Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield on Slavery

Presentism and the Historiographical Roots of Social Justice

Hello and welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Today I want to talk about presentism. Presentism. What do we do with men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield?

Men who have been respected in evangelical, reformed, conservative circles for years and now their status is being called into question because they own slaves. They did not hold to egalitarian ideas our current culture takes for granted.

Do we cast them aside? Do we stop respecting them? Do we call them hypocrites? Do we still learn from them? I think we're going to need to ponder this in the Christian community because if you have not faced this challenge, you will.

Trust me, you will. In fact, if you're not even a Christian, if you're just an American or someone who values your Western civilization, you're going to need to think through this too because all of these things are under attack right now.

Now, I think we are in the middle of what I'm calling a postmodernist controversy. I want to get all my cards out on the table first before we get into Edwards and Whitefield. I want to tell you what this means first because I think it's important.

The modernist controversy happened about 100 years ago and disciplines like science, higher criticism, and literature, these seeped into evangelical institutions, places of higher learning, and the fundamentalists who formed during this time, the conservatives, they said, you're ushering in a new higher authority.

We believe scripture is the higher authority. Revelation is the high authority that we believe in. What are you doing putting man on this pedestal and saying that through his scientific investigation he can find truths that contradict the Word of God?

That we don't—revelation is what dictates what is true before man does anything like that. Those who were on the progressive end of this, who kept these institutions, the fundamentalists basically took their resources and went and started new ones, they did not think initially that they were doing anything to threaten the gospel.

In fact, they probably thought that they were helping things. We're going to make Christianity intellectual. We're going to make sure that these disciplines are integrated with Christianity. Today, we have I think a similar situation, but we're not used to being attacked from the angle in which we're being attacked now.

History, Marxism, and the Social Justice Movement

So with the social justice movement, instead of these modernist type objective type of disciplines from science coming in and creating an issue, it's actually disciplines like history and sociology that are coming in.

We see this in a lot of the words that are being used. Cultural engagement is a word that's used over and over in SBC circles, and human flourishing is of course used quite a bit in Presbyterian PCA circles, and other terms like just white privilege, systematic racism.

These things are coming in from places outside of the Bible, and then they're being used to integrate with biblical ideas. Or, you know, in the case of justice, we take a definition that is not biblical and then we read it into biblical texts.

And we haven't had to face this challenge, I don't think, not coming from this direction. Now since we're talking about history, I want to talk about history for a moment. So Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States, his followers from the 1960s onward, like Eric Foner, they have a postmodern undercurrent in their approach to history.

Because what they essentially do is they say, you know, there isn't like an objective truth going back in history. I mean, history classically is historians were people who went back and they investigated, tried to find out what the truth was, before they ever tried to ask the ought question, they asked the what question.

Well, Howard Zinn and the gang, you know, they look at history as, kind of through a Marxist lens, that the truth is whatever, it's kind of like a might makes right. Whoever has the privilege, who ends up controlling finances and institutions, they end up telling their side of the story, and that's been the truth.

And we need to stop that. We need to instead tell the story of these aggrieved minorities and people who were oppressed, and they're gonna have their day to tell their side of the story. And so we're to the point now where in secular history, it's essentially become a discipline where you go back into the past, you cherry-pick the record for whatever makes the oppressed look good, the oppressors look bad, and you tell that story.

And truth is not as important, finding out what actually happened. So I'm not denying that there's an ethical component in history. In fact, I'm affirming that. I'm saying there is an ethical component that drives the way you're going to do it.

And in Christian circles now, there's an ethical component that has seeped in from these other disciplines. And I think it's, we're largely unaware of it. We don't see it initially. So, of course, in the secular world, right, we have like, for instance, the monument debacle where we're gonna reinterpret historical artifacts or we're going to erase monuments from the landscape.

Well, that's happening at Christian institutions now. A couple weeks ago, I found out that there was a prominent Christian university that had a mural of William Shakespeare, and they altered it, painted over some things, because he was a white man.

He had white privilege. So these things are coming in, and we need to know how to deal with them. So I want to talk about some of the perceptions out there of Edwards and Whitefield. These guys have been heroes for a while to people in the Reformed evangelical camp, but we'll start with Tabidi and Abile.

He said, and this is seven years ago, I regard Edwards as having sinned against God and his fellow man as having owned slaves. Now, let me ask you, I'm not going to answer this right now, but let me ask you the question, is it a sin in and of itself to own slaves?

