Anthony Bradley on Criticizing the Puritans: The Reformed Tradition and Racism.
At Urban Faith (HT: Aquila Report) Anthony Bradley has an excellent article defending Rapper Propaganda’s harsh critique of the Puritans. Bradley puts the article in the context of Christians’ tendency to insist that our own favorite people and movements be treated with the grace that preserves them from criticism, even as we are willing to criticize those outside of our group according to a much stricter standard.
Bradley writes,
“Precious Puritans” simply raises a caution about loving the Puritans too much because, although they had sound doctrine on issues like personal piety, that tradition was complicit in perpetrating injustice against Africans and African Americans during the slavery. The song opens with these words:
Pastor, you know it’s hard for me when you quote puritans.
Oh the precious Puritans.
Have you not noticed our facial expressions?
One of bewilderment and heartbreak.
Like, not you too pastor.
You know they were the chaplains on slave ships, right?
Would you quote Columbus to Cherokees?
Would you quote Cortez to Aztecs?
Even If they theology was good?
It just sings of your blind privilege wouldn’t you agree?
Your precious Puritans.
They looked my onyx and bronze skinned forefathers in they face,
Their polytheistic, god-hating face.
Shackled, diseased, imprisoned face.
And taught a gospel that says God had multiple images in mind when he created us in it.
Their fore-destined salvation contains a contentment in the stage for which they were given which is to be owned by your forefathers’ superior image-bearing face. Says your precious Puritans.
Bradley points out that many Reformed Christians look to the Puritans as their inspiration for Christian piety. Yet he wonders why some of these people seem to think that criticizing the Puritans for their failings will lead people not to read them anymore. Can we not recognize the sins of our forbears while still appreciating what we can learn from them?
Is this a slippery slope? Does testing and critiquing leads to this? Did Martin Luther’s comments about Jews incline people to hate him and reject him? Or John Calvin’s execution of Michael Servetus? Or Abraham Kuyper’s racism? Or Jonathan Edwards slave owning? I could go on.
The answer, of course, is “yes” and “no.” Those who would reject the Puritans because of their white supremacy will themselves struggle to find much of anyone in Western Christianity to embrace. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God in some way (Rom. 3:23), including all of those we hold in high esteem. There is an obvious “no” because this is not how the Bible teaches Christians to engage in cultural and historical analysis. We are to eat the meat and spit out the bones. This includes those who are both inside and outside the tribe. There is much meat in the Puritans but there are also massive bones.
I am with Bradley all the way on this, and I encourage you to read his whole article, as well as to watch the video of the song.
But on one point I’d like to press even harder than Bradley. It is not just that we need to eat the meat and spit out the bones. We need to ask ourselves whether the meat could have been prepared differently so as to make the bones less dangerous, or easier to spit out. To get away from the analogy, we need to ask what it was about Puritan piety that made them so vulnerable to the vices and injustice of racism and exploitation. Of course, the Puritans were not unique in this. The Southern Presbyterians were deeply implicated in the South’s racial slavery and segregation and the Dutch Reformed were quite complicit in the evils of South African apartheid.
In an excellent interview with Joe Thorn (HT: Scott Clark) Richard Bailey, author of the recently published Race and Redemption in Puritan New England, illustrates some of the things we are talking about:
It reminded me of sitting in a town library in western Massachusetts and reading of how the community’s longtime puritan minister, Stephen Williams, on two separate occasions drove enslaved Africans he owned to take their respective lives within days of his brutally and inhumanely beating them. Williams, a cousin of Jonathan Edwards who actually recorded the famous description of Edwards’s Enfield preaching of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” felt he punished them out of a duty to these men. “He got it, but he didn’t get it.” Or, again, it took me back into a different archives flipping through the diary of the minister Roger Newton only to see him record the death of Patience, a two-year-old child born to Lucy Billing and her family’s slave Caesar. When the baby’s impending birth became public knowledge, both Lucy and Caesar were tried in the civil court, publicly whipped for their crime, and Caesar had to be sold out of the area—a punishment that would not have been routine among puritans had they both been white. Again, “they got it, but they didn’t get it.”
Asked how the Puritans, known for their biblical teaching, so missed the boat on this issue, Bailey comments,
This is a question I’ve asked over and over again, Joe. In my book, I argue that the most pressing issue facing puritans was not, as the historian Edmund Morgan wrote years ago, the problem of doing right in a world that was doing wrong; rather, the real “puritan dilemma” was making a world that does wrong appear to be doing right. And these men were intimately involved in doing wrong (unspeakable and unfathomable wrong) to enslaved men, women, and children. And in trying to make this wrong appear right, I see them creating meaning for the term “race” in their historical moment. Despite their repeated prophetic statements against sin, puritans sinned grievously against enslaved persons.
The question must be asked, what is it about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to these evils? Or to put the question less provocatively, why does Reformed theology not provide us with a better defense against these crimes? We expel people who teach against the Five Points of Calvinism and we (usually) excommunicate unrepentant murderers or adulterers. Why have racists and oppressors often had an easier time of it? We should at least ask the question, is our theology missing something?
Posted on October 4, 2012, in Calvinism, Racism and tagged Anthony Bradley, liberation theology, new Calvinists, Precious Puritans, Puritans, Rapper Propaganda. Bookmark the permalink. 74 Comments.
You make some great points: in light of 20th century sensibilities. This critique is amazingly anachronistic. A short history lesson may be in order: we in the U.S. didn’t have a Civil Rights Act until 1964. Keep in mind: many of our theological heroes, sinners that they are, read their theology in light of cultural sensibilities. The same could easily be said of Calvin and Geneva, and countless others. Racists and oppressors? Really? Next thing you’ll be demonizing the Pilgrims, that they were horrible oppressors of the Native Americans. Or the Apostle Paul for not decrying slavery. Whenever we try and apply today’s cultural sensibilities to the past, we distort the past so that it cannot be effectively critiqued. Also, be careful: if everything is racist, then nothing is.
I’m with Scott, to a degree. We ought to be wary of judging an ancient people by modern moral standards, just as we ought to be wary of trying to apply ancient moral standards to modern culture. Ancient Israel had slavery, polygamy, concubines, sexism, etc. Many reformers themselves gave in to persecuting the anabaptists and others they disagreed with, burning folk at the stake and torturing them, and many early Americans did not have a modern sensibility about racial justice or civil rights.
