Jonathan Edwards Owned a Slave (and Other Moral Incongruities Among Church Leaders of the Past) by Chris White

Actual Irishmen not pictured

And so it begins with a story:

 Three Irishmen are sitting in the pub window seat, watching the front  door of the brothel over the road.

 The local Methodist pastor appears, looks up and down the street, and quickly goes inside.

 "Would you look at that!" says the first Irishman. "Didn't I always say what a bunch of hypocrites they are?"

 No sooner are the words out of his mouth than a Rabbi appears at the door, looks up and down the street, knocks, and goes inside.

 "Another one trying to fool everyone with pious preaching and stupid hats!" They continue drinking their beer roundly condemning the vicar and the rabbi when they see their own Catholic priest knock on the door.

 "Ah, now dat's sad." says the third Irishman. "One of the girls must have died."

It’s interesting how we can be so clear about the moral failings of others and yet be blinded to our own or those in our own society.

As someone who has been a serious student and teacher of church history for many years, one of the constant issues I have grappled with is what to make of some of the decisions, behaviors, and ideas of some of the church’s great luminaries.  Here are people of great vision and piety and theological imagination who at the same time do things that seem radically at odds with their Christian commitment.

A few well known examples:

Martin Luther in exile

Martin Luther had a strong tendency towards anti-Semitism that at times was quite vicious.

Constantine, the great Christian emperor, ordered the death of one of his sons and his wife.

John Calvin, no stranger to persecution by Catholics, was responsible for having a teacher holding heretical views burned at the stake in downtown Geneva.

Jonathan Edwards, one of America’s greatest thinkers and theologians, owned at 3 slaves during his lifetime and even justified his holding of them when confronted by other church leaders for doing so.

John Wesley and George Whitefield virtually abandoned their wives to pursue their preaching careers.

Constantine the Christian Emperor

Of course there are more, many more, examples if time and space permitted.

So what are we to make of these things and how should we respond to them towards critics of the faith or the church?  Let me make 3 suggestions:

1.  Approach historic figures charitably and not judgmentally.  It is certainly not my original thought (I think I may have got it from C.S. Lewis or R.C. Sproul) but we must exercise a Christian charity not just to the living, but especially the dead for they are unable to defend or explain themselves.  Brendan Manning speaks to this quite eloquently: “None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we're told not to judge. ..Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.” With historical figures we often know what they did but are often left without a shred of evidence about why they did something.  Sometimes historical context sheds light, sometimes the person leaves a memoir explaining (or justifying) themselves, but many times it is still conjecture.  We can’t walk a mile in their shoes, we don’t understand their particular sin matrix, we know nothing of the fears and prejudices that fed their thinking.  What we do know for certain is that Christians are people and people are sinners and sinners need the grace of God.

2. Recognize cultural myopia; theirs and your own. Myopia is another word for near-sightedness where things up close are very clear but anything in the distance is quite blurred.  Every one of us is shaped by our times and culture and this does in fact color our sense of ethics and values.  Truth be told, it even shapes the interpretation of scripture.  Mark A. Noll presents a clear example of this in his book The Civil War as Theological Crisis.  How could a nation which was at the time predominantly Christian, Protestant, Bible-reading, and Church-going literally plunge into the dark hole of fratricide over slavery when slavery is clearly unethical by the standards of Jesus?  Among many things, Noll points out that habits of Bible reading and interpretation of the day tended to support slavery because verses were often read in isolation from one another.

To read a summary of this book go to: http://soulepigraph.blogspot.com/2010/03/civil-war-as-theological-crisis-by-mark.html

But this applies to many things besides scriptural interpretation.  We live in a time of consumerism, leisure, sex-saturation, and obsession with choices and independence.  We know these things, but we know them like a goldfish knows it lives it water.  Jonathan Edwards (who lived in colonial America) owned a slave(s) but so did a lot of other ministers in New England.  Unlike George Washington who actually set his slaves free upon his death because his conscience was troubled by his ownership, Edwards did nothing of the sort.  We are grieved by the blindness of this great man of God who had a fierce intellect and was so devoted to preaching and holiness in his community.  But no doubt Edwards would be grieved to meet our generation with so little concern for pleasing God and that wastes so much time fiddling with telephone apps and looking at sex and violence on television.  We think nothing of it!

I'm sure Edwards would be amused with phone apps!