Think of all the people that owned slaves in scripture, and we're not corrected about it. Think about what Paul says about slavery, what Jesus said about slavery. Is it a sin in and of itself? You answer that in your own head.

Tabidi went on and he goes, you have to understand Edwards in his time. You have to take into account his blind spots. Now, I appreciate that. That was seven years ago, though. I heard him say something similar about both Edwards and Whitefield a year ago.

He didn't say the same thing. He didn't say, he didn't give a caveat at the end. So I think the tone is changing. Now, speaking of tone, Kyle J. Howard, a year ago, was during MLK 50. He's a social justice advocate, evangelical.

He said, I am more confident in Martin Luther King Jr.'s conversion than I am of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Out of the three, his life was the one marked by divine love and the pursuit of biblical justice.

And then he goes on to say, Edwards and Whitefield lived an unrepentant life of man-stealing. They were heretical, demonic, and evil. So it doesn't sound like he thinks they were Christians. And they participated in a system of legalized rape of women, torture, murder, sexual abuse, child rape, etc.

It was a system that, you know, made Roman slavery look, you know, it was nothing, which I don't think he's getting this from reading anything. He's not reading Eugene Genovese, Roald Jordan Roald. He's not going back to the slave narratives to find out what they said, slaves themselves said about their situation.

I don't think he's reading Roman history. It looks like he's getting it from somewhere though, right? And so there's this condemnation of Edwards and Whitefield here and this elevation of Martin Luther King Jr.

George Whitefield, Slavery, and the Condition of Slaves

Now, I want to talk about Whitefield and Edwards and then give you kind of my take. So let's survey these guys when it comes to slavery and race and so forth. So Whitefield, Whitefield, and if you want to go see a source on this, it is slightly to the left.

It's slanted that way. George Whitefield on slavery, some new evidence, Stephen J. Stein has some of this information. Now, I've read Thomas Kidd and other people on Whitefield though, so I might pepper some of that in.

But Whitefield, throughout his ministry, put blacks on an equal spiritual plane with whites. So he ministered to them. He shared the gospel with them. He believed that they were just as capable of salvation as their masters were.

Now in 1739, there was a slave rebellion in the Stono River area in South Carolina and Whitefield is there in the next year, 1740, and there still has been some attempts at rebellion since then. And this is out of time.

You got to know about twice as many blacks lived there as whites. So Whitefield in 1740 is journeying to Georgia from South Carolina and he finds, he comes across some blacks who seem out of place and he gets anxious about it.

He just doesn't know if their intentions are right. And some have said that, well, look, he's racist. Not necessarily. If you take into account what happened in 1739, he is, he's nervous, but he doesn't know.

And he is reading into this what had just taken place. So, so I think that relieves some of that tension that some may feel, but let's move on. Let's keep looking into Whitefield because we haven't gotten to the main thing that people demonize him for.

1740, Benjamin Franklin, his publisher in Philadelphia, publishes to the inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina. And Whitefield's traveling through these places. So he publishes this book and it's basically an open letter to them.

And he says, as I lately passed through your province, I was sensibly touched with a fellow feeling of the miseries of the poor Negroes. So he's identifying with them. And he said, God has a quarrel with your abuse.

And he's talking specifically about slave masters who would abuse. Your abuse of the cruelty to these poor Negroes. He said, some masters are no better than monsters of barbarity. And the blood of these slaves that was spilt will be used against them in heaven.

And, and the only thing that was worse than this physical, physical sin in his mind against these slaves was the fact that there are masters that did not Christianize them. They didn't share the gospel with their slaves.

And so what Whitefield does is he tells them, look, share the gospel with them, Christianize them. In fact, that'll make them better slaves. Now he gets flack for this because, well, how can you say that they'll be made better slaves?

Well, in Whitefield's mind, he's just repeating what Paul says, slaves obey your masters. He's just repeating scriptural imperatives. And his goal is, I mean, clearly if you read this letter, his goal is their condition.

Let's move on. 1747, 1748. This is where Whitefield gets in trouble, essentially with modern people. He has an orphan house in Georgia. It's in financial difficulty. Some folks in South Carolina say, Hey, why don't you start a plantation here?

We'll give you some slaves. You can make some money. You can get out of your financial difficulty. So they do that. And then Whitefield says, you know, I want to bring some of these slaves down to Georgia.

I want to bring them to the orphanage. And he even says, I've been held back because of white hands and that Georgia won't be flourishing unless Negroes are employed there. So he has a very high view of the work ethic of black people.