This is not to say what they did is okay – far from it! Just to acknowledge that it’s not really fair or reasonable to hold ancient people to modern moral standards. Seems to me.
So, while I would not hold up a Calvin or a Jefferson or a King David as perfect models of moral rectitude, I do cut them a bit of slack because theirs was simply a different time and a different culture that held different mores.
Which is not to say that these ancient behaviors were NOT racist or sexist or piggish or awful – racism, slavery, treating women as chattel and torturing/oppressing those you disagree with are clearly awful, horrible behaviors… It’s just acknowledging that it was a different time and values change from culture to culture and time to time.
Matt, I’ve really got to learn not to open your emails until I have had my coffee for the morning! You have a talent for pushing my hot buttons.
My first reaction when reading your article was to blow up.
My second reaction was to remember that anger rarely solves anything, but responding with facts sometimes does.
I can grant part of your point — I’ve written before that as conservative Calvinists, we have a special responsibility to repudiate and reject the evil influence of Southern Presbyterian racism and that of South African Boers. The PCA has a special problem in that regard since it is beyond dispute that racism was an underlying factor in the secession movement from the PCUS.
However, to go beyond that and argue that there’s something distinctively Reformed about racism simply does not make sense. That is especially true with regard to the Puritans and their relationship in the 1600s and 1700s with the institution of slavery. In fact, your citation of Jonathan Edwards’ background as a slaveowner is especially problematic. Not only was Edwards a missionary to the Native Americans and a defender of the tribes at Stockbridge against English abuses, his own son explicitly rejected slavery. By the standards of the 1700s, the Edwards family was far closer to believing in the dignity and worth of non-whites than the vast majority of their fellow white colonists.
I am anything but a defender of the “peculiar institution,” but slavery as practiced in the English-speaking Protestant world wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the treatment of both African slaves and native populations by the other major colonial powers of the day.
Go take a look at the history of French Catholic slavery in Haiti, or Spanish Catholic treatment of the Latin American native population. The horrors of French slavery were so bad that when some of the French Catholic slaveowners from Haiti emigrated to Maryland, the treatment of their slaves was viewed as being so shocking that, according to a New York Times historical article from a few years ago, the slaves actually succeeded in going to the civil courts and obtaining relief against abusive treatment. Even by the standards of slaveholding Marylanders of the late 1700s and early 1800s — standards virtually nobody in modern America would consider acceptable — what was considered appropriate discipline of slaves in French Catholic Haiti was considered abuse worthy of punishment by civil authority.
Yes, it’s true that Jonathan Edwards owned slaves. The main thing that shows is that he was a man of means. It would have been unusual for a wealthy and educated man of the early 1700s not to own slaves.
However, any evaluation of Edwards on this point ought to include his son’s role in severely criticizing the institution of slavery on biblical grounds. Edwards’ son was writing for anti-slavery societies and preaching against slavery in an era when that viewpoint was most emphatically not popular. He was led to that view both by biblical exegesis and by his awareness of the brutalities inherent in the slave trade as well as the actual practice of slavery. Edwards’ son became convinced that slavery as practiced in the America of his day simply did not meet the standards for slavery under the Old Testament, and therefore should be abolished as unbiblical “manstealing.”
Likewise, any evaluation of the secular and liberal anti-slavery movement of the 1800s ought also to include Abraham Lincoln’s severely racist views of African-Americans. Many of the people who argued for abolition of slavery did so based not on some sort of egalitarian belief in the inherent worth of African-Americans, but rather based on the conviction that people of African descent are inherently inferior and should be prevented from close contact with a supposedly superior white race.
For example, in the fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate, Lincoln said this: “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
Some will point out that this speech was several years before the Civil War broke out, and that’s true. But what did Lincoln advocate after the Civil War began, and after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation? His plan was not to have black and white equality in America, but rather to move former slaves to Panama or some other colony for people of African descent. Reality intervened and that didn’t happen, but it’s impossible to argue that Lincoln’s views are anything but bigoted by modern standards.
A reasonable argument could be made that it was the evangelical abolitionists of the late 1700s and the 1800s, not the secular and liberal abolitionists of that era, who came closest to a belief in the inherent dignity and worth of people of African ancestry.
In any event, to criticize the Puritans for racism without noting that a belief in European superiority was standard for **ALL** the colonial powers of that time, regardless of religious viewpoint, is simply foolish.
Even with regard to South Africa, which is a particularly horrible case, it’s pretty difficult to ignore the fact that it was not just the Dutch Afrikaaners who held racist positions, but also the British. To ignore the role of Cecil Rhodes in the development of South African apartheid is impossible.
Whatever one may say of the role of Dutch Reformed theology in South Africa, I trust it is obvious that sentiments such as those expressed in Rhodes’ 1877 Confession of Faith are bigoted. Cecil Rhodes not only viewed Africans as inferior, but also viewed the French, the Irish, and other European ethnic groups with disdain and disgust. For example, he believed that the United States had become partially degenerate because of excessive immigration out of southern Europe and Ireland.
Here are a few of Rhodes’ views on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race:
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence. Added to this the absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars, at this moment had we not lost America I believe we could have stopped the Russian-Turkish war by merely refusing money and supplies. Having these ideas what scheme could we think of to forward this object. I look into history and I read the story of the Jesuits I see what they were able to do in a bad cause and I might say under bad leaders…. Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire. What a dream, but yet it is probable, it is possible…. Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.”
Blaming Afrikaaners for apartheid in South Africa is fair, but it is **NOT** fair to ignore the fact that apartheid happened under the watch not only of Calvinist Afrikaaners but also their British enemies who were anything but Reformed. South African racism owes at least as much to the British imperialist vision of Cecil Rhodes as it does to the ethnocentrism of the Boers.
Scott, a couple points. First, I am not criticizing the Puritans based on 20th Century sensibilities. You assumed that, but the criticisms I affirm here (as well as the criticisms of Bradley and others) were criticisms others were making long before the 20th Century (as Darrell’s lengthy comment itself demonstrates). I encourage you to read the Bailey interview. Bailey writes: “So, there were a few puritans and “sons of puritans” speaking out against slavery. But woefully few. But I appreciate these few. They make it clear that our typical response to such things (that is, saying something like, “We must understand these puritans were simply men of their times”) simply doesn’t cut it. In fact, channeling Propaganda here, I hate such a copout. Mainly because it fails to recognize that some men and women of their times saw the evil and sinfulness of race-based slavery and of what they were doing to men, women, and children created of God and they argued against it. So, if we want to say that on this issue the puritans were often among the “worst men of their times,” then ok. But “men of their times” doesn’t cut it—not even close in my opinion. I also think it even better to say they were sinners. Sinners that needed a Savior to redeem them and every aspect of their lives.”
