if slavery was not abolished in America, the practice would “practically authorize any nation or people, who have the power to do it, to make [them] their slaves.”39 Second, Edwards held that slaves could be owned if they were Christianized, which has been long stated as the reason God ordained slavery. To his credit, Edwards not only preached to the Africans but included them in the membership of his church. In his own effort to convert slaves, Edwards in his regular preaching did not draw metaphysical differences between races. He exhorted
both, “black and white” to “hearken to the call of Christ.” Christ he declared, “Condescends to take notice of serv[an]ts & people of all nations[;] he Condescends to poor negroes.”40
There were nine full communicant African-American members of his Northampton church; “[Six] of these, including the Edwardses’ slave Leah, were products of the awakening . . . and became communicants in 1736. Around this time the church admitted two Indian members, Mary and Phoebe Stockbridge.”41
Nothing is said of their status in the church, or whether they were allowed to sit with the whites in the congregation. On the one hand, from what we know of history, broadly speaking, we can deduce that they were excluded in many ways. Yet on the other hand, Edwards was faithful, as he saw faithfulness to this issue, to the blacks of his day by way of evangelism.42 Having said that, whatever the case may be with
regard to Edwards and his evangelizing of slaves, we are always brought back to the reality that is at the heart of this entire chapter: the institution of slavery and its unjustified existence as it was expressed in America.
There is an inherent contradiction in offering Christ to men and women whom you hold in bondage, against their own will, and on the basis of man-stealing. Murray J. Harris, in his book Slaves of Christ, states:
If we may generalize, ancient writers about slavery, assuming the inevitability and necessity of slavery for the well being of society, focused their attention not on the slave’s gaining or regaining of physical independence but on the need for spiritual freedom in the midst of physical servitude. Although the body may be enslaved, the spirit or the mind remains free, while the spirit of many free people is enslaved to passions. But this was not the emphasis of Christianity. For the early
Christians, whether slave or free, both body and spirit belong to the Lord (1 Cor. 6:15, 17) and slavery to him constituted true freedom.43 Here I am compelled to make some comments concerning the difference between sanctioned slavery in the Bible and the institution of slavery in America. When people discuss slavery, they do so with preconceived ideas, assuming that others hold the same definitions and understandings of the words that create those ideas.
The argument that says slavery was not evil because the Bible does not say slavery is evil is not sound, since it relies upon a number of assumptions that turn out to be untrue. One is that the slavery in America modeled the sanctioned slavery in the Bible. But that is not the case. Rather than asking, “What does the Bible say with regard to rightfully owning slaves?” we should first ask, “What does the Scripture prohibit in the owning of slaves?” Harris helps us on this issue, stating that
the Scriptures forbid “the exploitation of the slave for monetary gain” and “the kidnapping of persons for slavery and trafficking in slavery.”44 Harris cites the incident in Acts 16 where Paul had cast the evil spirit out of the slave girl who mocked Paul and the gospel. Luke writes:
Harris comments:
Although Paul’s action precipitated his arrest and imprisonment along with Silas (16:19-24), Luke’s report of the episode does not suggest the inappropriateness of Paul’s action, but rather the opposite; the abuse of the slave was repudiated. This is also clear, by implication, from those passages where slaves-owners are directed to treat their slaves justly and fairly.45
This kind of exploitation, which, by implication, is condemned in Acts 16, was a central tenet of American slavery, and the evidence for such is not scant. Yet with regard to the church, we see the same exploitation of men and women for monetary gain. When churches were unable to give full compensation to their pastors, they would often hire out their slaves in an effort to meet their financial obligations. America prospered and became what it is today in large part due to the labor of
Africans, and many who prospered were professing Christians. The land of the free was built on the backs of chained and shackled Africans who, though they labored to make it what it was, enjoyed little, if any, of its fruits. The most desired of fruits was freedom.
The second aspect that Harris cites is that of man-stealing and slave trafficking. Here he makes reference to 1 Timothy 1:9-11, but focuses on the word translated “enslavers.” The only use of this term is in this passage, and the word “refers to someone who sells slaves . . . and in particular to someone who kidnaps people for sale as slaves.” Harris also adds the penalties for such persons stating that “Paul is alluding to the eighth commandment, ‘You shall not steal’ (Ex 20:15), which applies to persons as well as things. Exodus 21:16 prescribes the death penalty
for the kidnapper (cf. Deut 24:2). That is, while both Testaments assume the practice of slavery, both repudiate kidnapping and dealing in slaves.”46
We return to the question of what the Bible prohibits in sanctioned slavery. While we may grope to understand the practice of slavery in the Bible, it seems clear that the very actions and practices prevalent in American slavery are the same actions prohibited by the Bible. While the penalty of death sanctioned in the Old Testament for such practices may seemed to have passed over America, one may justifiably wonder
whether the damning effects of homosexuality on the culture and its evil rise within the hallowed walls of the church and countless other catastrophic realities in our land count as evidence for the wrath of God on America because of the unspeakable evils of slavery. Much can be debated on this issue.
What these two prohibitions show is that the form of slavery in America was contradictory to the Bible and was therefore evil. While Edwards may have seen slavery as being justified on the basis of Christianization and humane treatment, some of his followers—namely, Edwards, Jr., Samuel Hopkins, and Lemuel Haynes—believed differently. Hopkins believed that “the millennium was to commence with the defeat of Satan’s followers . . . among whom Hopkins counted slave traders and slaveholders.”47
The negativity of American slavery, however, is not seen simply in its opposition to Scripture, but also in the social sins it encouraged. “Hopkins clearly defines slavery as a sexual sin, a lustful and lewd version of selfishness. ‘Lust’ was, indeed, the cause of slavery, Hopkins maintained.”48 Quoting Edwards, Jr., John Saillant writes, “Slavery ‘tends towards lewdness’ since a ‘planter with his hundred
wenches’ is like a Sultan in his seraglio.’ The evident issue of this sexual sin, also known as amalgamation, was generations of mulattoes in America.”49
Slavery was and still is a blemish upon America. Even after its abolition the residual effects are evident in the culture at large and regrettably within the church. As an African American who loves Reformed theology and Jonathan Edwards and who desires to see these truths embraced by all, especially those within the African-American context, I have to make sense of this hypocrisy. Edwards was only a small part of a much larger picture of Reformed thinkers and preachers. The theology
I love so much is tainted with stains of slavery, and my heroes — one of which is Jonathan Edwards—owned my ancestors and cared not to destroy the institution of slavery.
WHY READ EDWARDS? The question that many have posed over the years is: Why should I read a white man’s theology? Why should I care or even consider that what he says is accurate when he missed something that was seemingly obvious and evil? Why should I give my attention to the ideas and constructs of men who constructed a reality of segregation and superiority that held
in check the advancement of Africans in America and treated them like brutes and beasts and less than human? Why should I care about a theology that, on the surface, seems to devalue every cultural expression of Christianity indigenous to African Americans? One of the most important answers is that Edwardsean Calvinism formed the basis of early American abolitionism.
