The contemporary debate over whether or not Christians should engage in social justice is not novel to our generation. Disagreement about Gospel versus justice, Gospel over justice, or Gospel and justice has been a hallmark of the church in America since colonial days. In learning how the Puritans endorsed an exclusive Gospel over justice position which prioritized personal salvation for the slaves and justified a non-opposition and even affirmation of slavery, we should consider how our well-intentioned theological perspectives may in fact lead to a “Christian” complicity and inaction to address the racial injustices of our time.
“Win slaves for Christ”
In a previous post, I discussed how leading Puritans like Jonathan Edwards owned slaves and George Whitefield promoted slavery. But their biggest “contribution” to the perpetuation of racial inequalities may have been their prioritization of individual salvation over concern for social injustice.
Richard Baxter, an admired Puritan by many Christians, reflects the tension between loving a slave as a potential brethren in the body of Christ and not seeking to abolish the structural systems that subject his body to be mastered by another. In one of the letters recorded in his magisterial Christian Directory (here), Baxter send instructions to slaveowners about how they should treat their slaves. While arguing for good treatment of slaves since “God is [the slave’s] ultimate owner and that you have none but a derived and limited property in them”, he focuses on the importance of evangelism to and of slaves. Baxter encourages slaveowners to “exercise both your power and love to bring them to the knowledge and faith of Christ, and to the just obedience of God’s commands.” In other words, the mark of a Christian slaveowner is to win slaves for Christ.
His instructions illustrate the tension between individual responsibility and complicity in unjust legal practices and allowances of slavery. On the one hand, Baxter condemns as “Devils” those who “go as pirates and catch up poor Negros or people of another land…to make them slaves and sell them.” He also counsels for the good treatment of slaves and to “use them so as [tenderly as] to win them to Christ, and the love of religion, by showing them that Christians are less worldly, less cruel, [and do not] hinder their conversion and salvation.” But he does not advocate slaveowners to free their slaves or seek the abolition of the institution of slavery. By defining Gospel as a personal endeavor divorced from and having no effects on social relations, Baxter and his contemporaries effectively argued that Christ would be lord over men’s hearts, but not their bodies. In doing so, he defines as Christian the prioritization of salvation in heaven over bodily freedom here on earth and frees the Christian from any action to redress the structural injustices and inequalities found in imperfect structures made by sinful man.
This prioritizing of Gospel over justice and the freeing of a Christian from any obligation to loosen the bondage of his fellow Black brothers and sisters was accordingly institutionalized as law. This was most notable in 1667 when the colonial government of Virginia passed a law decreeing that “baptism of slaves does not exempt them from bondage.” The law effectively, as described by the Equal Justice Initiative, established “North American slavery as a permanent, hereditary status centrally tied to race. The law also contributed to the development of Christian interpretations of slavery that aimed to find — or manufacture — scriptural support for the buying and selling of human beings.”
The pernicious implications of a Gospel over justice theology is best illustrated by Cotton Mather. Infamous for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, he was also a public intellectual of significance influence in the pulpit and the public square. He wrote frequently about the need of slaves to accept the Gospel. However, his consistent framing of this reflected a flawed theology that robbed slaves of dignity and reified subjugation even though they too are made in the Imago Dei.
In 1696, Mather wrote that as slaves were “better Fed and better Clothed & better Managed by far than you would be if you were your Own men, All that now remains for you is to become first the Good Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then of those that have purchased you.” And showing a cruelty and clarity of a man convinced that his theology endorsed the institution of slavery, Mather “encouraged” slaves with a “Gospel hope” based in “Christian” racism. He writes that
“Though your Skins are of the color of the Night, yet your Souls will be washed White in the Blood of the Lamb, and be Entitled unto an Inheritance in Light. Though you are in Slavery to men, yet you shall be the Free-men of the Lord, the Children of God. Though you are Fed among the Dogs, with the scraps of our Tables, yet you shall at length Lie down unto a Feast with Abraham himself in the Heaven of the Blessed. [Do not be] you Discouraged; it will be but a Little, a Little, a Little While, and all your pains will End in Everlasting Joys.”
Are we repeating the errors of the Puritans again?
We may want to dismiss the writings of our Puritan church fathers as anachronistic and misguided, as people who were uninformed about and not devout in their reading of Scripture. But who among us can claim to have the religious fervor and knowledge of these Puritans? Who among us can say that we are more focused on Scripture and more learned about church history and theology than these men for whom theology was their profession? And if they can err so much in their theology so as to endorse undeniably racist framings of salvation as the only redeemable quality and aim of Black slaves, how much more should we consider our own theologies and the extent to which they may distort our preferences and participation in the public square.
One lesson we can learn from the Puritan pursuit of Gospel over justice is that it leads to neither Gospel or justice. While it is true that the Black Church thrived by the grace of God, it did so not because of but in spite of the church’s attempt to evangelize them. White pastors preached a Gospel of docile submission not so that they would know Christ more, but that they would obey their masters more. And an emphasis of Gospel over justice certainly did not lead to justice; instead, the church provided a sacred endorsement of slavery and grounded the perpetuation of racial inequality on “Christian” foundations, an error that we are still untangling centuries later.
And so we must be circumspect about our contemporary postures towards social justice and Gospel. Even if well-intentioned, let us consider how our clinging of “more Jesus to end racism” is in fact bad theology that does not recognize the reality of racism and seems motivated only by a desire to be free from any responsibility to address injustice. Let us not be immature or naïve to think that we can seek a middle path between “radical” perspectives by responding to the call of social justice with a call to focus only on Jesus and Gospel. James reminds us that if we see “a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and [only] says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15–16)
When we cling to a Gospel over justice perspective, we are in effect saying to our Black brothers and sisters suffering from persistent racism that Jesus is for you, but we are not. Yes we need Jesus for it is only the Cross that can give us the eschatological hope and assurance of justice served! The Cross is, as James Cone describes, the best justification of the suffering of lynching and racial oppression. But let us not be like those who sees injustice around us and gives our Sunday School answer, however well intentioned, to focus on the Gospel only. Doing so distorts the message of Jesus and lends a Christian justification for inaction in the face of injustice. And so, as history shows time and time again, prioritizing Gospel over justice instead of Gospel and justice ensures neither Gospel or justice.
For more about the series, check out the introduction post and the previous post on Puritans owning slaves and What the colonial church’s embrace of Enlightenment philosophy teaches us about the “threat” of critical race theory.