Second, if you doubt that our Reformed forbears were often racists and oppressors I’d kindly encourage you to read up on the subject. The historical record is public and there for all to see. No one is making this stuff up.
Third, the critique here is not against slavery per say (i.e., your comment on the Apostle Paul) but against explicitly racist forms of slavery and the practice of brutality in slavery. Again, the critique is not based on 20th Century sensibilities, but on timeless principles of Scripture and natural law.
Darrell, I’m a little confused by your comment. You make many excellent points, but what I gather from it all is that you affirm a) the Puritans and our Reformed forbears were guilty of serious evils as noted in the blog post; b) but they were simply reflective of the errors of their time; and c) they often weren’t as bad as the others of their time.
I’m ok with all of this to a certain extent, but I think it misses the point.
Of course some Puritans were better and some were worse. I’m not terribly concerned about comparing the legacy of various groups. My point is that the Puritans and the Reformed fell into serious evils (which you acknowledge) and that not only do we need to come to grips with this fact, but we need to ask ourselves how their theology functioned or malfunctioned, in allowing them to fall into these errors.
I think the inability of Christians freely to confess the faults of their own groups and traditions (without qualifying it to death every time and insisting that others were worse) is disturbing. As Bradley points out, we will rip our opponents’ histories to death (i.e., think of the Catholic Church), but when it comes to our own boys we demand so much more grace. One gets a sense that truth is somewhat forgotten in the midst of all of this apologetics and advocacy.
Matt, your response both helps and complicates matters.
It helps because you’re changing the focus somewhat from racism to hypocrisy and self-pride. As a Calvinist of rather strong Puritan inclinations, I have a simple response — go read the “jeremiads” of the Puritan preachers criticizing their people and themselves for backsliding.
As Calvinists, and especially as experiential Calvinists, we of all people are (or ought to be) the first to condemn ourselves for our sins and wickedness. I do not see historic Calvinists in any way saying that “when it comes to our own boys we demand so much more grace.” On the contrary, I see repeated warnings by Puritan preachers that from those to whom much has been given, much more shall be required. That is certainly a biblical emphasis, and when combined with the Puritan emphasis on self-criticism, it prevents or at least reduces the problem. Self-pride and aggrandizement may typify the aspirations of men like Cecil Rhodes, but they are not the typical approach of a conservative Calvinist.
We have no Protestant saints. Calvin had reasons for being buried in an unmarked grave. Hagiography has no proper place in Protestantism, and especially Reformed Protestantism.
Your response complicates matters, however, because you previously wrote this: “The question must be asked, what is it about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to these evils? Or to put the question less provocatively, why does Reformed theology not provide us with a better defense against these crimes? We expel people who teach against the Five Points of Calvinism and we (usually) excommunicate unrepentant murderers or adulterers. Why have racists and oppressors often had an easier time of it? We should at least ask the question, is our theology missing something?”
Again, you criticized not only Puritanism but also Reformed theology in general: “We need to ask what it was about Puritan piety that made them so vulnerable to the vices and injustice of racism and exploitation. Of course, the Puritans were not unique in this. The Southern Presbyterians were deeply implicated in the South’s racial slavery and segregation and the Dutch Reformed were quite complicit in the evils of South African apartheid.”
My point was that racism of the 1600s and 1700s was not by any stretch of the imagination unique to Puritanism. You, by contrast, are arguing that there is something “about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to these evils.”
I dispute that point, and dispute it strongly.
In response, I argued that these evils of racism and slavery — and they most emphatically were evils — far from being a special problem to which those who hold Reformed theology are vulnerable, stemmed from a common racist bigotry of the European colonial powers which they all shared toward native populations of North America and toward those of African descent.
If you’re going to argue that there’s something about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to racism, I need to show how non-Reformed colonial powers of the 1600s and 1700s acted. That is not defending the evils of our Reformed forebears, but rather showing that their evils were evils of the age, not evils inherent to their theology.
I think the record is beyond dispute that all the European colonial powers acted pretty horribly, but that the conduct of the Spanish and the French and the Portuguese was considerably worse than that of the British, with the Dutch being somewhere in between.
Quite frankly, these European powers didn’t even like other Europeans very much; the modern concept of a multiethnic state which we take for granted in the modern United States was simply unknown to British, French, Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese colonial powers in the 1600s, 1700s, or even 1800s. Even within the definition of “British,” a cursory look at the way the English treated the Scots after they settled in Northern Ireland, let alone how both the Scots and the English treated the Irish, shows how a shared Calvinism didn’t keep English Puritans from regarding the Scottish Presbyterians as backwoods barbarians and from regarding the Irish as a degenerate race almost inherently incapable of understanding the Gospel.
Was that wrong? Obviously. That’s not defending the badly bigoted behavior of too many of the Puritans, but rather responding to your claim that there is something “about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to these evils.”
I do not believe that is true, either as a matter of theology or of history.
What is true is that the concept of “take up the white man’s burden” has historically been a way to link religion with race. That motive is far from being a problem unique to Calvinism, or even especially characteristic of Calvinism.
For example, I think you might find quite a few conquistadores of the 1500s and 1600s who had a Hispanic version of that same ideology, seeking to bring the glory of Hapsburg Catholic Spain to Latin America, and committing mass genocide via the Inquisition as a result.
And to bring the point into my own home a bit, go look at the way Koreans — who are already far more numerous in Reformed circles than white people — disparage Westerners for our immorality, laziness, decadence, disrespect for elderly people, and disregard for education.
On one level, I can defend every single one of those Korean attacks on white people as biblically based. There are reasons why Calvinism succeeded tremendously in Korea when it failed in many other mission contexts — certain pre-existing Korean cultural values made it much easier for Koreans to accept a predestinarian view of Christianity, and many of the cultural trappings of Reformed theology are quite compatible with pre-existing Korean views.
On another level, if you want to see ethnocentrism, forget South Africa or the American South and go visit Korea. If current trends continue, in just one or two more generations there won’t be many of us white Calvinists left, and our children will be listening to Korean preachers attacking the immoral wickedness of white people that led to the collapse of Christianity in America.