His position [condoning slavery and condemning the slave trade] . . . represents a transitional stage in the development of antislavery thought among elites between complete advocacy of slavery and immediatism of his first-generation, New Divinity disciples.50
While the major promoter of such a transition was Samuel Hopkins, others like Edwards, Jr., and Lemuel Haynes shared in his passion to see slavery and the trade eradicated. These men took their cue from Edwards’s understanding of what he called “disinterested benevolence,” which to him was love toward “Being in General” or “God and his Creatures.”51 To Edwards, this love was the very basis of our expression
of love toward our neighbor; not a love full of self-interest, but one that is inclined to the good and happiness of others. . . . disinterested benevolence . . . meant to Hopkins an unselfish goodness not just to mankind in general or even to one’s enemies, but primarilyto those who needed benevolence most, that is, the oppressed of mankind. And who, of all beings, asked Hopkins, were most oppressed and most needed universal good will but the Negroes whose slavery was an offense to Christian benevolence.52
Some have written that Hopkins went dangerously beyond his mentor in extending this concept of benevolence in ways Edwards, supposedly, did not intend. Hopkins, wanting to give imminent expression to what appeared to be purely aesthetic, other-worldly thought, sought to flesh out the social implications of Edwards’s teaching by showing its leaning toward abolitionism. Whatever one may say of Hopkins’s use of Edwards on this issue, what cannot be questioned is Hopkins’s unswerving commitment to the view of God’s supremacy and the theology upon which it was expressed. Saillant explains how New Divinity ministers drew upon this understanding of disinterested benevolence:
[D]ivine benevolence required, Edwards reasoned, the damnation of the unregenerate, since God could not have consistently loved himself and his creation at the same time as he accepted sinners into heaven. Sin became, then, a providential means of revealing divine benevolence, since God had designed evil as the occasion of the damnation of the unregenerate and the revelation of his glory and goodness.53 Saillant, quoting Hopkins, continues: “‘God makes the sin . . . the occasion and Means of His own Glory.’ God ‘over-ruled sin’ . . . in the sense that deeds that individuals intended as evil were used by God as the occasion of good.”54
The framework for such a belief was justified in two biblical accounts: the story of Joseph and the crucifixion. Joseph was sold into to slavery by his brothers, rose to power and honor, and in the end held the very lives of his relatives who sold him
into slavery in his hands. The grand statement of that account is Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
We see the same in the crucifixion of Christ: By his death many were made alive and brought near to God. The pleasure of God in the crushing of his Son displays the paradoxical happiness of God in that crushing, since by it he was glorified and sin defeated. He took what men intended for evil and made it, by design, for his glory and our good. The response of many southern Presbyterians to Edwardseanism constitutes additional evidence that the seeds of abolitionism flowed through the theology of Edwards.
Due to the influence of “Edwards and his school,” its relationship to abolitionism, and its influence in the New School branch of the Presbyterian church, southern Presbyterian theologians became increasingly concerned to distance themselves from Edwards and his followers.55
Columbia Seminary, a bastion of Reformed orthodoxy, found itself embroiled in controversy, having come under much suspicion of its orthodox commitments when many of the first students later became New School in their sympathies. . . As one editorial writer in the Columbia newspaper questioned, “Is [Columbia Seminary] as free from all suspicions of a taint of the new divinity, and of abolitionism as a Southern school ought to be?”56 While other aspects of southern Presbyterians’ objections of Edwards lay on theological grounds (believing that Edwards was too
innovative and free with theological speculation), it is not denied that another problem they held against Edwardseanism was its seeds of abolitionism.
While the New Divinity disciples were in unanimous agreement concerning the cruelty and evil of slavery, and that the theology of Edwards with its centrality of the sovereignty of God was a means to combating its survival, there was one point at which such unanimity crumbled. Saillant writes: “Members of the New Divinity school were among the first Americans to publish against the slave trade and slavery, yet were also among the first to propose expatriation of freedmen and freedwomen to Africa.”57
By the mid-1770s, two distinct approaches would emerge. One approach emphasized the connections between blacks and whites, envisioning a day when both races would be united as equals in America. The other approach emphasized the distance between blacks and whites, envisaging the end of the slave trade and slavery yet also
promoting the expatriation of blacks from North America.58
While they all shared an understanding that the immediate effects of abolitionism were the spiritual and physical freedom of the Africans, it was their understanding of the long-term solution that created separation. To Hopkins and Edwards, Jr., the long-term solution was expatriation. While they conceived of freedom for the Africans, they had not intended that such freedom be exercised in the colonies, fearing a number of things, most notably intermarrying and retribution. Haynes, on
the other hand, “argued that the slave trade and slavery were designed by God to further the appreciation felt by black and white alike for liberty, education and social harmony.”59
With such a division among the sole promoters of abolitionism all claiming Edwards as their theological defense, a question that would naturally be raised is: Which strand of abolitionism would be a logical expression of Edwards? Another way to approach the subject is to ask: If Edwards were alive during the days of such events as the American Revolution, which of the New Divinity disciples best represents his
thoughts consistently?
Understanding Edwards’s view of the Millennium and his subsequent understanding of the progressiveness of revelation and its effects on peoples and nations, I am persuaded that the strand of Edwardseanism that understood slavery as God’s means of displaying unity among the races is consistent Edwardseanism. While Lemuel Haynes, the African-American New Divinity disciple, did not readily agree with Hopkins and others within the New Divinity school that God used the slave trade and slavery for the Christianization of Africa, he was unable to disagree . . . in a theological fashion. Haynes pointed to a vision of blacks and whites united affectionately and equally in American society—a vision that he believed God was offering to Americans through the suffering of slaves. Just as theologians . . . put the abolition of the slave trade and slavery on a par with the Reformation, Haynes put the sufferings of slaves on par with the goodness and beauty of a free and benevolent society.60
I offer two reasons for the idea that that consistent Edwardseanism led to such a conclusion. The first is Edwards’s feelings towards African Americans and Native Americans and his allowing them not simply to attend but also to become full members in the church. This is no small matter, certainly when you consider the history of African Americans and their experiences within white, Protestant churches. It is not
recorded whether or not these persons were allowed to sit among the majority in church, but that such were able to become full communicants and treated as equals is no small thing.
A second reason for my conclusion is his ministry to Native Americans.
Though Edwards’ mind never changed on slavery, it did change over another colonial shame: the treatment of Native American Indians, which included their enslavement. While serving as a missionary to the Mahican and Mohawk Indians at the Stockbridge mission in Massachusetts, Edwards had the occasion to witness the cruel exploitation
of the Indians firsthand. This experience prompted him to work actively on behalf of the Indians, often in opposition to selfish Englishmen, including some direct relatives.61
What is it that makes a man once driven by cultural norms and familial dynamics to behave counterculturally and in opposition to his family? One answer is experience. This was a tremendous factor in Edwards’s theological and social development. Because he witnessed the evils and corruption toward the Native Americans, he fought for them and against his own time. One wonders if such a shift would have occurred had he been privy to the horrors of the slave trade. Stout and Minkema comment:
In my reflection on Edwards and this thought of experience, and after reading of his subsequent change of heart and mind after witnessing the horrible treatment of the Native Americans, I am inclined to think that Edwards, had he understood the atrocities of the slave trade, would have changed his position on slavery. I realize that no one can know this for certain, but had Edwards lived to see the hypocrisy of the Revolution—men seeking to be free from the rule and dominion of the crown, yet denying Africans the same freedom for which they fought — I am inclined to believe that he would have considered such to be hypocrisy.
HOW DO WE LISTEN TO EDWARDS?
By asking how we give Edwards a hearing, I am thinking more of what kind of mental construct must be present in the minds of anyone who wants to understand Edwards in spite of his shortcomings. The only true answer to this question has manifold implications: we must embrace the sovereignty of God.
The aim of this chapter is neither to exonerate Edwards nor to condemn him. The aim is to love his God. The God whom Edwards preached was the God of the Bible; he is sovereign over all things and events in the universe, even the sin of slavery.63
The difficulty that such a belief may pose is its seeming exoneration of the perpetuators of slavery on the basis that it was God’s design. However, evil is not justified because God, in his mysterious ways, ordains for it to be. Two events in the Scriptures illustrate this point. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was, as the Scripture declares, “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). And still, in the same voice and context, a paradox is created with the stating of a seemingly contradictory truth, namely: “you crucified and killed [him] by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The death of Christ was by the hand of God, as Isaiah says in Isaiah 53:10: “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief.” At the same time we know that it was by the hands of men that Christ suffered. The sovereign hand of God does not stand in opposition
to the responsibility of men. God crushed Christ by the hands of sinful men, so that even though he is in control of all events, men are held accountable.
