Jonathan Edwards, Cancel Culture, and Why to Buck It

 It took me long enough to read Jonathan Edwards’ Complex Views on Race that I should be ashamed, I finished it off why eating Hormel tamales.

Edwards owned slaves, he did not preach against slavery, but he did:

Positively, Edwards and his congregation at Northampton were on the leading edge of thinking through these issues in at least one specific way — Edwards’ congregation received blacks into full membership of the church, giving them all the privileges of membership, including access to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.[6] By one count, the Northampton Church included nine blacks and two Indians in full communicant membership.[7] We must recall that this would be the ultimate statement of recognition of their humanity and brotherhood in Christ. Church membership, perhaps even over against citizenship or suffrage, was the highest statement of acceptance of another’s status in Christ as a cherished and beloved brother. At least one of Edwards’ own slaves was received into membership, Leah — saved during the Great Awakening — and this likely indicates that the Edwards family treated their slaves with kindness and some semblance of human to human equity.

and

 Indeed, his own son Jonathan Edwards Jr., and his students Joseph Bellamy, and especially Samuel Hopkins would take his ideas one step further, and apply Edwards’ concept of “benevolence to being” directly to slavery issues. His disciples then, utilizing his principles and applying them to a contemporary issue, became determined abolitionists. These students of Edwards would together comprise what is called the “New Divinity,” slightly modifying the verbiage to “disinterested benevolence,” meaning an utter and unconditional kindness to fellow men, without regard for recompense, recognition, or reward. Of these students, all were particularly aggressive in moving towards a full position of total abolition, with Hopkins even preaching this message directly to the Continental Congress. So, it is fair to say that Edwards’ own disciples applied his message to slavery as such in ways that Edwards may have been either unaware of, or afraid to do. They were then, more consistently “Edwardsean” than Edwards himself.

The Greeks said to judge no man's life until he had died. Do not judge people unless you are without sin, and can say that no good is in their example or ideas. Right now we may be in a death match in which Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration are pitted against authoritarianism. Want to cancel Jefferson?

sch 6/11