The problem is that Koreans are making exactly the same mistakes in their own mission work that American and British missionaries were making in the 1800s — confusing Christianity and culture.
Cultures need to be Christianized, not the other way around, and that happens when individuals get converted and start becoming severely self-critical, subjecting everything they’ve been taught to the test of Scripture and becoming intensely aware of their own sinfulness.
Apart from that sort of self-criticism stemming from a personal awareness of one’s own total depravity, Christianity turns into a social gospel.
Calvinists should know that. When we don’t, we’re wrong.
I’m with Matt on this. And then we wonder why our Reformed denominations contain so few African-Americans. Gee, ya think this attitude of turning a blind eye to our history is, I dunno, one big reason?
Darrell, I’m not arguing that Reformed people are somehow uniquely vulnerable to racism. At no point in this post did I make a comparative point. You keep wanting to compare the Reformed legacy to others. Let me please ask that we set others aside for the moment, and simply focus on our own tradition.
No matter how bad others have been, we still have to come to grips with the fact that over and over the Reformed tradition, almost wherever it was, became complicit in racism and oppression, and that often Reformed theologians played a significant role as apologists for this racism and oppression. Others who did not defend it nevertheless failed clearly to condemn it.
Now I asked a simple question. Is there a weakness in Reformed theology that enabled this to happen? Or, I suggested, we could ask the question a different way. How did Reformed theology fail to prevent this from happening? If you think Reformed theology malfunctioned, I am fine with that qualification. But then tell me how it malfunctioned. The question still remains, how did our best theological minds fail appropriately to respond to racism and oppression?
Okay, Matt, let’s focus on our own tradition.
Is there something about the Reformed tradition which leads to racist bigotry?
Don’t forget that Van Raalte and Scholte deliberately chose to move to the North rather than the South because of the issue of slavery in the South, something to which they were strongly opposed. Also, don’t forget that Wyatt Earp was a Union Army recruiter in Pella, Iowa, or that Scholte was an ardent advocate of the elimination of slavery and one of the early supporters of the Republican Party.
You’d be on better grounds arguing that the Reformed emphasis on family life which stems from covenant theology can create ethnocentric issues for Reformed churches in which people sometimes forget that salvation is by grace and not by race, and leads to idolatry of the family in which one’s heritage is more important than personal conversion.
I remember a black pastor writing in Christianity Today a couple of decades ago that the problem with the Dutch wasn’t that they are racist — he said the Dutch don’t even like other white people.
That black pastor had a point. Growing up as an Italian in Grand Rapids, I know that firsthand.
Ethnic Dutch churches can have an “in group” versus “out group” mentality in which other white people don’t get treated very well, either, unless they are 1) related by blood or marriage or 2) sufficiently sound theologically. (And yes, I put those two in that order for a reason.)
It seems to me that Dutch Reformed churches don’t have a racial problem, they have an ethnic problem. Those problems are significantly different in both their causes and their consequences.
And a further question is, why are we so reluctant to criticize the average Puritian attitude toward slavery as sinful when we freely admit as Reformed believers that we all have to deal with remaining indwelling sin? What is there about slavery that seems to push some buttons with us even now?
The questions were asked…
what is it about Reformed theology that makes us vulnerable to these evils? Or to put the question less provocatively, why does Reformed theology not provide us with a better defense against these crimes?
I agree with those who say that this is not unique to one segment of Christianity or of society. Folks from across the spectrum have engaged in societally acceptable sinful behavior, failing to recognize the right from the wrong. There were even Quakers who owned slaves (although I’m thinking that the Amish probably did not.)
Two things, then:
1. I think it is always easier to recognize “obvious” sins 100 years after the fact. It’s less clear right at the moment, especially when you’re dealing with a cultural norm.
2. If we steer clear of behaviors that cause obvious harm to others and, instead, stand up for behaviors that increase liberty and decrease oppression/harm, we’ll probably be a huge step away from the risk of being harshly judged ourselves 100 years thence.
A good question to consider might be:
What is it about anabaptist beliefs that kept them from engaging in this peculiar sin when most other Christian denominations/traditions did? Is it a spirit of Christian egalitarianism? Simple living? Was it less to do with opposition to slavery and more to do with being insular?
I don’t know the answers, but it’s an interesting question…
Did the Mormons ever own slaves?
Maybe it has to do with being an oppressed people – that at least some who’ve been persecuted and oppressed (and the anabaptists and mormons were) learn from that and don’t pass it on when they have the chance…?
DTM, have you considered that the idea that culture needs to be Christianized is what leads to certain compromises? And have you considered that a glaring assumption within it is a neglect of abiding sin? I mean, the idea seems to be that Christians have the Holy Spirit and therefore the power to transform culture for the better. But while the Spirit may indwell, sin still clings, which seems to throw quite a damper on such an optimistic project. Some may even considered a function of religious fantasy.
And so, Matt, I’m more inclined to think that the answer to your question is less academic and more theological. You wonder what it is about Calvinism that creates a blind spot for certain evils to go unchecked. The same could be asked of any group that also makes claims about moral certainty. But only Calvinism actually has an explanation for why sinners, both those with the Spirit and without, behave as they do.
Your question conveys some bewilderment. But it should actually be of little surprise that sin is found even amongst those who take the reality of human depravity seriously. Maybe what should be found less within the Calvinist ranks is the amped up sense of righteous indignation and more consonance with the doctrine of total depravity.
ZRim, let me repeat what I wrote: “Cultures need to be Christianized, not the other way around, and that happens when individuals get converted and start becoming severely self-critical, subjecting everything they’ve been taught to the test of Scripture and becoming intensely aware of their own sinfulness. Apart from that sort of self-criticism stemming from a personal awareness of one’s own total depravity, Christianity turns into a social gospel. Calvinists should know that. When we don’t, we’re wrong.”
Unless you are 1) a premillenial dispensationalist who doesn’t worry about the world because Christ will come back soon and burn everything up, or 2) an anabaptist who doesn’t think Christians should serve in civil government, or 3) someone who is extremely pessimistic and believes Christians will never be a majority or even a large minority in any society, I don’t see how you can get around the question of how Christians should act when they’re in positions of social, economic or political power.
Calvinism is primarily a matter of theology, but it has clear sociological consequences. I think you know that. A Calvinist who takes his faith seriously won’t stop at the Five Points. He will learn to be frugal, will learn to work hard, will learn not to cheat on his wife, will learn to respect his superiors, will learn to raise his own children according to biblical principles, and generally will become the sort of person who is often (certainly not always, but often) successful in life and business.