It is with this understanding that we can hold that while slavery falls under God’s sovereign control, the perpetuators of slavery and those who profited from the slave trade are not excused by the admission of this fact. Instead, the opposite may be the case. It is the sovereignty of God in slavery that may stand to implicate such human agents, since it is God at work even in their deeds, for the good of his name. Hopkins and others saw the horrors of the Revolutionary War as the punishment of God because of slavery. This is the context in which we must labor, as Christians, to hear and understand anything regarding slavery and draw our conclusions thereof. Embracing this reality does not call for an intellectual or emotional abandoning of history, living and behaving as if slavery never happened; rather it is an attempt to place history within its right context—namely, as subservient to the will and decrees
of the Sovereign King.
What the trials of God have to teach us, with regard to slavery and racism, is not only a demonstration of the continual effects of sin, but more importantly, racism, seen by the godly through the grid of God’s sovereignty and our everlasting joy in him only, is to be a reminder to us that we are not home yet. Trials are to teach us to be looking and reaching for that eternal city, to be seeking the joy that is certain to follow such faithfully endured trials (see Jas. 1:1-2; 2 Cor. 4:16-18).
Perhaps, as pilgrims in this world, our history and present-day sufferings are making us uncomfortable in this world so that we might long for heaven. Perhaps a radical way to view suffering is not to grapple and argue, as many seem to do, for a piece of the American pie, but rather to see such hindrances as reminders that you—we—are not yet home. Fight for social justice? By all means! Yet fight as a citizen of heaven, not as one who thinks that this earth and America’s economy is the end-all.
This, I know, is not easy to digest, especially if you are African American and you witness, whether in others’ lives or in your own, the residual effects and implications of days gone by. Though I have studied this and taught it many times, it is not easy to write, and it is difficult to communicate in some contexts. Yet we all desire to be driven and shaped by the truth and are willing, I hope, to lay everything at the foot of divine revelation and to allow such to construct a mentality that holds sway by its creeds and ethics over that of our own culture. This in no way calls anyone to deny culture, but it expresses the tension in which we live, certainly as African Americans, as we seek to make sense of our history in America in light of the Word of God.
The reality of this tension is captured in a provocative statement made by a friend of mine, Ken Jones, pastor of Greater Union Missionary Baptist Church in Compton, California. In a discussion we had regarding this issue some years ago, Pastor Jones commented that “the challenge of the African American within the Reformed context is
that we are called to embrace the theology of our oppressors and to reject the theology of our liberators.”64 This means that the odd and ironic position of the African American who seeks to be shaped by orthodox theology must reject, in many respects, the theology of a Martin Luther King, Jr., and embrace the theology of a Jonathan Edwards or Robert Dabney. While I admire Dr. King for his work and
efforts in fighting for the freedom of African Americans in this country (my freedom), I am not hesitant to note that he will not offer much help in theological precision. While, on the other hand, Edwards never held the mantle as social liberator, his theology will saturate a man in orthodoxy.
As an African American, I know daily the pressures of being in a predominantly white society. Yet how I approach that society, the grid by which I engage that society, is more telling than anything else. God cannot be sovereign over some things and yet not in control of others. This is no justification for abuse or racism, for such perpetuators will have their day of reckoning. But the eradication of racism today, as would be the case with slavery then, will not come about through programs, but by means of a God-centered and God-entranced view of reality. We must not be governed by the political persuasion of today, but governed by the sovereign reign and rule of God. Whatever we may think of Edwards, one thing is for certain: He left the American church with the necessary theological truths to kill racism in our hearts and to be conquerors of it in the church.
In light of that, though we fight and should fight the residue of such hatred in our day, the reality is that the desire to be theologically orthodox today means we must add to our shelves books by dead white men who owned slaves. All of our heroes have clay feet. Jonathan Edwards was not a perfect man, and he did not get everything right, nor did he stand for all the right things. Neither do any of us. His blind spots and sins are pointers to our own blind spots and sins. To ask for grace and
mercy on our own sins is, by logical implication, to be ready and willing to extend it to Edwards.
In his book A Dream Deferred, Shelby Steele writes that loneliness “is no doubt a risk that trails every effort to define one’s beliefs. Most people could empty half of any room simply by saying what they truly believe.”1 I, like many of you, have felt this kind of “loneliness,” and, in many ways for the cause of Christ and truth, I have come to expect it. When one deals with the issue of race or race relations, past and present, one enters into a realm of discussion that is tense, filled with emotion and assumptions and all kinds of feelings that make discussion difficult. But if endured, the discussion can often be fruitful. The content of this chapter deals with such an issue—namely, Jonathan Edwards and his understanding of slavery.
Nothing has been more of a stain on our history than the institution and cruelty of slavery in America. Try as one may to undermine its unspeakable evil, the present existence of varying worlds in the United States in particular (the world of the white, black, Hispanic, etc.) finds its roots in the mentality and social ideals that promoted and perpetuated slavery—namely, European ethnocentrism. The driving
principle behind this institution was not simply economic prosperity, since to enslave anyone for financial gain one must first assume a moral right to enslave, as well as suppose the lack of freedom of those they would hold in bondage. Thus what formed the very heart of slavery was the belief that some had the authority to impose their rights on others in such a way that stealing men, women, and children from
their native land, tearing families apart, and systematically dehuman-izing them was condoned and rewarded. Hence merchandise was made of oppression.
One of the most troubling facts concerning slavery was its association with Christianity. Not only those who were deemed unregenerate and heathen owned slaves; those who professed to have met the true Liberator, Christ, also refused such liberty to men. This was then, and remains today, a difficult barrier for many to traverse. Yet it is our history, and if we affirm with the Scriptures that God is the Lord of history and long to honor Christ with the whole of our understanding of reality
and desire to love one another as we ought, we must look through the lens of heaven if we are to make sense of it and glorify God in all things.
In preparing this chapter I wanted to understand how Edwards, with his intellect and theological understanding and love for God, could own slaves and do so till the day of his death. It was clear to me that in order for African Americans, or any other person of color, to hear and appreciate Edwards, that question had to be answered since it represents one reason for hesitation. I do not suppose that I will answer every question that will arise from the reading of this chapter. The topic is so vast
and varied that it may raise additional questions that, I hope, will compel each of us to dig and find what is there to be explored and attained.
EDWARDS ON SLAVERY
The only known treatment by Edwards on this topic is his recently discovered “Draft Letter on Slavery.”2 In it we find not only his view on slavery, but also the rationale behind his condemnation of the slave trade. Its contents are not readily discernible due to the typical style employed by Edwards as he sought to get his mind around a topic or an issue. Kenneth Minkema writes:
The draft is typical of Edwards’ habits of letter writing. In preparing
many of his letters, particularly those of an important nature, Edwards first sketched out major points and transitions in an elliptical, streamof-consciousness manner on a scrap of paper and then wrote the letter in full on good foolscap.
As of today, no fuller treatment of this draft has been discovered, if indeed it ever existed.
THE OCCASION OF THE DRAFT On the occasion of this draft, Edwards biographer George Marsden writes:
Some parishioners at the church in Northfield . . . had denounced their pastor Benjamin Doolittle, for owning African slaves. The accusation was only one part of larger controversy between Doolittle and part of his congregation, led by a number of older men in the town. The “disaffected brethren” accused Doolittle who had been their pastor since 1716, of making exorbitant salary demands. . . . Some of the discontent arose from suspicions that Doolittle had Arminian leanings and that he was cool toward awakenings. At the moment, however, the controversy over slaveowning had come before the Hampshire Association, and Edwards was chosen to draft a response.