What will future generations say of us when we are the people in the graveyard?  Evil is still evil and Jonathan Edwards (and all the other examples I mentioned) was definitely blind to that species of sin, but that does not mean that God couldn’t or didn’t use them for a good purpose.  We are all works in progress and if anything it reveals the patience and grace of God through all the ages.

3. Learn from their mistakes without justifying their evil.  When we encounter these terrible blemishes on the records of great men, we need not shrug them off or worse yet adopt their sinful behavior.  We should learn the moral lesson their lives offer.  We should be humbled by the fact that if great people who serve Christ are capable of making really bad choices and doing evil things, what of ourselves?  None of us is so faithful as to never fail.

St. Paul exhorts all of us to “examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5-6).”  Let us not judge one another, but examine our own life that we may be pleasing to Christ in every respect.

For a great practical devotion on how to put this verse into practice go to:
 http://www.raystedman.org/daily-devotions/2-corinthians/how-to-examine-yourself

 

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark A. Noll

While this is a book that would normally be read by specialists (it’s price and nuanced style reflect this) it needs to be read by a wider audience. Noll develops his argument of the Civil War being a theological crisis follows along these lines: first the founders and antebellum politicians made it clear America was a country held together by it’s religion and churches. America at the time was roughly 70% evangelical with a commitment to the scriptures as the guide to life. The hermeneutic of the day tended towards a simple understanding of individual verses apart from the macro themes of scripture. A non-reflective reading of individual verses in the Bible could support slavery. The country being 95% Protestant meant there was no one grand authority to settle this interpretive issue that was dividing the Churches. The churches in fact did divide over the slavery issue 20 years before the civil war. The division of the nation follows. No one is left to settle this theological issue but Generals Grant and Lee.

The biblical arguments for the institution of slavery were as follows:

i.) Leviticus 25:45-46—Possession of slaves as property is permitted in Law

ii.) Philemon—Paul sends Onesimus back to his master

iii.) Gen. 9:25—Ham’s descendants through Canaan (Africans) shall be slaves to Shem and Japeth.

iv.) Gen. 17:12---Slaves in Abraham’s household were circumcised.

v.) Deut. 20:10-11---Slaves can be captive in war

vi.) Mt.5-7---Sermon on Mount is silent about slavery

vii.) 1 Cor. 7:21---Slaves not to chafe if master doesn’t grant emancipation.

viii.) Col. 3:22,4:1---Master-Servant relationships regulated but not prohibited.

ix.) 1 Tim. 6:1-2---Slave conversion doesn’t equate emancipation.

Pro-emancipation Christians modified it this way: admitted the OT/NT acknowledgement. It was the law in that part of the world at the time. That doesn’t necessitate its continuance everywhere. Also slavery in the South broke up Negro families and marriages, abused women slaves sexually by masters, and was based on an anti-scriptural idea of Caucasian superiority. While verses permit slavery, the overall tone of scripture calls for equity, love, and righteousness, all of which were absent in the slavery institution as practiced here. Other voices added to this the fact that slavery in the Roman empire was not based on race, thus Caucasians would be eligible for slavery as well; something unthinkable in the American South.

The Black Church in America also launched their stand against slavery:

1. Bible didn’t teach perpetual, unregulated slavery based on race.
2. Mt. 7:12 Golden rule would prohibit slavery in America
3. Church leaders justifying from scripture are prostituting religion to cover their profitable iniquity.
4. Some argued that God would destroy America if repentance didn’t come.
5. Christian slaveholders were not ejected from the church for committing adultery with slave women and selling off their mulatto children.
6. Native Americans rejected missionary efforts because they watched the white church and worried they would share the same fate as the blacks.
7. Acts 17 clearly states all men descend from a common source and thus are all equal. Yet black slavery is based on racial inferiority.

While all of these were certainly cogent, well-publicized arguments in the day, they really gained no traction. There was no final authority and most people were talking past one another. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, saw keenly into the situation. If there was a breakthrough in the cotton and tobacco industry that suddenly made slavery unprofitable monetarily, everyone would see these arguments much more clearly. The fact is, it reveals that what we believe is not just shaped by reason alone, but by our environment and communities as well.

The America of 1861 certainly couldn’t agree despite the fact they mostly shared the same religious values and commitments. One shudders to think if the America of today, if faced with a similar controversy, could even agree to split up on two sides of the issue.