If you have lots of Calvinists in a community, some of them are going to become important businessmen; others will become important in other areas of society. The result is some of those people will end up as civil magistrates, and others who are not in government will be in positions to influence the conduct of many other people.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with those Calvinists seeking to apply biblical principles to their business or other areas of their lives, including the political realm.
People’s worldviews count. An atheist usually has no problem with applying his worldview in all aspects of his life. Same for a theological liberal. Same for a person whose god is his belly or his lustful desires.
Perhaps you think Calvinists elected to public office need to leave their faith at home and not apply it outside the doors of their home or their church. If so, we disagree.
Most people are not schizophrenic; they can and will apply their core beliefs to many areas of life, though I readily grant that it will not always be in a consistent fashion.
I see no reason we should not do the same thing, especially when we know that if we don’t apply our core beliefs, others will apply their beliefs to us.
Zrim,
I agree with you, but I’d actually press the point a little further. I think the Reformed tradition has been too obsessed with maintaining cultural godliness, which requires cultural power. In order to maintain such power and have such an influence, you have to tolerate (or even promote) much of the status quo. Here I think Dan’s point has some merit; the Anabaptists, not at all concerned about cultural power, tended to be much more suspicious of things like racism, slavery, militarism, etc.
Bailey’s quote on the Puritans is right on target here. The Puritans were so obsessed with maintaining the godly society (i.e., the political community) that they felt they had to compromise the standards of the church in order to do it (think the Half-way covenant). Rather than focusing on the society of the faithful as the point at which sanctification is realized – and ensuring through preaching and discipline that it was realized there – they compromised the fidelity of the church in order to maintain the allegiance of the whole society.
So much more could be said, but my point is that I’m not simply asking the question out of bewilderment. I believe there are concrete problems with the Reformed theological tradition that we have not fully come to grips with, and I believe the legacy of the Puritans is a classic example.
Matt, I’m trusting that you are aware the Half-Way Covenant was fought against by Edwards and the First Great Awakening? It’s hard to argue that the Half-Way Covenant is a logical conclusion of Puritan theology.
Remember that for me, this is “home territory,” so to speak, when it comes to the underlying questions of church history and church polity in addition to the issues of theology that are more commonly discussed. I understand quite well what it meant to have a “church and society” (i.e., parish) in each New England town. I also understand how that division between the church, consisting of those who professed personal faith, and the society, consisting of those who professed the truth of the Christian religion but not personal faith, led to Unitarians taking over numerous meetinghouses all over New England when the civil magistrates were no longer punishing unbelief. The civil polity of the New England churches relied on the civil magistrate in ways which caused major problems, and it was eventually the orthodox Trinitarian side which called for disestablishment of the Congregational churches in Massachusetts.
I am not aware in detail of how the Anabaptist tradition dealt with the question of slavery in America. Perhaps others here can argue that point. However, without clear evidence (which may exist, I just don’t know) I am not sure I want to concede the argument that an Anabaptist view of society will lead people to oppose slavery,
My guess is that most Anabaptists in America of the 1700s were Mennonites, generally of a German or Dutch background, and were not owning slaves simply because they settled in areas where the local farming was not of the scale in which slavery would have been economically beneficial, and didn’t yet have the level of wealth which would have allowed large-scale plantations. Alternatively, maybe the pacifism of the Anabaptists led them to believe that physical punishment of slaves was sinful, and as a result there were practical difficulties in getting a slave to obey when force could not be used to compel obedience.
It would be nice in this discussion to actually define what we mean by “Puritan” and what we mean by “Reformed”. It seems like large swaths of Reformed folks are being needlessly slandered by being called all kinds of wicked things that they had nothing to do with. I have failed to see a single example of how this is a peculiar “Reformed” thing as if Arminians, Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans, Atheists, etc. did not own slaves or engage in manstealing. I also see a large Strawman being lit here as well in regards to the lack of willingness to critique “Puritans” on anything.
PCA Historian Wayne Sparkman has shown Puritan Richard Baxter condemning these things in the 17th Century England. (See here: http://heidelblog.net/2012/10/puritans-slavery-and-criticizing-heroes/#comment-21293).
It is also worth noting that the Scottish Covenanters were very outspoken about slaveholding and slavery in general. I’ll post it here an example of Scottish Covenanters, and who is more Puritan than the Covenanters, denying a call because of the membership of slaveholders in the church:
“an extract from: “Minutes of the Reformed Presbytery of America 1798 to 1809; and digest of the acts of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod 1809 to 1888 (Philadelphia, 1888), p. 3.”
“In the Fall of 1800. — A call was made on Mr. McLeod to the pastoral charge of the united congregations of the city of New York and Coldenham. Mr. McLeod demurred to the call, on the ground that there were slaveholders among the subscribers to the call. The subject of slaveholding being now before the Presbytery, it was enacted that no slaveholder should be allowed the communion of the Church.”’
Thanks Benjamin, your comments point out, once again, that it is simply not the case that these people did not know better because they were products of their time. The critics were there.
Darrell, my point is not to suggest that Reformed theology leads to racism. It is that there may be something about classic Reformed theology that made it hard for us to resist the temptation to conform to the status quo, especially when that status quo was conservative, and even if that status quo involves oppression.
I suspect that “something” is in part related to the desire to transform the whole society into a godly commonwealth. Given that the reformed from Calvin to the Puritans wanted to do this, they needed a model. Inevitably that model became Old Testament Israel. And although not all became theonomists, many became something close to that.
The problem with that is that the “ethnocentric” focus of the Old Testament on the covenant people affected the nature of Israel’s laws and commonwealth. For Christians to imitate that therefore inevitably opened them up to forms of national exclusivism appropriate to Israel but not to the church. Thus one finds people like Thornwell defending slavery on a specifically racial basis, and contemporary still living PCA theologians defending segregation on the basis of passages in Ezra and Nehemiah.
To be clear, I don’t think these problems pertain to the heart of Reformed theology (i.e., the doctrines of grace, the doctrine of the church, sola Scriptura, etc.) I think they pertain to classic Reformed theology as it shaped the tradition. And I don’t think we have come to grips with that at all.
Rev. Glaser is right. The Covenanters have a long history of opposition to slavery, and were supporters of the abolitionist movement.