The writing of this draft reveals several things about Edwards and his view on slavery. First of all, it is interesting that Edwards would even consider writing in defense of a man who opposed him theologically and who held opposing views with regard to awakenings. Noting this oddity, Marsden comments: “That he would do so is striking because he probably shared the suspicions that Doolittle had unorthodox and Old Light leanings.”5 The implication is that Edwards was engaged in theological compromise on this issue. The evidence of this is recognized when one considers the fact that “Doolittle was reputed to be an anti-Calvinist ‘Arminian,’ and in other contexts, would have been Edwards’ staunch foe.”6 If what Marsden writes is accurate—namely, that Edwards knew of Doolittle’s theological persuasions and negative feelings toward awakenings—we come to see how socially ingrained and acceptable the oppression of Africans in America had become. That Edwards would
defend Doolittle, a man who opposed everything he stood for theologically, on this issue of slavery betrays a more immediate concern with the existence of the institution of slavery than with theological consistency.
This compromise demonstrates the impact that a culture and its accepted norms can exert upon the church. That a man of Edwards’s learning and convictions could defend Doolittle on the issue of slavery demonstrates the ongoing battle the church wages with the cultural ethics in which it exists and the ethics of the home for which it strives. “Here, as in other places, we see how experience could shape and transform
theology in most scientific ways.”7
R. C. Sproul has said that when he disagrees with the giants of the Christian faith, he does so with fear and trembling. I feel the same way as I write this concerning Edwards. It is a difficult thing to posit that Edwards compromised theologically when what we have known of him in virtually every other case is theological precision and conviction. Yet the facts remain. However, though such compromise happened, we must
be careful to remember that, though he was a brilliant thinker, he, like all of us, still fought against the remaining effects of sin. This should not leave us thinking only of the culture’s influence over Edwards but should raise in our own minds the question of whether or not some of our assumptions and perceptions are culturally driven rather than theologically driven. If a man of great learning and religion such as Jonathan Edwards could be driven by culture’s influence, how much more might many in the church today, who are not given to the same biblical and theological precision as Edwards, be similarly influenced?
A second observation gleaned from Edwards’s draft concerns what did not prompt him to write. It seems doubtful that Edwards would have ever written anything on the subject, since what occasioned the writing of the draft was not his own internal promptings concerning slavery and the slave trade but a controversy that had become prevalent in his day. Stout and Minkema comment:
". . . he threw theological differences to the side and stood shoulder to
shoulder with Doolittle. . . . So it was that Edwards, the Calvinist, promoter of revivalism, found himself in the ironic position of defending an Arminian, Old Light critic of the awakenings on an issue he never cared to address before."8
This being the case, what was it that compelled Edwards to defend and side with an Arminian slave owner and write about a subject that, supposedly, he never cared to discuss? The prime motivation behind Edwards’s action was the reality that he himself owned slaves. It was not that he felt a great burden against the atrocities of slavery, if indeed he knew them at all, nor that there was great desire to see the institution abolished and men gain the freedom that he and others like him enjoyed
as gifts from God.
By many accounts Edwards was America’s greatest religious thinker and, according to Perry Miller, was “so far ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him.” Unfortunately, Edwards’ progressivism did not extend to the question of slavery. In fact, Edwards was a slave owner who purchased a number of slaves in the course of his lifetime . . . he bought his first slave in the auctions at Newport, Rhode Island, the major northern hub of the Atlantic slave trade.9
Minkema writes: “[I]n 1731 they purchased three: Joseph, Lee and a woman named Venus. . . . [L]isted in the inventory of his estate in 1758, [was] a ‘negro boy’ named Titus.”10 Whatever Edwards knew about slavery did not affect his participation in it. Stout and Minkema write:
[What] we now know of the brutalizing dehumanization of the slave market did not faze him. . . . Apparently, Edwards was so at home with the institution of slavery, and the status that it conferred on aristocratic clergymen, such as himself, that he never really questioned its central tenets. . . . That any congregation would feel justified in censoring and removing their pastor over the issue of slavery was an affront to Edwards’ aristocratic sensibilities and sense of clerical status.11
While some have argued that he was ambivalent on this issue of slavery, the fact that he owned slaves until his death without any record of granting their freedom upon his death makes such an idea difficult to embrace. In his draft he “acknowledged slavery’s] inequities and dis-turbing implications,”12 yet continued to endorse and sanction its legitimacy. If by ambivalent we refer to Edwards’s wholesale view of slavery and the slave trade, this may be true. Edwards embraced slavery along with others, but unlike most, he denounced the slave trade (as we shall see below). This position “represents a transitional stage in the development of antislavery thought among elites between complete advocacy of slavery and the immediatism of his first generation, New Divinity disciples.”13
In Edwards’s day “slave-owning was an elite practice. . . . A significant number of ministers owned slaves as a symbol of social status.”14 Slavery had become so embedded in the fabric of society and so necessary for the prosperity of man and country that any confrontation to its legitimacy was to call into question an accepted way of life. So intertwined was the condoning of slavery by the church that “Edwards . . . perceived that such railings against the minister could be to the great wounding of religion.”15 Driven by a dual reality—namely, that he owned slaves and knowing that a threat to the slaveholding of any one minister was a threat to the slaveholding of any minister—Edwards dismissed theological differences and defended Doolittle, the Arminian.
EDWARDS’S DEFENSE OF SLAVERY Edwards was a masterful logician, and this ability is seen in the manner in which he defends slavery. “In characteristic fashion, Edwards began his defense with an unrelenting offense, charging the congregation with hypocrisy and an unbecoming resistance to clerical superiority.”16 Against such Edwards argued:
"How ill does it suit for a man to cry out of another for taking money that is stolen, and then taking of it of him that wherein the injustice consists. If the slaves are unjustly theirs, then their slavery is unjustly theirs, and of this they are partakers of. All the difference there can be, is that they are not so immediate partakers, that it is a step farther off. . . . Their argument, if it carries anything, implies that we ought not to be partakers at all. If they don’t mean so, but only mean by so many steps, they would do well to fix the number of steps. And besides, they don’t know but that they are partakers as immediately as we. They
may have their slaves at next step. Let them also fully and thoroughly vindicate themselves and their own practice in partaking of negroes’ slavery, or confess that there is not hurt in partaking in it, or else let ’em cease to partake in it for the future, one of the three. For if they still continue to cry out against those who keep negro slaves as partakers of injustice in making them slaves, and continue still themselves notwithstanding to be partakers of their slavery, let ’em own that their
objections are not conscientious, but merely to make difficulty and trouble for their neighbors."17
The argument is clear and consistent. Those who were opposing slavery were at the same time benefiting from what they opposed by continuing to profit from slave labor. “In this way they are partakers of a far more cruel slavery than that which they object against in those that have slaves.”18 From the quote above, Edwards conceived of three options these opposers could take.
One option would be for them to take slaves for themselves. In light of the conflict between Edwards and the opposers of slavery, this may appear to be an odd option, but in the mind of Edwards, to oppose slavery and yet to continue to benefit from and not condemn the slave trade was hypocrisy. Thus, “calling for the cessation of slaveholding while continuing to participate indirectly in the slave trade implied a never ending increase of enslaved people.”19 In such a case Edwards held that “They may have their slaves at next step.”20
A second option would be to admit that there was nothing morally evil in slave owning. This argument is dependent on the argument of the first option. If the slave trade necessitated slave owning, those who continued to benefit from the trade did not have to take slaves themselves but should, by reason of logic, close their mouths from speaking any further opposition.
A third option would be to refuse to benefit from slave labor and slave trading altogether. This was perhaps the most consistent position that the opposers could take, but at the same time it was difficult to almost impossible since “The whole economy of New England . . . depended on products produced by African slavery (a key part in New England’s trade was with the slave economies of the Caribbean).”21 What happened as a result of this draft with Doolittle and those who opposed him is not readily known. What we do know is that Edwards delivered an undeniably decisive blow to the arguments of those who opposed the institution by highlighting the contradictions inherent in their arguments. These same contradictions pointed out by
Edwards, however, are evident in his own logic in denouncing the slave trade.
