by Jemar Tisby
When colonists in North America fought and won the war for independence from Britain, they used the rhetoric of liberty and natural rights to argue for the righteousness of their cause. While white soldiers and political leaders were declaring their inalienable right to independence, they were also enslaving countless women, men, and children of African descent. And the American church participated in and defended the contradiction between freedom and slavery embedded in the constitution of its young nation. Revisiting early American history reveals the shocking forms of hypocrisy that helped shape our society.
THE DECLARATION AND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE
English philosopher John Locke was raised by Puritan parents who instructed him in the Christian faith and taught him about the natural rights of humankind. He published an explanation of his political philosophy in a 1689 work entitled Two Treatises of Government. In it he wrote that natural law “teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker . . . they are his property.”2 Nearly a century later, Thomas Jefferson picked up on Locke’s language and wrote about the “unalienable rights” of human beings when he penned the Declaration of Independence.
According to Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, the government exists by the consent of the people. If the people determine that the laws of a commonwealth are contrary to their interests, then the consent they have given to political officials “must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.”3 Colonists in America would soon adopt this political philosophy to justify their rebellion against the British government.
After the British prevailed in the French and Indian War (1754–63), their territory in North America expanded greatly, and so did their war debt. Dissatisfied with lackluster support from the colonies during the war and desperate to recover financially, Britain levied new taxes and enacted new laws to consolidate power over the thirteen colonies. Some colonists, who had previously found little commonality with one another, started to unite around their resentment of British imperial policies.
In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, the colonists began calling themselves Patriots. Laws such as the Stamp Act (1765) and the Townshend Acts (1767) consolidated colonial animosity toward imperial power and supported a sense of solidarity among the colonists. In 1774, a year after the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, Patriot leaders organized the Continental Congress to protest what they saw as oppressive imperial measures. The following year, the Battle of Lexington and Concord became the first skirmish of what became the American Revolution.
The Declaration of Independence, first drafted by a slaveholder named Thomas Jefferson, captured the spirit of revolution in its opening words. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet Jefferson, as with so many of his day, did not consider black people equal to white people. Few political leaders assumed the noble words of the declaration applied to the enslaved. A draft of the document denounced the transatlantic slave trade by accusing the British monarch of “violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people . . . captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” The antislavery clause was excised from the final draft of the declaration due to the objections of delegates from Georgia and South Carolina as well as some northern states that benefited from slavery.4
One does not need to argue that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation” to see the obvious appeals to a higher power in the Declaration of Independence. The document mentions “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” the rights bestowed on all people by the “Creator,” and it appeals to the “Supreme Judge of the world” for the legitimacy of revolutionary cause. Whatever religion they practiced, the authors of the Declaration of Independence appealed to the idea of universal human liberty passed down from an all-powerful deity. Many Christians of the time would have understood this language as a reference to their God. But the “universal” rights referenced in the Declaration of Independence were not universally applied.
Revolution had its limits. Women, who had played a major role in supporting the Patriots during the war, did not gain significantly more political or civil rights as a result of independence. The indigenous Americans, whose populations had already been wracked by war and disease, found that colonial independence meant the loss of their own freedom.
When Africans in America heard white leaders proclaim natural rights and equality for all, naturally they applied those statements to their own situation. In a 1773 letter to the Massachusetts General Court, a committee of slaves wrote, “We cannot but expect your house will again take our deplorable case into serious consideration, and give us that ample relief which, as men, we have a natural right to.”5 The impulse toward liberty was so strong that Africans in the colonies took up arms to pursue it. Some fought for the British on the promise of freedom for their service against the rebellious colonists. Others fought for the Patriots, hoping victory would ensure abolition. In either case, the motivation was the same: freedom. Despite the vigorous efforts of African-descended people to apply revolutionary rhetoric to the problem of slavery, the institution endured long after the American Revolution had ended.
THE GREAT AWAKENING
The Great Awakening held both promise and contradiction when it came to the African population in the colonies. Prior to the revivals of the mid-1700s, few enslaved Africans converted to Christianity. White enslavers feared that evangelizing would plant the troublesome seeds of liberation in the minds and hearts of their chattel. But Africans did not come to the American colonies devoid of spirituality. Many of them practiced the indigenous religions of tribes in West Africa, and a significant number were Muslim. Africans preferred their own forms of faith to that of their white enslavers.6
In the decades leading up to the American War for Independence, another revolution was taking place. The Great Awakening fundamentally altered the shape of Protestantism in the colonies and among African slaves. Influenced by the Enlightenment’s emphasis on experience as the ground of knowledge, evangelists during the Great Awakening highlighted the necessity of a personal encounter with God and the role of emotion in the Christian faith. Historian Alan Gallay described it this way: “The driving goal of evangelical ministers was to spread the message of new birth while combating those who assumed that grace was achieved gradually and by good works.”7 In contrast to more staid forms of worship practiced by the Anglicans, Dutch Reformed, Congregationalist, and Presbyterian churches, the Great Awakening moved American Christians toward more informal and less structured forms of worship.