Matt, we do need to look at dates. The movements against slavery and against the slave trade (which, at the time, were not identical movements) began in the late 1700s and gained strength through the early 1800s. In England, the battle was won via politics, first to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself. In America, the slave trade was abolished by political means (as provided in the Constitution, by the way, as a compromise) but the battle against slavery as an institution had to be won by actual warfare.
I am much less charitable toward Dabney and Thornwell than I am toward people in the early 1700s, and I have major problems with their “spirituality of the church” doctrine which was created specifically to defend slavery against abolitionist attacks. Part of the reason is that slavery changed over time, and it didn’t look the same in all places or at all times. It took many years for the institution of slavery to develop in America and take the classic form it eventually assumed in Southern plantation culture.
Early on, slavery existed in the North as well, but was more similar to the familiar forms of indentured servitude which had a very long history in England; a Northern slave could and sometimes did buy his freedom, and wasn’t treated much differently than any other servant or someone apprenticed to a trade. The economics of the North didn’t justify the large-scale sorts of slavery which developed in the South.
In the earlier years before the horrors of Southern chattel slavery became fully developed (or, for that matter, were widely known), there were still some Christians who believed it was permissible to buy a slave and treat the slave well. Their arguments often focused on the evils of the slave trade rather than the institution of slavery per se.
The problem with that argument is the very important principle that stolen property is not legitimately possessed by anyone, even if properly purchased from the original thief.
That position had radical implications and meant that even if a Christian treated his slaves well, he was in possession of people who (or whose ancestors) had been stolen. Manstealers are to be excommunicated, according to the New Testament, so even if slavery per se is not inherently evil (i.e., people captured in a just war according to Old Testament principles), the slaves being offered for sale in America didn’t meet that criteria and were stolen property.
Van Raalte and Scholte understood that principle. So did the Covenanters. So did Jonathan Edwards’ son. However, we’re speaking about people who lived in the 1800s. It makes a difference, and it took time to realize the importance of that principle. We simply can’t assume that everybody in the 1600s and early 1700s understood what had become clear by the 1800s, namely, that race-based chattel slavery in the American South had turned into something which bore very little if any resemblance to slavery in the Old Testament, or for that matter, even in Roman times.
Make no mistake — I’m not defending slavery per se. Jonathan Edwards, Sr., was just as wrong to own slaves as any other possessor of stolen property.
What I am saying is that since we’re talking about Puritanism, we’re talking about the era of the 1600s and 1700s, not the 1800s, and we can’t just assume that people living in the 1600s and 1700s had access to the same factual information and theological arguments that people had a century or two later.
Otherwise, we’re going to get ourselves into stupid arguments about whether Augustine was somehow sinful to allow himself to be consecrated as a bishop rather than to be one teaching elder among many in his local presbytery or association of pastors. Context counts, and both Dabney and Thornwell **SHOULD** be judged more severely than the Puritans.
Correction — I meant to say that Wyatt Earp’s father was a Union Army recruiter in Pella. Bad typo.
Here’s a little bit on Anabaptists and slavery. Apparently, Abraham Lincoln believed anabaptists to be thoroughly opposed to slavery…
He [Lincoln] said that Brethren and Mennonite people should not be required to participate in the military. His reason was that ‘These people do not believe in war. People who do not believe in war make poor soldiers. Besides, the attitude of these people has always been against slavery. If all our people had held the same views about slavery as these people hold, there would be no war” (page 129, Rufus Bowman, The Church of the Brethren and War).
I’m trying to find some original writings, but there’s some general info to consider.
Thank you. This is helpful.
FWIW, I have no problem with the civil government recognizing conscientious objector status. That issue was settled even before the Constitution was written by the organization of Pennsylvania as a colony governed initially by Quakers. My understanding is that Mennonites in the South were drafted into the Confederate Army despite their pacifism and that led to major problems, which was a violation by the South of long-established American constitutional principles.
Okay, this time with the actual link…
Here’s a little bit on Anabaptists and slavery. Apparently, Abraham Lincoln believed anabaptists to be thoroughly opposed to slavery…
He [Lincoln] said that Brethren and Mennonite people should not be required to participate in the military. His reason was that ‘These people do not believe in war. People who do not believe in war make poor soldiers. Besides, the attitude of these people has always been against slavery. If all our people had held the same views about slavery as these people hold, there would be no war” (page 129, Rufus Bowman, The Church of the Brethren and War).
I’m trying to find some original writings, but there’s some general info to consider.
Your 1:43pm comment Darrell is perfect and should be the last word in this conversation. Excellent.
Thank you, Rev. Glaser. Unfortunately, it’s clear this discussion is not going to end.
Darrell, I understand and affirm many of the nuances you are articulating here. But I think you are exaggerating the extent to which they remove the problem. The question remains, even if the problems of the Puritans in the 17th and 18th Centuries were mild compared to what happened in the 19th Century, why did the tradition fail to stem the influence of racism? Again, the issue is less slavery than racism. As Mark Noll demonstrates in his work, the North may have been more opposed to slavery, but it embraced all the same racist assumptions as did the South.
Insofar as the roots and traces of that later racism are found even in the Puritans, we still have to come to grips with this problem.
Matt, I don’t want to read motives into you as our host, but I think it’s becoming evident that there is a broader agenda here than slavery. As you quite correctly point out, bigoted racist assumptions existed in the North, and not just among conservatives but also among abolitionists and Northern liberals. After all, I’m the one who cited Abraham Lincoln’s racism.
Matt, I’m not disagreeing with your point that the Reformed confessions didn’t adequately guard against racism. However, would you kindly show me what other set of Reformation-era confessional standards did? Does Lutheranism have a better track record of defending against racial bigotry? For that matter, do any of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation conciliar statements or papal doctrinal deliverances guard against racial bigotry, or even address the matter?
In the context of the 1500s and 1600s, uniformity in religion among a national, tribal or ethnic group was pretty much assumed. If you were a Cossack, for example, you were going to be Eastern Orthodox and would have significant religious problems with the Roman Catholics of Poland and Lithuania, even though many of the Cossacks were in political allegiances with the Poles. I think it’s pretty obvious that just as Calvin sought the conversion of the French to Reformed theology, Knox sought the conversion of the Scots to Reformed theology, and Luther sought the conversion of the Germans to Lutheran theology, religion was viewed as having clear cultural implications.
It’s hard to decide whether the English hated the Irish and the French because the English were Protestants and the Irish and French were Catholics, or whether the religion was merely an additional reason justifying prior ethnic hatreds.