DENOUNCING THE SLAVE TRADE Edwards held that the slave trade was being continued on faulty grounds—namely, seeing God’s allowance of Israel to plunder the Egyptians before the Exodus as a parallel and justification for the slave trade.22 That is, in the mind of slavery’s defenders, the Exodus formed
the basis and rationale for taking slaves. For Edwards, however, to take people from their land and to hold them in bondage was an unjustifiable atrocity since it “would have a much greater tendency to sin, to have liberty to disfranchise whole nations.”23 Minkema writes: He used the word “disfranchise” to describe the practice, by which he meant depriving individuals of the freedom, rights, and privileges they
enjoyed in their native country. Thus he presented the question “whether Scripture warranted the enslavement of non Christians” and answered negatively. He queried “if God’s observing & Giving Leave for a thing prove it is not unreasonable in its own nature.” Again, the implied answer was “No.” One cannot, he held, make a “special”
injunction to God’s people (whether Israel of old or Christians under the New Testament) into an “Established Rule.” “A special precept for a particular act is not a Rule. . . .” For example, in Deuteronomy 15:6 God allowed Israel to plunder the Egyptians before the Exodus, but this, Edwards stated, “is quite a different thing from Establishing it as a rule that his People might borrow and not pay in all ages.”24
Edwards also argued against the trade on the basis of what it means to love one’s neighbor and examined who, in fact, “neighbor” refers to. [Edwards] took particular exception to a narrow definition of “Neighbor” as identifying only fellow believers. If neighbors were limited to Christians, then any sort of immoral behavior toward others was permissible. “This,” Edwards commented, “makes the SS. [Scriptures] Contradict it self.” Such a circumscribed definition of neighbor negated the moral law, which Christians were obliged to follow regardless of where they lived.25
The slave trade, according to Edwards, was against the moral law of God since it imposed on the liberties of men in their native land and, at the root of its execution, was a belief that such persons were not neighbors and thus did not deserve the love commanded in the law of God. Those who would condone the trade were “partakers of a far more cruel slavery than that which they object against in those that have slaves.”26 While Edwards was right in his understanding of the cruelty
of the trade, he did not carry the same logic to his understanding of slavery.
The argument used to debunk the critics of slavery—namely, that to participate in the trade was to necessitate the institution—now stood in the face of Edwards. To condone slavery contradicts condemning the trade since the existence of slaves in the States is owing to rejection of the moral law and also the fact that the institution demands the trade. The dichotomy in all of this is that Edwards would “oppose the overseas trade, even though he had hitherto purchased his slaves through it.”27 Thus, to condemn the trade and at the same time to participate in the selling and buying of slaves was a glaring contradiction. An illustration of this can be seen in a man who condemns the transporting of illegal drugs by cartels all over the world into the U.S. and at the same time is an active participant in the buying and distribution
of those drugs in America. No one, except other drug dealers, could ever buy such logic since the one (selling and buying drugs) necessitates the other (the transporting of drugs to the U.S.). It is on this basis that many after Edwards, including Edwards, Jr., Samuel Hopkins, and Lemuel Haynes, sought the cessation of not only the institution but the trade as well.
From where we sit today, looking back at that period of history and the subsequent influence that the thought of Edwards would have on America, it seems that with one strike of a pen, perhaps, Edwards could have exerted a radical influence on the way we view and understand race in American society. But he, like many before him and after him, did not rise to the occasion on this issue.
Another noteworthy point concerning the primacy of culture in slaveholding is the view of Edwards toward African and Native Americans. Marsden writes:
"Even though Edwards regarded African and Native American civilizations
as vastly inferior to Christendom, especially since these heathen peoples had suffered so long under Satan’s rule, he thought they were very equal to Christian nations both in their rights and potentialities. In his sermons on The History of the Work of Redemption . . . he assured the Northamptonians that although these peoples now lived almost like the beasts in some respects, it would not always be that
way. In the millennium era . . . “[It] may be hoped that then many of the Negroes and Indians will be divines, and that excellent books will be published in Africa, in Ethiopia, in Turkey—and not only very learned men, but others that are more ordinary men, shall then be very knowing in religion.” 28
Edwards, Jr., son of Jonathan and a noted abolitionist, “grappling with his own family’s history and slave ownership . . . sought to exonerate them,” including his father, “by pleading at once their Christian sincerity and their ignorance.”29 Though arguments may and perhaps could abound against such reasoning, understanding Edwards’s view on revelation as being progressive, this may well be true. While Edwards could very well believe something different than what is stated, we find
nothing but words of equality as he understood equality in his day. “We are made of the same human race,” [Edwards] had written in a note on Job 31:1530 . . . perhaps soon after he became a slave-owner. “In these two things,” he wrote, “are contained the most forcible reasons against the master’s abuse of his servant, viz. that
both have one Maker and that their Maker made ’em alike with the same nature.”31
Interestingly enough, the logic Edwards used to diffuse the arguments of those who condemned Doolittle and others for owning slaves was not used in the seeming contradiction of Edwards—condemning the trade and yet owning slaves, keeping the trade alive, at least in the sense that his behavior in no way was a deterrent to others who might desire to purchase slaves.
HOW COULD HE OWN SLAVES? In an effort to help make sense of how Edwards could own slaves, Marsden calls us to “consider Edwards’ attitudes towards slavery in the context of his hierarchical assumptions . . . where it was assumed that higher orders of society would have servants to perform domestic and farm labor.”32 Before we can adequately move to any conclusions concerning
Edwards and slavery, we must battle the natural inclination of removing Edwards from his historical-cultural context and then viewing him through our modern assumptions. Perhaps for some in the African-American community this kind of cultural imposition has hastened judgment without due consideration for that kind of cultural understanding to which Marsden calls each of us.
In coming to the aid of his fellow minister and in owning slaves himself, another question that arises is, how could such behavior be justified by a man whose vision of God was as glorious as any in America? Robert J. Cameron, in his book The Last Pew on the Left, comments:
The only reasonable explanation for intellectual ministers like Edwards
. . . owning slaves and preaching that slaves were not to seek to be free, is the pervasive, perpetual, subtle influence of the sin nature possessed by all. . . . Could it be that these men were more interested in maintaining their lifestyles and justifying the tranquility and economic growth of the colonies . . . than they were in carrying out the Great Commission, or assisting their congregations in the transformation of their minds?33
As stated above, Jonathan Edwards was a sinner saved by the grace of God, who still battled with the remaining effects of his fallen condition. This in no way stands to exonerate him for the role he played in sustaining slavery; rather it brings into perspective the way in which sin can have effect in our lives.
In the cosmic sense of reality, owning slaves is no different from any other sin, in that all sin is against God, and all of us are capable of the greatest of evils were God to release his restraining hand for his eternal purposes. What is interesting, however, is that while we must see sin as the cause of Edwards’s behavior, Edwards himself never called what he and his other colonists were doing “sin.” To Edwards, slavery was a necessary evil that served some positive good in the natural order that God had decreed—a thought his disciples would take up some years following his death. Yet if Edwards was wrong, it is not his God or his theology that is to blame—only his sin.34 Reformed theology did not produce a heart to own slavery.