But he gets in trouble here in the eyes of modern people because he's the one that is, he's the most famous man in America, and he's petitioning Georgia to allow slavery. How can he do this? Now, I'm going to throw this question out there without bringing any moral judgments yet.

I'm saying anything really. I just want you to think about this because there's a lot of things I think when it comes to presentism, there's a lot of things we overlook. There is an ethical dimension to presentism.

Are we judging the past by standards that come from, if you're a Christian, the Bible? Or are we judging them by the standards of our time? Just what people think in general. As I was saying before, the discipline of history has a postmodern undercurrent today in the way it's practiced.

Part of the discipline of history today is it is telling the story, this is a Marxist kind of component, of the egalitarian nature of man or the egalitarian, you know, man freeing himself from the chains that constrain him and being equal in every way.

And history is that story. The history of the world is that story. Man is freeing himself to be more egalitarian. We're going to have this utopia. And so even the history of the United States becomes a history of less equal to more equal.

And it's all about our fight for equality. And you can see this in every single, I mean, it's not just with regards to race, it's in regards to sex and orientation. And it just, so it gets into everything.

Now, are we judging Whitefield by this idea that, well, look how, look what a caveman he was. He was way behind the curve. You know, he should have known this. That was wrong. And when we say it's wrong, is it wrong because we have a chapter and verse or is it wrong because what our modern current age tells us is the standard we're operating by?

Let's review for one second. Whitefield put slaves and masters on the same spiritual plane. He was very strong against masters who abused slaves. And so he was against that. And then we have this thing where he essentially allows or introduces slavery, helps introduce it into Georgia.

But he believes that should be guided by a Christian principle. And so this is who he is, you know, trying to be as nuanced as I can while giving this to you in a brief short form. So let's get, let's go on to Edwards and we're, you know, hold that, whatever thoughts you have, hold those.

Jonathan Edwards, Slavery, and the Limits of Christian Ownership

Let's talk about Edwards and then let's bring this all together. Kenneth P. Mckema, Jonathan Edwards on slavery and the slave trade has some information on this that surveys some of this stuff. He owned at least four slaves during the course of his life.

He did not draw metaphysical differences between race though. He thought that just like Whitefield, in fact, he goes a step beyond Whitefield because in the 1730s, there were Native Americans and African Americans becoming slave, becoming saved, not slaves, they were becoming slaves too in some ways, but they're becoming saved in joining churches.

And Edwards in 1739 basically says, I'm looking forward to the day that Native Americans and African Americans are going to be writing, they're going to be divines, they're going to be writing excellent theological works.

And this was his hope. So not only does he think that they're equal in the sense that they have the same problems that everyone has, sin, and they have the same solution, salvation, he says they can go toe-to-toe with us intellectually, why not?

So that's Edwards. Now the only document that we have where he specifically talks about slavery is a draft. And he's writing to defend a minister, some people think it was him, and he's being, you know, this minister, whoever it is, is being criticized by the congregation for owning slaves.

And he condones slave ownership, he does. But he also condemns the slave trade in this, which is interesting. He acknowledges its inequities and disturbing implications, but he takes ownership, he takes a, sorry, a providential view of the institution.

So it's a necessary evil, and it serves some positive good in God's decree. So remember, he's the Calvinist, right? So he's saying God's got a purpose for this. He's Christianizing some people that wouldn't have received the gospel, that there's something going on.

Now he believed that holding slaves was permissible as long as they were treated humanely, which is what the law in Massachusetts also required. He points out the hypocrisy of those who profit off of slavery, slave products, while condemning it.

And he says, for if they 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 them own that their objection are not conscientious, but merely to make difficulty and trouble for their neighbors.

So he says, you guys are a bunch of busybodies. You don't really care about the condition. Now remember that word condition. With Whitfield and with Edwards, they're concerned about the condition of slaves.

That today though, word difference here, today in our egalitarian age, the thing that matters it seems like is status more than condition. Well they couldn't vote, they couldn't, there's things that they couldn't do that other people can do.

That would not have been on Edwards and Whitfield's mind. It just wouldn't have been a thought as much. They lived in this hierarchical culture, and it just, it wouldn't have crossed their minds. Now were the seeds for getting rid of slavery planted by Christians during this time?

Yeah, they were. I mean the idea that slaves and masters are on the same spiritual plane really did help end slavery, but was there specifically biblical passages that they could look to that were clear that said this is evil, this is wrong?