Under the conditions of the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s, I am hard pressed to see that anybody in Europe who had significant contact with Africans or Native Americans — whether British, Dutch, French, Spanish or Portuguese — regarded Africans and Native Americans as anything other than benighted pagans who needed to be placed under strict control for their own good.
Did the English treat African slaves worse than they treated the Irish? I’m not convinced that’s a true statement. At least the English tried (and largely succeeded) in converting their African slaves to Protestant Christianity; the “wild Irish” seem to have been regarded as being beyond hope and fit only for extermination.
None of this is good. We are not to fear those who fear God, regardless of the color of their skin.
But the bottom line remains this — I can’t think of any colonial power or religious tradition in the days of Puritanism which had any significant contact with Africa or the indigenous peoples of North and South America whose adherents treated Africans or Native Americans very well.
This isn’t just a Reformed problem. It’s a sin problem. Racism and ethnic bigotry know no confessional boundaries.
I think you’re perhaps right that in the Civil War, the greatest problems with maltreatment of COs was in the South. We do have stories, though, of torture, arrest and oppression of anabaptist COs in other US wars (notably WWI and WWII).
Here is one such story.
Also, what explains 17th century Puritans such as Richard Baxter who was eloquent in his denunciation of slavery?
Scott Oakland, your comments amaze me. You have been eloquent in condemning people who vote Democrat on the abortion issue, but Puritans and others in the Reformed faith get a pass when they defended owning people as property and the evils that entailed and the man-stealing which the Bible condemns? But woe to those in the public sphere who tread on private property rights.
Let’s continue this strawman. Who has been defending New England Puritans view of Slavery?
I think we should explore that question with ZRim. Some of his statements today are interesting.
It’s pretty hard to defend the “spirituality of the church” doctrine and condemn racism.
Personally I think race-based chattel slavery in the South is the big Achilles’ Heel in the whole Two Kingdoms argument.
Abolishing slavery was the right thing to do. I am not at all clear that the Southern Presbyterian “spirituality of the church” doctrine, in the context in which it had developed up to the 1860s, would have allowed the Southern Presbyterians and Southern Baptists to advocate abolishing it.
That’s not a Reformed problem, but it most emphatically **IS** a two kingdoms problem.
DTM, I’m none of those three things, but I still fail to see how any of what you’re saying takes into account the reality of being sinful, which might dial tone all the things you seem to think being Calvinist entails, especially since plenty of non-Calvinists that strive for those things as well (except the biblical principles part). Perfect pagans can see the social and moral downsides of chattel slavery and the upside of fostering the traits that makes good citizens.
But yes, I think we disagree. Optimism about the human condition, even with believers mixed into it, doesn’t really seem to be the implication of Calvinism. Realism does. (And leave the pessimism to the Dispensationalists.)
Matt, that’s a fair enough point. But I’m not sure that maintaining the moral outrage about this particular issue isn’t itself a function of the very same sense of cultural godliness you’re questioning. During their time, cultural godliness may have entailed giving a pass on the institution of slavery. But by the same token, it may be that in our time it has simply shifted to showing sufficient moral indignation toward it in order to maintain cultural godliness. And that has the potential to cause believers in this time and place to reach back across time and place and to pass enormous judgment fellow believers—which could be a compromise of the standards of the church.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m as born-bred-and-buttered Yank as the next guy, and there is what’s right and what’s wrong, etc. But my point here has to do with what seems like the unchecked self-righteousness that often accompanies this conversation, and the ease with which we often assess times and places not our own. We seem to forget there is such a thing as human sin, and out pops some of the most brazen and uncharitable descriptions of brethren
Scott, Richard has a point. Consistency would seem to demand either slowness to judge past slaveholders and present choicers, or quickness in both cases. I’m voting for the former.
Zrim, Amen to that point. I agree wholeheartedly. Of course, I still think it’s legitimate to ask ourselves what theological emphases or errors may have weakened our tradition in the past, and then to work through how we might improve our theology for the present. That’s what I was trying to do in this post, and that’s the value of thinking through the mistakes of the past. And of course, I know you agree with that point.
Darrell, we do seem to be running in circles here. I don’t think we need to be: We all agree that the Reformed did some bad things though they were not as bad as some other people who did bad things and therefore they could have been worth. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the Reformed confessions (in their current form) are the problem. I also don’t think Reformed people are particularly worse than any other Christian tradition, on balance. Let’s get all that out of the way. Phew.
Now perhaps it would move the conversation forward if you addressed my point about the Reformed emphasis on creating the godly society, the willingness to use the Old Testament as the standard for that project, and the overwhelming temptation to sacrifice fidelity to the ethic of the gospel in the name of preserving cultural, political, or economic power. Indeed, this was an emphasis that seems to have informed even the Thornwell spirituality of the church types, in contrast to some of the contemporary two kingdoms advocates.
Okay, Matt… your comments here surprise me. Based on what you just wrote, I do think I have been misunderstanding you.
For whatever it’s worth, I think part of why I have been misunderstanding you is that modern racists are not terribly concerned with preserving a godly society. I do not see that desire, which **IS** part of the Reformed tradition, as being in any way connected to modern racist attitudes, at least in the form that I see them today.
Modern racism is much less an organized movement trying to accomplish specified goals or trying to create a culture than individual people who just don’t like other people with a different skin color or culture and want to be left alone to practice their prejudices or at least believe their bigotry without practicing it in ways that infringe on others.
While organized racists do exist, they tend to be small in numbers and largely irrelevant beyond being annoyances because they are mostly powerless to accomplish real damage. Examples are residual groups like the Ku Klux Klan which once were important but no longer are, internet-based groups like the Stormfront website, quasi-religious groups such as the Aryan Nations movement, and some (certainly not all) segments of the militia movement. Even the Neo-Confederate movement sometimes goes to great lengths to emphasize that advocacy of secession (i.e., the League of the South) or respect for one’s ancestors’ military service (i.e., the Sons of Confederate Veterans) does not necessarily imply racism. I’m not sure we can even consider the Sons of Confederate Veterans to be a racist group anymore — I’m aware of their internal conflicts on the issue, but it’s obvious that a large segment of SCV wants nothing to do with racism or other hate groups and the official position of the SCV is against getting involved with such groups.