Revivalist preachers, especially Baptists and Methodists, tended toward dramatic and animated presentations in their sermons. Preachers “helped [their audience] to feel the weight of sin, to imagine the threats of Hell, and to accept Christ as their only Savior.”8 Preachers typically avoided complicated doctrinal matters and focused on the simple act of conversion. Black men and women, who were sprinkled among the crowds listening to revivalist preachers, began adopting Christian beliefs.
Enslaved Africans did not merely adopt Christianity, they made it their own. Aspects of the faith such as the notion of rebirth, baptism by immersion in water, and emotional expressiveness resembled African traditions.9 For example, enslaved people in the South adapted a practice from West African known as the “ring shout.” Worshipers got in a circle and rotated counterclockwise as they sang, danced, and chanted.
Although the proportion remained small, the Great Awakening initiated the first significant number of conve
rsions to Christianity among enslaved Africans in the colonies. Evangelical preachers, although European, pushed against the traditional customs of established denominations, including the segregation or exclusion of African people. Revivalists emphasized the spiritual equality of all people and preached to interracial crowds. They baptized anyone willing to accept Christ as their Savior. Black people even became ordained ministers and missionaries.
In 1785, Lemuel Haynes became the first black person ordained by any Christian fellowship in America.10 Prior to his career in ministry, Haynes fought in the Revolutionary War. After his conversion, he sensed a call to ministry and became a Calvinistic preacher in the Northeast. He drew much of his theological convictions from the teachings of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. A dedicated preacher, Haynes said, “Nothing is more conducive of divine glory and salutary to men than the preaching of the gospel. Unless these glad tidings are proclaimed, the incarnation of Christ is vain.”11 Likely biracial, Haynes nevertheless pastored an all-white church in Vermont.
Black people were attracted to revival preaching because it mirrored the familiar practices of West African religions. Full-throated singing, emotional expressiveness, and physical movement had cultural resonance with people of African descent. Christianity also held out the hope of freedom. Enslaved people connected spiritual salvation with earthly liberation. They believed that spiritual equality might lead their white slaveowners to see them as full human beings deserving of emancipation.
Affirmations of spiritual equality did not translate into social equality, however. Slaveowners still frowned upon Christianizing the enslaved. Black ministers usually were only allowed to preach to black people. The messages preached to black Christians leaned heavily toward messages on obedience and honoring one’s earthly master. Only rarely would the enslaved be permitted to congregate on their own for fear that they would use the meetings to plot rebellion.
Restrictions on enslaved people congregating typically became more stringent after slave uprisings like the Stono Rebellion that occurred near Charleston in 1739. A native African and slave named Jemmy led about twenty enslaved men from Angola in a revolt against their white masters. Other enslaved people joined, and their numbers swelled to nearly fifty people. They broke into a store and stole guns and ammunition. They then killed the shopkeepers and about thirty more white people in an attempt to escape to Spanish Florida, where it was said escaped slaves could gain freedom and land. A white militia caught up with the group and killed about half the rebels. The rest fled and were captured and executed over the next month.
As a result of the Stono Rebellion, South Carolina passed the Negro Act of 1740. The act, which largely reiterated laws that had already been passed but not strictly enforced, prevented the enslaved from assembling in groups without white supervision, selling their own goods for profit, or learning to write. The Negro Act also purported to “restrain and prevent barbarity being exercised toward slaves” because “cruelty is . . . highly unbecoming those who profess themselves Christians.”12 As a result, the act mandated whippings on the back for recalcitrant slaves, but any slaveowner who cut out the tongue, put out the eye, castrated, or burned a slave would have to pay a fine. Because of laws like the Negro Act, it became increasingly difficult for enslaved people to gather.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
More than any other two preachers, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards symbolized the spiritual revival that took place in the eighteenth century. Whitefield, an Anglican minister from England who was influenced by John Wesley, became what historian Harry Stout called “the first intercolonial religious celebrity.”13 He usually preached outside because the throngs who gathered to hear him were too large for any church building. Whitefield had been trained in theater and used his experience in drama to captivate his listeners. Most preachers at the time read highly doctrinal sermons from a manuscript. Whitefield’s theatrical narrations appealed to the emotions in a way that established Christian leaders usually frowned upon. The dynamic preaching of revivalists during the Great Awakening broadened its appeal to include lower economic classes of whites and the enslaved.