There weren't, and so they operated within the time that they lived as men of their time. Now Edwards also opposed man-stealing based on biblical principles. Again, he limited the purchasable slaves to war captives, debtors, and children's of slaves.

So he's reaching back into the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and he's saying this is, we should operate by this. His son did become an abolitionist. So I just think that's interesting that his son did that.

One more thing when it comes to Edwards. He's often called a racist because of some comments he made about Indian cultures, because Edwards became a missionary to Native Americans. He uses the word Indian here.

He says in a letter to William Pepperill, he says, Indian languages are extremely barbarous and barren, and very ill-fitted for communicating things moral and divine, or even things speculative and abstract.

In short, they are wholly unfit for a people possessed of civilization, knowledge, and refinement. Now, is that racist? Or is he saying, the context here is he's giving Pepperill advice on educating young Native Americans.

Is he saying they need to learn English? That is what he's saying. He's saying they need to learn English to get these theological truths down, and they need to comprehend them. It's not just enough to just make them memorize sounds.

They need to comprehend. And he's saying you can't do it in their language. I don't know enough about the language to know whether that's true or not. But is that in and of itself a racist or ethnically superior thing that he is saying?

It doesn't sound like it. Now, maybe it is strong language. But again, this is the man who also thought that there's going to be a time when Native Americans are writing these theological works. He's looking forward to it.

So he becomes a missionary to the Indians. And his son, William Pepperill, sorry, that's not his son. That's the letter he wrote. His son, Jr., Jonathan Edwards Jr., he becomes an abolitionist. And he learns these Native American languages when he's working there.

So that's Edwards. That's Edwards. That's Whitfield. And, you know, there's not like a lot of information we have about them in regards to this. That's pretty much, I mean, I'm surveying it, but that's pretty much what we have.

Martin Luther King Jr., Biblical Standards, and the Dangers of Presentism

Now, Martin Luther King Jr. is being, you know, has been criticized by the conservative side as why are you grandstanding this guy? And you can look at my video where I talk about that. And I say there's good things about him.

The I Have a Dream speech is good. We don't cast everything away. But as far as making him this hero, why would we do that? You know, Paul talks about people who followed Christ as being, it doesn't look like MLK followed Christ.

Well, MLK directly breaks the commands of God. He's an actual heretic. And the criticism against him is not a criticism using presentism. We're not saying, hey, it's 50 years later and now we're looking at MLK and we're saying, well, you know what?

He's not up to snuff. You know, we now believe that adultery is wrong. Whereas in his time, you know, he didn't know better. Well, that's not what we're saying. We're saying there's biblical standards that he broke.

And we're saying that he had a pattern of this. He was unrepentant, it seems at least. And unless he had a deathbed conversion, it looks like he didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. We're looking at the Bible as our standard here.

Now, what do we do when we look at Edwards and Whitefield? What does the left do? Are they looking at the Bible and saying, okay, here's what the Bible says about slavery specifically, chapter and verse, and they didn't meet it.

Or are they also, or just, taking principles from the time period in which they live, things that we just take for granted, egalitarian ideas, and then imposing that on them and demonizing them? I'll let you answer that.

You know, or is it a ratio? Is it some of biblical principles, but also, you know, egalitarian things from our culture? You know, on what standard are they demonizing Edwards and Whitefield? It's different than the standard that's being used to caution against MLK and grandstanding him, so to speak.

Now, everyone has human failures, right? There's no one perfect. God is in the habit of using people with failure. And there seems to be more grace given to those who are more ignorant of their failures.

What do I mean by that? Luke 12, 48. This is interesting to me. I'm going to read it for you from my Assault Bible here. But the one who did not know it and committed deeds worthy of a flogging will receive but few.

From everyone who has been given much, much will be required. And to whom they entrusted much of him they will ask all the more. If you're given more, more is required of you. Were Edwards and Whitefield given the same information that we're given today?

Did they live in a culture in which it was multicultural and they could see firsthand walking around that, wow, okay, there's every shape, every color, every culture seems to have, you know, they're capable.

They can do all these things. Or did they live in a world where, well, Edwards, you know, missionary to Native Americans, you know, did he just see maybe the outworkings of a pagan worldview? Could he have potentially misassociated that with genetic differences and so forth?

