I did not know that Puritans owned slaves until I was in my 30s.
Having grown up in church my whole life, including spending a year in New England public schools and reading about Puritans in both English literature and theology settings, I never learned that the Puritans owned slaves and don’t recall a single conversation discussing the early American church fathers and slavery. While not all Puritans owned slaves, and some Puritans did oppose slavery, many Puritans owned slaves and a few, including luminaries such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, defended and even advocated for the expansion of slavery. At the very least, they were complicit in the system of slavery that propelled the growth of the New England colonies.
And I did not learn about this from a Sunday School class, a Christian podcast or blog, or even a “secular” history lesson, but from a rap by Propaganda, a song that would have gotten zero playtime on any Christian music station and that I only providentially found while searching out Christian rappers on Spotify.
While the song sparked controversy when released in 2012 (see critiques of Propaganda here and here, and defenses of Propaganda here and here), Propaganda is not alone as more “mainstream” Christians have discussed their own struggles with Puritan and early American church fathers’ record of slavery (for example, John Piper, Mark Galli, Thomas Kidd, Jason Meyer, Trevin Wax).
But why should I care that the Puritans owned slaves?
I think this stuff I didn’t learn in Church matters in at least five ways.
First, it reminds us that current debate about how the Church should respond to racism is not a new challenge.
From before the founding of the nation, the American Church and Christians have been grappling with the problem of racism and the reconciling of Gospel Truth in specific social and cultural contexts. Put positively, this means that we are not the first to be struggling with this, and there is historical precedent if not insight from previous times that can inform our current debate. But from a negative perspective, we can lament that hundreds of years later, the Church continues to struggle with the sin of personal and structural racism as we as a country continue to deal with the ramifications of America’s original sin.
Second, that the Puritans owned slaves reminds us that good theology and right biblical thinking is not enough in guarding us from sin.
In my church circles, the Puritans are held up as paradigms of faith, of peoples who we should learn from in seeking how to integrate right doctrine with godly living. But in a way, the Puritan response to slavery (that it was a necessary to the economic development of the early colonial period, that it provided an opportunity for otherwise “lost” Africans to have an encounter with the Gospel in the new world) reflects James’ critique in James 2:15–16 of the one who, seeing “a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, [only] says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body.”
Third, this history should cause us to reflect on our own theologies, and how our interpretation and application of what we call “Biblical” is almost always incomplete.
We are sinful people, and we cannot know our infinite God. But in the theologies we do hold dear, we should constantly examine if there are systematic gaps or errors that need to be corrected and reformed. As Jason Meyer puts it, “Edwards’s complicated legacy is a cautionary tale for us. Jonathan Edwards had more intellectual firepower than any person reading this article, and he was a systematic thinker. He could connect theological dots like no one else. If he could succumb to such obvious, woeful oppression and injustice and theological hypocrisy, then we should be spurred on to greater levels of self-examination. Where are our blind spots? Or where do we willfully turn a blind eye to things we’re simply afraid to address?”
Fourth, we need to be thoughtful about how we consider and use the past in contemporary teaching and practice.
In many churches, especially more Reformed circles, there is a strong tradition of using arguments and theological thoughts from Reformers long ago. That is valuable and can be useful. That the Puritans owned slaves does not disqualify them as worthy reference points of historical Christianity. But that they did own slaves should be taught along with their teachings so that contemporary interpretation and application takes into account the cultural and historical distance from their context to ours. We cannot decontextualize and anachronistically apply past insights and thought to our current times without recognizing the inconsistency between their theology and their practice. That is part of the historical legacy they left us, and as Christians seeking to be more faithful in our witness and expression of the Gospel in all spheres of life, it is critical that we know about and learn from the complete past of the Church, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
And finally, we need to be careful in how we respond to critiques and perspectives that challenge mainstream “orthodoxy” in the Church.
Coming full circle back to Propaganda and his critique of the Puritans, it is noteworthy though perhaps not surprising that when a black man raps about the Puritans, it is deemed controversial and requires immediate correction for being too emotional and lacking nuance; but when a white pastor laments, it is met with golf-clap appreciation. Is it that those who hold dear to Puritan teaching and doctrine are more concerned with defending the honor of those long dead than hearing the pain and puzzlement of those who hear the Puritans elevated as heroes and exemplars of the American church? Or is it that the Church has defined who can and cannot have a voice to challenge orthodoxy and is primed, even unconsciously, to systematically silence those who disagree, who don’t use the right theological words like us, or who do not look like us?
How we respond to criticism reveals as much about the Church as the substance of the critique. In the case of the Puritans and their slaves, it seems too many Christians are too focused on defending tradition and valuing the voices of those long past than hearing the living voices of our fellow brothers and sisters long ignored. But the fact that Puritans owned slaves need not just be history if in contemporary discussions, we learn from them and use their experiences if not inconsistencies to consider the intersection of our theology, doctrines, practices, and behaviors. And in doing so, we can reflect on our sinful natures, and how we all, as much as Puritans from long ago, need to consistently examine our own sins and blindspots as we seek to be ever more like our holy God.
For more on Stuff I didn’t learn in Church, see my introduction. If you have feedback or comments, please email stuffididntlearninchurch@gmail.com.