A second way to understand how Edwards could own slaves is a matter of his own heritage. The only life that Edwards knew was one in which the enslavement of Africans was an acceptable practice. A rather lengthy quote from Minkema will demonstrate this point. As a clergyman and a member of the social elite, Edwards was representative of the slaveowning class in New England. . . . Many of Edwards’ relatives and friends owned slaves as a symbol of social status. Alternatively, they used slaves to augment their often tardy salaries by hiring them out as day laborers. Jonathan’s father, Timothy, owned a slave named Ansars. His wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, sought to purchase slaves of her own. The reverend Timothy Woodbridge of
Hartford, Connecticut, owned an Indian boy and African slave; Elisha Williams of Wethersfield, Connecticut, rector of Yale College from 1726 to 1739, owned an Indian woman. Both of these men were relatives of Edwards. In Massachusetts, such prominent ministers as Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College, and Nathan Webb of Uxbridge were slave-owners.35
By no means is this to be a justification for Edwards’s slaveholding, but it is an attempt to set him in his proper context. Marsden cautions us against the natural inclination to view men of history from our own contexts, stating that we should think about Edwards as an eighteenth-century figure and about how that context should shape [our] understanding of him . . . it would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate their outlooks critically.36 The grounds for such cultural imposition centered around two “ethical” premises of slave owning: (1) They were to be treated humanely, and (2) they were to be Christianized.
First, Edwards held that slaves could be rightly owned if they were treated humanely. On the assumption of humane treatment Edwards could not be found at fault. There is in fact no record of any abuse or ill treatment by Edwards toward his slaves. “In 1740, Jonathan and Sarah cosigned to guarantee the financial support of ‘Jethro Negro and his wife Ruth,’ who were manumitted in the will of Sarah’s step mother.”37
It is true, perhaps, that the majority of northern slave owners treated their slaves with much more respect and dignity, though still not as fellow image bearers of God, than their southern counterparts did. Having said that, while humane treatment was a justification for slavery, it was not at all a valid one. Throughout history that has been the dominant cry of the white church in seeking to minimize the horrific
consequences of slavery, even in our day, appealing that many were treated well. In response, listen to the words of one of Edwards’s disciples to whom he was most connected (his son):
Should we be willing, that the Africans or any other nation should purchase us, our wives and children, transport us into Africa and there sell us into perpetual and absolute slavery? Should we be willing that they by large bribes and offers of a gainful traffic should entice our neighbors to kidnap and sell us to them, and that they should hold, in perpetual and cruel bondage, not only ourselves, but our posterity through all generations? Yet why is it not as right for them to treat us in this manner, as it for us to treat them in the same manner? Their colour
indeed is different from ours. But does this give us the right to enslave them? The nations of Germany to Guinea have complexions of every shade from the fairest white, to the jetty black: and if a black complexion subject a nation or an individual to slavery; where shall slavery begin? Or where shall it end.38
Edwards, Jr.’s statement is better grasped by an illustration to the point. Let’s say that someone came to your home and took away your child. For years you searched and after much agony found her location and her captor. You then say to him that you are going to press charges against him because he kidnapped your child, broke up your family, and caused much grief and despair. To your charge he responds, “But I treated her well.” It is doubtful that this would be an acceptable explanation to drop the charges and continue life, business as usual.
This is what Edwards, Jr., is asking, and the tone of his argument suggests that the slaveholders—none in that day, and for certain no right-minded person in our day— would be satisfied with the claim that their kidnapped loved one was treated humanely. The issue is not how slaves were treated, but the fact that they were slaves in the first place. While Edwards held that the slave trade was cruel and an abomination to God, those who followed him would condemn both slavery and the
trade as great evils and causes of divine retribution from God upon the nation — namely, the Revolutionary War.
On a similar note, Hopkins added that if slavery was not abolished in America, the practice would “practically authorize any nation or people, who have the power to do it, to make [them] their slaves.”39 Second, Edwards held that slaves could be owned if they were Christianized, which has been long stated as the reason God ordained slavery. To his credit, Edwards not only preached to the Africans but included them in the membership of his church. In his own effort to convert slaves, Edwards in his regular preaching did not draw metaphysical differences between races. He exhorted
both, “black and white” to “hearken to the call of Christ.” Christ he declared, “Condescends to take notice of serv[an]ts & people of all nations[;] he Condescends to poor negroes.”40
There were nine full communicant African-American members of his Northampton church; “[Six] of these, including the Edwardses’ slave Leah, were products of the awakening . . . and became communicants in 1736. Around this time the church admitted two Indian members, Mary and Phoebe Stockbridge.”41
Nothing is said of their status in the church, or whether they were allowed to sit with the whites in the congregation. On the one hand, from what we know of history, broadly speaking, we can deduce that they were excluded in many ways. Yet on the other hand, Edwards was faithful, as he saw faithfulness to this issue, to the blacks of his day by way of evangelism.42 Having said that, whatever the case may be with
regard to Edwards and his evangelizing of slaves, we are always brought back to the reality that is at the heart of this entire chapter: the institution of slavery and its unjustified existence as it was expressed in America.
There is an inherent contradiction in offering Christ to men and women whom you hold in bondage, against their own will, and on the basis of man-stealing. Murray J. Harris, in his book Slaves of Christ, states:
If we may generalize, ancient writers about slavery, assuming the inevitability and necessity of slavery for the well being of society, focused their attention not on the slave’s gaining or regaining of physical independence but on the need for spiritual freedom in the midst of physical servitude. Although the body may be enslaved, the spirit or the mind remains free, while the spirit of many free people is enslaved to passions. But this was not the emphasis of Christianity. For the early
Christians, whether slave or free, both body and spirit belong to the Lord (1 Cor. 6:15, 17) and slavery to him constituted true freedom.43 Here I am compelled to make some comments concerning the difference between sanctioned slavery in the Bible and the institution of slavery in America. When people discuss slavery, they do so with preconceived ideas, assuming that others hold the same definitions and understandings of the words that create those ideas.
The argument that says slavery was not evil because the Bible does not say slavery is evil is not sound, since it relies upon a number of assumptions that turn out to be untrue. One is that the slavery in America modeled the sanctioned slavery in the Bible. But that is not the case. Rather than asking, “What does the Bible say with regard to rightfully owning slaves?” we should first ask, “What does the Scripture prohibit in the owning of slaves?” Harris helps us on this issue, stating that
the Scriptures forbid “the exploitation of the slave for monetary gain” and “the kidnapping of persons for slavery and trafficking in slavery.”44 Harris cites the incident in Acts 16 where Paul had cast the evil spirit out of the slave girl who mocked Paul and the gospel. Luke writes:
As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become
greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers. (Acts 16:16-19)
Harris comments:
Although Paul’s action precipitated his arrest and imprisonment along with Silas (16:19-24), Luke’s report of the episode does not suggest the inappropriateness of Paul’s action, but rather the opposite; the abuse of the slave was repudiated. This is also clear, by implication, from those passages where slaves-owners are directed to treat their slaves justly and fairly.45
This kind of exploitation, which, by implication, is condemned in Acts 16, was a central tenet of American slavery, and the evidence for such is not scant. Yet with regard to the church, we see the same exploitation of men and women for monetary gain. When churches were unable to give full compensation to their pastors, they would often hire out their slaves in an effort to meet their financial obligations. America prospered and became what it is today in large part due to the labor of
Africans, and many who prospered were professing Christians. The land of the free was built on the backs of chained and shackled Africans who, though they labored to make it what it was, enjoyed little, if any, of its fruits. The most desired of fruits was freedom.
The second aspect that Harris cites is that of man-stealing and slave trafficking. Here he makes reference to 1 Timothy 1:9-11, but focuses on the word translated “enslavers.” The only use of this term is in this passage, and the word “refers to someone who sells slaves . . . and in particular to someone who kidnaps people for sale as slaves.” Harris also adds the penalties for such persons stating that “Paul is alluding to the eighth commandment, ‘You shall not steal’ (Ex 20:15), which applies to persons as well as things. Exodus 21:16 prescribes the death penalty
for the kidnapper (cf. Deut 24:2). That is, while both Testaments assume the practice of slavery, both repudiate kidnapping and dealing in slaves.”46
We return to the question of what the Bible prohibits in sanctioned slavery. While we may grope to understand the practice of slavery in the Bible, it seems clear that the very actions and practices prevalent in American slavery are the same actions prohibited by the Bible. While the penalty of death sanctioned in the Old Testament for such practices may seemed to have passed over America, one may justifiably wonder
whether the damning effects of homosexuality on the culture and its evil rise within the hallowed walls of the church and countless other catastrophic realities in our land count as evidence for the wrath of God on America because of the unspeakable evils of slavery. Much can be debated on this issue.