So that's something that we have to take into consideration. Did they have the scientific advances that we have today that show the similarities between people? They didn't. So they didn't have as much light as we do as far as if you want to say a quality and the similarities between people and the capabilities of people of different, of all sorts of ethnicities.

So the interesting thing to me, though, is when I looked up this passage, Luke 12, 48, I remembered the verse. I forgot the context it was in. This is about being ready for Christ when he is coming at an hour that you do not expect.

Slavery, though, is the template upon which this parable is drawn. Let me read for you the verses preceding Luke 12, 48. And I'm making a point. So listen up. Verse 45. But if that slave says in his heart, my master will be a long time in coming and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and an hour that he does not know.

And he will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. And that slave who knew the master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will will receive many lashes. But the one who did not know it and commanded deeds worthy of a flogging will receive but few.

From everyone who has been given much, much will be required. And to whom they entrusted much of him they will ask all the more. If Jonathan Edwards or George Whitefield said that exact section that I just read, what would social justice evangelicals say about them?

Hopefully you get the point. If we use presentism, if we use standards from the present to judge people of the past, we destroy our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's reputation, we destroy the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the church fathers, the reformers, if you're an American, the founding fathers, etc.

We will not escape that destruction ourselves. Let me give you some examples. I'm going to start on the conservative end. If you are a Trump supporter, and let's say you supported Trump because you were against illegal immigration and you didn't think Hillary Clinton was going to handle it.

Let's say that was one of your reasons. And 50 years from now, your descendants are sitting there in school or 100 years from now, and the CNN archive has been used to write the history books. And they know that you have some quotes you wrote down, you know, that you voted for Trump or you were supporting him.

And now they think that, well, Trump, you know, is what CNN said he was. He's a racist, and it was just about white supremacy, hating Hispanics. Is that fair? Is that fair? Now, it's not a stretch to say this.

We are seeing this play out in the present. But let's say we're 100 years down the road, and everyone just takes for granted CNN's view on this. Is it fair to, and that's the new compassion, is it fair to judge you as a Trump voter by that standard?

Let's take another one. We'll take another one from the right. Welfare. Welfare is a system that, let's say it's not good. The Bible says, you know, a man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat. And we have this system that enables people to, kind of enslaves them in a sense, right, to the dole.

And let's say you're against it. Let's say you want to progressively get rid of it. You care about the condition of the people, though, that are receiving this aid. And so you become a welfare worker, and you're going to try to make sure that people aren't treated like numbers, but human beings.

Well, let's say that, you know, again, years down the road, there's maybe a Christian denomination and your family or people, you know, become part of it. And they have this belief that the welfare system is so wrong, how can you, someone who worked as a welfare worker, be a Christian?

How can you do that? You know, you're assisting in this horrible system, when in reality you are trying to take the commands of God and apply them to a bad situation to make it a little better. Let's take one more example.

My head's being filled with them. This will be the last one, though. Let's talk about slave labor in the sense of sweatshops and clothes that are purchased at, like, Walmart or Target. You know, let's say you're benefiting, like Edwards was talking about, those who benefited from slave labor.

You're benefiting from sweatshops, from countries in which they still have slave labor, child labor, and you're against those things, but, you know, you gotta wear something and you don't have a lot of money, so you go out and you buy clothes and that's what you wear.

What should people think about you? What should they think about you? Are you in sin, specifically? Is there a chapter and verse to say you are in sin? I'm not going to answer these questions, but they need to be considered, and there's a lot more examples I can come up with, but this is what presentism does, and we're doing it to Edwards and Whitfield today, but tomorrow, who is it going to be?

This acid eats everything. It really does. You know, it's going to end up being, like, no one before 2010 is going to be deemed moral because the standards just keep changing, and hopefully, you know, we recognize this, but I wanted to bring this to your attention.

I think this is the way that if you are encountering someone who argues this way and this is the way it should be handled. Ask questions. Get them to think about what they're really saying and get them to try to understand where their source of authority is coming from, and are they judging things in the past based on ethics from the Bible, the Word of God that transcends these barriers of time, or are they judging things just based on, you know, what the cultural flavor around them is?

Or is it a mix? You know, it's worth asking these questions. I think if we're going to be honest with ourselves, if we're going to try to be true to Scripture, we can't view Edwards and Whitfield the way Kyle J. Howard views them as heretics, and if we're going to be honest with Scripture and true to it, we can't view Martin Luther King Jr. the way that so many Christian churches and institutions are propping him up right now, either.

So I'll leave that there. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it helps. God bless.