Whitefield was more moderate on race than many of his white contemporaries. He excoriated enslavers for their physical abuse of slaves, calling them “monsters of barbarity.” He expressed ambivalence about the practice of slavery itself, but he had no doubts about how masters should treat their laborers. “Unsure of ‘whether it be lawful for Christians to buy slaves,’ Whitefield was positive that ‘it is sinful, when bought, to use them . . . as though they were Brutes.’ ”14 The worst abuse, in Whitefield’s view, was some enslavers refusal to allow the enslaved to be evangelized. He and others like his wealthy, slaveholding, Christian allies Hugh and Jonathan Bryan advocated for the rights of enslaved people to learn Christianity and to worship.
Over time Whitefield’s moderation on slavery morphed into outright support. In 1732, Georgia became the last of the original thirteen colonies, and founders envisioned it as a Christian utopia where European inhabitants would have “freedom of conscience” when it came to religion. In line with this vision, James Oglethorpe, the colony’s administrator, determined that Georgia would be a slave-free region. Oglethorpe and his supporters were not concerned with abolition, however. They simply wanted Georgia to be a settlement where poor Englishmen could labor without competition.15
On a trip to Georgia in 1738, Whitefield began planning for what would become the Bethesda Orphanage. Influenced by Methodism’s focus on charity and caring for orphans as well as by a visit to a Lutheran orphanage in Germany, Whitefield found an ideal setting for a new venture in the small community of Savannah. In time, the evangelist raised enough money for some land near Savannah. He named the new orphanage Bethesda, or “House of Mercy.” To this day, it operates under the name Bethesda Academy. Yet in the eighteenth century, the orphanage struggled to stay open. Due to mismanagement and its inability to generate much income, the fate of the orphanage was constantly in question.
Faced with the vicissitudes of starting a nonprofit organization and ensuring its financial viability, Whitefield looked to slavery to secure Bethesda’s welfare. He turned to the wealthy allies he had gained during his revivals in South Carolina for support. With the help of his friends near Charleston, Whitefield purchased a 640-acre plantation and planned to use the profit from the crops produced there to support the work of the orphanage. Whitefield was virtually guaranteed a profit from his plantation activities because he did not plan to pay his laborers. “One negro has been given me,” he wrote in a letter. “Some more I plan to purchase this week.”16
Whitefield began petitioning the political leaders of Georgia, which had been founded as a free territory, to allow slavery. He suggested that allowing slavery could improve the financial fortunes of the land and claimed that economic ruin was the only alternative: “Georgia can never be a flourishing province unless negroes are employed [as slaves].”17
Historian Stephen J. Stein insists that financial concerns only partially explain Whitefield’s advocacy of slavery. “The focus upon contrast and change in his ideas which has dominated discussion to date obscures a more significant feature of his thought, namely, his deep-seated fear of the blacks.”18 The economic impulse for slavery can never be separated from the racist ideas that typecast enslaved Africans as dangerous and brutish. Whitefield and countless other white Christians imbibed beliefs that encouraged fear and suspicion of African-descended people.
A few months after the Stono Rebellion in September 1739, Whitefield and a party of companions made their way through South Carolina. On a dark and moonless night, they stumbled across a group of enslaved black people. One of Whitefield’s companions asked for directions to “the gentleman’s house whither we were directed,” but the group of blacks seemed not to know the person or the location of his home. “From these circumstances, one of my friends inferr’d, that these Negroes might be of those who lately had made an i
nsurrection in the province, and were run away from their masters.” After that, Whitefield’s party quickened their pace fearfully “expecting to find Negroes in every place.”19 Virtually any gathering of black people—even when black Christians congregated for worship—was likely to elicit suspicion.
JONATHAN EDWARDS
As significant as George Whitefield was to American religious history, he was still British. America needed a homegrown pastor to celebrate as their own hero. Many Christians look to Jonathan Edwards, heralded as “America’s Greatest Theologian.” A Calvinist pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts, Edwards emphasized the need for a new birth and authentic conversion. Instead of focusing solely on the intellectual nature of religion, he spoke of a change in “affections”—redirecting passion away from oneself and toward God. Edwards defended the emotionalism of revivals against critics and argued that such expressions were evidence of personal experience with God. Known for works such as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Religious Affections, Edwards’s vaunted philosophical and theological acumen, however, did not lead him to reject race-based chattel slavery.
Born in 1703, Edwards displayed an insatiable curiosity and sharp intellect. At the age of eleven he penned a treatise on the spider’s method of using air currents and web strands to move from place to place. In 1716 he enrolled in the Collegiate School of Connecticut, now known as Yale University, at just under thirteen years old. A year later, Edwards read John Locke and absorbed his teachings like a miser “gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered treasure.”20 He also engaged with the works of Isaac Newton and saw the burgeoning field of empirical science as evidence of God’s creative genius.