What these two prohibitions show is that the form of slavery in America was contradictory to the Bible and was therefore evil. While Edwards may have seen slavery as being justified on the basis of Christianization and humane treatment, some of his followers—namely, Edwards, Jr., Samuel Hopkins, and Lemuel Haynes—believed differently. Hopkins believed that “the millennium was to commence with the defeat of Satan’s followers . . . among whom Hopkins counted slave traders and slaveholders.”47
The negativity of American slavery, however, is not seen simply in its opposition to Scripture, but also in the social sins it encouraged. “Hopkins clearly defines slavery as a sexual sin, a lustful and lewd version of selfishness. ‘Lust’ was, indeed, the cause of slavery, Hopkins maintained.”48 Quoting Edwards, Jr., John Saillant writes, “Slavery ‘tends towards lewdness’ since a ‘planter with his hundred
wenches’ is like a Sultan in his seraglio.’ The evident issue of this sexual sin, also known as amalgamation, was generations of mulattoes in America.”49
Slavery was and still is a blemish upon America. Even after its abolition the residual effects are evident in the culture at large and regrettably within the church. As an African American who loves Reformed theology and Jonathan Edwards and who desires to see these truths embraced by all, especially those within the African-American context, I have to make sense of this hypocrisy. Edwards was only a small part of a much larger picture of Reformed thinkers and preachers. The theology
I love so much is tainted with stains of slavery, and my heroes — one of which is Jonathan Edwards—owned my ancestors and cared not to destroy the institution of slavery.
WHY READ EDWARDS? The question that many have posed over the years is: Why should I read a white man’s theology? Why should I care or even consider that what he says is accurate when he missed something that was seemingly obvious and evil? Why should I give my attention to the ideas and constructs of men who constructed a reality of segregation and superiority that held
in check the advancement of Africans in America and treated them like brutes and beasts and less than human? Why should I care about a theology that, on the surface, seems to devalue every cultural expression of Christianity indigenous to African Americans? One of the most important answers is that Edwardsean Calvinism formed the basis of early American abolitionism.
His position [condoning slavery and condemning the slave trade] . . . represents a transitional stage in the development of antislavery thought among elites between complete advocacy of slavery and immediatism of his first-generation, New Divinity disciples.50
While the major promoter of such a transition was Samuel Hopkins, others like Edwards, Jr., and Lemuel Haynes shared in his passion to see slavery and the trade eradicated. These men took their cue from Edwards’s understanding of what he called “disinterested benevolence,” which to him was love toward “Being in General” or “God and his Creatures.”51 To Edwards, this love was the very basis of our expression
of love toward our neighbor; not a love full of self-interest, but one that is inclined to the good and happiness of others. . . . disinterested benevolence . . . meant to Hopkins an unselfish goodness not just to mankind in general or even to one’s enemies, but primarilyto those who needed benevolence most, that is, the oppressed of mankind. And who, of all beings, asked Hopkins, were most oppressed and most needed universal good will but the Negroes whose slavery was an offense to Christian benevolence.52
Some have written that Hopkins went dangerously beyond his mentor in extending this concept of benevolence in ways Edwards, supposedly, did not intend. Hopkins, wanting to give imminent expression to what appeared to be purely aesthetic, other-worldly thought, sought to flesh out the social implications of Edwards’s teaching by showing its leaning toward abolitionism. Whatever one may say of Hopkins’s use of Edwards on this issue, what cannot be questioned is Hopkins’s unswerving commitment to the view of God’s supremacy and the theology upon which it was expressed. Saillant explains how New Divinity ministers drew upon this understanding of disinterested benevolence:
[D]ivine benevolence required, Edwards reasoned, the damnation of the unregenerate, since God could not have consistently loved himself and his creation at the same time as he accepted sinners into heaven. Sin became, then, a providential means of revealing divine benevolence, since God had designed evil as the occasion of the damnation of the unregenerate and the revelation of his glory and goodness.53 Saillant, quoting Hopkins, continues: “‘God makes the sin . . . the occasion and Means of His own Glory.’ God ‘over-ruled sin’ . . . in the sense that deeds that individuals intended as evil were used by God as the occasion of good.”54
The framework for such a belief was justified in two biblical accounts: the story of Joseph and the crucifixion. Joseph was sold into to slavery by his brothers, rose to power and honor, and in the end held the very lives of his relatives who sold him
into slavery in his hands. The grand statement of that account is Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
We see the same in the crucifixion of Christ: By his death many were made alive and brought near to God. The pleasure of God in the crushing of his Son displays the paradoxical happiness of God in that crushing, since by it he was glorified and sin defeated. He took what men intended for evil and made it, by design, for his glory and our good. The response of many southern Presbyterians to Edwardseanism constitutes additional evidence that the seeds of abolitionism flowed through the theology of Edwards.
Due to the influence of “Edwards and his school,” its relationship to abolitionism, and its influence in the New School branch of the Presbyterian church, southern Presbyterian theologians became increasingly concerned to distance themselves from Edwards and his followers.55
Columbia Seminary, a bastion of Reformed orthodoxy, found itself embroiled in controversy, having come under much suspicion of its orthodox commitments when many of the first students later became New School in their sympathies. . . As one editorial writer in the Columbia newspaper questioned, “Is [Columbia Seminary] as free from all suspicions of a taint of the new divinity, and of abolitionism as a Southern school ought to be?”56 While other aspects of southern Presbyterians’ objections of Edwards lay on theological grounds (believing that Edwards was too
innovative and free with theological speculation), it is not denied that another problem they held against Edwardseanism was its seeds of abolitionism.
While the New Divinity disciples were in unanimous agreement concerning the cruelty and evil of slavery, and that the theology of Edwards with its centrality of the sovereignty of God was a means to combating its survival, there was one point at which such unanimity crumbled. Saillant writes: “Members of the New Divinity school were among the first Americans to publish against the slave trade and slavery, yet were also among the first to propose expatriation of freedmen and freedwomen to Africa.”57
By the mid-1770s, two distinct approaches would emerge. One approach emphasized the connections between blacks and whites, envisioning a day when both races would be united as equals in America. The other approach emphasized the distance between blacks and whites, envisaging the end of the slave trade and slavery yet also
promoting the expatriation of blacks from North America.58
While they all shared an understanding that the immediate effects of abolitionism were the spiritual and physical freedom of the Africans, it was their understanding of the long-term solution that created separation. To Hopkins and Edwards, Jr., the long-term solution was expatriation. While they conceived of freedom for the Africans, they had not intended that such freedom be exercised in the colonies, fearing a number of things, most notably intermarrying and retribution. Haynes, on
the other hand, “argued that the slave trade and slavery were designed by God to further the appreciation felt by black and white alike for liberty, education and social harmony.”59
With such a division among the sole promoters of abolitionism all claiming Edwards as their theological defense, a question that would naturally be raised is: Which strand of abolitionism would be a logical expression of Edwards? Another way to approach the subject is to ask: If Edwards were alive during the days of such events as the American Revolution, which of the New Divinity disciples best represents his
thoughts consistently?
Understanding Edwards’s view of the Millennium and his subsequent understanding of the progressiveness of revelation and its effects on peoples and nations, I am persuaded that the strand of Edwardseanism that understood slavery as God’s means of displaying unity among the races is consistent Edwardseanism. While Lemuel Haynes, the African-American New Divinity disciple, did not readily agree with Hopkins and others within the New Divinity school that God used the slave trade and slavery for the Christianization of Africa, he was unable to disagree . . . in a theological fashion. Haynes pointed to a vision of blacks and whites united affectionately and equally in American society—a vision that he believed God was offering to Americans through the suffering of slaves. Just as theologians . . . put the abolition of the slave trade and slavery on a par with the Reformation, Haynes put the sufferings of slaves on par with the goodness and beauty of a free and benevolent society.60
I offer two reasons for the idea that that consistent Edwardseanism led to such a conclusion. The first is Edwards’s feelings towards African Americans and Native Americans and his allowing them not simply to attend but also to become full members in the church. This is no small matter, certainly when you consider the history of African Americans and their experiences within white, Protestant churches. It is not
recorded whether or not these persons were allowed to sit among the majority in church, but that such were able to become full communicants and treated as equals is no small thing.
A second reason for my conclusion is his ministry to Native Americans.
Though Edwards’ mind never changed on slavery, it did change over another colonial shame: the treatment of Native American Indians, which included their enslavement. While serving as a missionary to the Mahican and Mohawk Indians at the Stockbridge mission in Massachusetts, Edwards had the occasion to witness the cruel exploitation
of the Indians firsthand. This experience prompted him to work actively on behalf of the Indians, often in opposition to selfish Englishmen, including some direct relatives.61
What is it that makes a man once driven by cultural norms and familial dynamics to behave counterculturally and in opposition to his family? One answer is experience. This was a tremendous factor in Edwards’s theological and social development. Because he witnessed the evils and corruption toward the Native Americans, he fought for them and against his own time. One wonders if such a shift would have occurred had he been privy to the horrors of the slave trade. Stout and Minkema comment:
That Edwards saw no contradiction between “winking” at domestic slavery but not winking at the slave trade is curious, but characteristic also of many of his clerical peers. Perhaps the explanation lies in their experiences with the slaves. Having never witnessed the ultimate brutalities of the institution, and clean in their conscience that they witnessed and preached to their slaves, they were at peace with it. By accepting domestic slavery as a “necessary evil” not unlike a just war,
Edwards could remain at ease with his domestic slaves as long as he tutored them in the truths of Christianity.62
In my reflection on Edwards and this thought of experience, and after reading of his subsequent change of heart and mind after witnessing the horrible treatment of the Native Americans, I am inclined to think that Edwards, had he understood the atrocities of the slave trade, would have changed his position on slavery. I realize that no one can know this for certain, but had Edwards lived to see the hypocrisy of the Revolution—men seeking to be free from the rule and dominion of the crown, yet denying Africans the same freedom for which they fought — I am inclined to believe that he would have considered such to be hypocrisy.
HOW DO WE LISTEN TO EDWARDS?
By asking how we give Edwards a hearing, I am thinking more of what kind of mental construct must be present in the minds of anyone who wants to understand Edwards in spite of his shortcomings. The only true answer to this question has manifold implications: we must embrace the sovereignty of God.
The aim of this chapter is neither to exonerate Edwards nor to condemn him. The aim is to love his God. The God whom Edwards preached was the God of the Bible; he is sovereign over all things and events in the universe, even the sin of slavery.63
The difficulty that such a belief may pose is its seeming exoneration of the perpetuators of slavery on the basis that it was God’s design. However, evil is not justified because God, in his mysterious ways, ordains for it to be. Two events in the Scriptures illustrate this point. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was, as the Scripture declares, “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). And still, in the same voice and context, a paradox is created with the stating of a seemingly contradictory truth, namely: “you crucified and killed [him] by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The death of Christ was by the hand of God, as Isaiah says in Isaiah 53:10: “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief.” At the same time we know that it was by the hands of men that Christ suffered. The sovereign hand of God does not stand in opposition
to the responsibility of men. God crushed Christ by the hands of sinful men, so that even though he is in control of all events, men are held accountable.
It is with this understanding that we can hold that while slavery falls under God’s sovereign control, the perpetuators of slavery and those who profited from the slave trade are not excused by the admission of this fact. Instead, the opposite may be the case. It is the sovereignty of God in slavery that may stand to implicate such human agents, since it is God at work even in their deeds, for the good of his name. Hopkins and others saw the horrors of the Revolutionary War as the punishment of God because of slavery. This is the context in which we must labor, as Christians, to hear and understand anything regarding slavery and draw our conclusions thereof. Embracing this reality does not call for an intellectual or emotional abandoning of history, living and behaving as if slavery never happened; rather it is an attempt to place history within its right context—namely, as subservient to the will and decrees
of the Sovereign King.
What the trials of God have to teach us, with regard to slavery and racism, is not only a demonstration of the continual effects of sin, but more importantly, racism, seen by the godly through the grid of God’s sovereignty and our everlasting joy in him only, is to be a reminder to us that we are not home yet. Trials are to teach us to be looking and reaching for that eternal city, to be seeking the joy that is certain to follow such faithfully endured trials (see Jas. 1:1-2; 2 Cor. 4:16-18).
Perhaps, as pilgrims in this world, our history and present-day sufferings are making us uncomfortable in this world so that we might long for heaven. Perhaps a radical way to view suffering is not to grapple and argue, as many seem to do, for a piece of the American pie, but rather to see such hindrances as reminders that you—we—are not yet home. Fight for social justice? By all means! Yet fight as a citizen of heaven, not as one who thinks that this earth and America’s economy is the end-all.
This, I know, is not easy to digest, especially if you are African American and you witness, whether in others’ lives or in your own, the residual effects and implications of days gone by. Though I have studied this and taught it many times, it is not easy to write, and it is difficult to communicate in some contexts. Yet we all desire to be driven and shaped by the truth and are willing, I hope, to lay everything at the foot of divine revelation and to allow such to construct a mentality that holds sway by its creeds and ethics over that of our own culture. This in no way calls anyone to deny culture, but it expresses the tension in which we live, certainly as African Americans, as we seek to make sense of our history in America in light of the Word of God.
The reality of this tension is captured in a provocative statement made by a friend of mine, Ken Jones, pastor of Greater Union Missionary Baptist Church in Compton, California. In a discussion we had regarding this issue some years ago, Pastor Jones commented that “the challenge of the African American within the Reformed context is
that we are called to embrace the theology of our oppressors and to reject the theology of our liberators.”64 This means that the odd and ironic position of the African American who seeks to be shaped by orthodox theology must reject, in many respects, the theology of a Martin Luther King, Jr., and embrace the theology of a Jonathan Edwards or Robert Dabney. While I admire Dr. King for his work and
efforts in fighting for the freedom of African Americans in this country (my freedom), I am not hesitant to note that he will not offer much help in theological precision. While, on the other hand, Edwards never held the mantle as social liberator, his theology will saturate a man in orthodoxy.
As an African American, I know daily the pressures of being in a predominantly white society. Yet how I approach that society, the grid by which I engage that society, is more telling than anything else. God cannot be sovereign over some things and yet not in control of others. This is no justification for abuse or racism, for such perpetuators will have their day of reckoning. But the eradication of racism today, as would be the case with slavery then, will not come about through programs, but by means of a God-centered and God-entranced view of reality. We must not be governed by the political persuasion of today, but governed by the sovereign reign and rule of God. Whatever we may think of Edwards, one thing is for certain: He left the American church with the necessary theological truths to kill racism in our hearts and to be conquerors of it in the church.
In light of that, though we fight and should fight the residue of such hatred in our day, the reality is that the desire to be theologically orthodox today means we must add to our shelves books by dead white men who owned slaves. All of our heroes have clay feet. Jonathan Edwards was not a perfect man, and he did not get everything right, nor did he stand for all the right things. Neither do any of us. His blind spots and sins are pointers to our own blind spots and sins. To ask for grace and
mercy on our own sins is, by logical implication, to be ready and willing to extend it to Edwards.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
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