The closest thing I see in modern racism to efforts to “create a godly society” is the tiny groups of white supremacists who want to move to parts of the Rocky Mountains in the American West to create some sort of survivalist community. Those groups are so radical and so extreme that I don’t think they represent more than a tiny fraction of modern bigots.
Let me try to rephrase what you’re saying so you can tell me if I’m understanding you correctly.
You do not believe Reformed Christians are now or have been in the past worse than other contemporary Christian traditions in their racism. You do not believe there is something inherently wrong with the current version of the Reformed confessions (by which you presumably mean the American revision to the Westminster Confession and Abraham Kuyper’s revision to the Belgic Confession), though there might have been a problem with the original WCF and the original version of Article 36 of the Belgic Confession which said the state should prevent all idolatry and false worship.
Do I understand you correctly there?
Caveats and qualifications are important. When you write that “for what it’s worth, I don’t think the Reformed confessions (in their current form) are the problem,” we need to examine both the current and the original forms of the confessions to see the differences.
Since you subscribe to the Belgic Confession which will be less familiar than the WCF to Presbyterian readers of this blog, I’ll quote the original version of Article 36 which specifies that civil magistrates are “not only to have regard unto, and watch for the welfare of the civil state; but also that they protect the sacred ministry; and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of anti-Christ may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshiped by every one, as he commands in his Word.”
This was deleted by the national synod of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland in 1905 following a process that began in 1896, was footnoted but not amended by the synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America in 1910, and was not formally amended by the CRC until 1938. A substitute statement was created by Synod 1958 but to my knowledge has not been formally adopted by the CRC and has no confessional standing in the URCNA.
The current revision of the Belgic Confession, to which you subscribe, reads as follows, with paragraphing that I’ve designated by numbers:
“(1) We believe that our gracious God, because of the depravity of mankind, has appointed kings, princes, and magistrates; willing that the world should be governed by certain laws and policies; to the end that the dissoluteness of men might be restrained, and all things carried on among them with good order and decency. For this purpose He has invested the magistracy with the sword, for the punishment of evil doers and for the protection of them that do well. (2) Their office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshipped by every one, as He commands in His Word. (3) Moreover, it is the bounden duty of every one, of whatever state, quality, or condition he may be, to subject himself to the magistrates; to pay tribute, to show due honor and respect to them, and to obey them in all things which are not repugnant to the Word of God; to supplicate for them in their prayers that God may rule and guide them in all their ways, and that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity. (4) Wherefore we detest the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who reject the higher powers and magistrates and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order which God has established among men.”
The relevant revisions are to the second paragraph.
I think it’s pretty clear that the first paragraph indicates that God is interested in creating a society according to His standards. Even the **AMENDED** version of the second paragraph still states that the civil magistrate is “to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted.” All that has been deleted is the requirement to suppress false worship and idolatry with the sword.
Furthermore, according to the third paragraph, it is “the bounden duty of everyone” (including non-Christians) to “to obey them (the civil magistrates) in all things which are not repugnant to the Word of God; to supplicate for them in their prayers that God may rule and guide them in all their ways.”
Since the fourth paragraph has not been amended, this means you are required by the confessions of your federation of churches to detest Anabaptists. That’s not an option for you; it’s a confessional requirement. Likewise, I think you’re required to believe in private property (which might have some relevance to some prior discussions on this website) because you are required to detest those who “introduce community of goods.”
I frankly don’t see that anything in the Reformed confessions addresses racism or racial issues. I do, however, see the confessions directly addressing Anabaptism and private property.
I also see the Belgic Confession continuing to advocate a view of a godly kingdom which doesn’t seem very compatible with at least a radical version of the Two Kingdoms viewpoint, though perhaps it is compatible with a more moderate version.
Why the big focus on racism these days? Im my view, the claim of racism should be used very sparingly else it loses its impact and actually harms those you try to protect by letting in “cry-wolf” syndrome which can result in ignoring the claim when there is true, blatant racism. I am in full agreement that any racism in Christian circles should be condemned. But picking on select men in the Puritan (or otherwise Reformed) tradition, while ignoring racism in other traditions, is quite the navel-gazing event that negates proper introspection. Why not focus on preventing future racism, or how congregations can become more diverse, rather than dwelling on the past, which we can do nothing about. My particular congregation is a mix of all races, colors, and creeds, and contain those of different socio-economic levels as well. I see it upfront each Sunday and it is a beautiful thing. Why not focus on becoming more diverse? And Richard, I’m not sure why the abrasive comments at my every post. Every time I express concern for the public sphere, you are on me like white on rice. Please keep in mind that the Bible never tells us to bifurcate our life in a way that many in your ilk make it sound. The public sphere is important! I can only infer that you think it is is not. We both have legitimate positions. Unless, like John Frame said in his book, you think my position is outside of Reformed orthodoxy? Gospel-centeredness is all well and fine, but, with all due respect, the 2K “Gospel-only” isn’t.
Thanks Darrell, you are understanding me correctly. And while I describe to the substance of the Belgic Confession (the confessional content) I, along with most or all other Reformed ministers, would reject the language of detesting the Anabaptists. The statement is rhetorically horrifying, particularly given the historical record.
Of course I affirm private property, and reject the requirement of community of goods, as I made clear in earlier posts.
I think the Belgic Confession is entirely consistent with the two kingdoms doctrine as I’ve articulated it here and in other places.
But back to the original point. I think the reason why the Puritans, or other Reformed groups, were able to fall into the pattern of affirming oppressive racial ideas and practices was to a significant extent a result of their desire to have cultural influence. When you want, really badly, to maintain cultural power, it is tempting to minimize the sins of the wealthy and powerful. So in Scotland, for instance, affirming racial slavery in the 19th Century was not that great of a temptation, because the economy there did not depend on it and the tide of opinion had turned against it. But when the same Scottish Presbyterians crossed the ocean and found themselves in a different society, they changed their tune. The same could be said about the Dutch Reformed going to South Africa.
What often happened in practice was that those affirming unjust ideas and systems hid behind the language of the confessions (for instance, the Westminster language of superiors and inferiors), emphasizing more the responsibilities of the “inferiors” than those of their “superiors.” The whole emphasis of the social ethic could shift from conforming to the example of Christ – an example of sacrificial service and love – to maintaining authoritarian structures according to the status quo by forcing submission on the part of others.
The root theological problem here is a failure to view communal conformity to the image and example of Christ as the primary obligation of Christians, and the replacement of that calling with the call to create (and derivatively control) a godly society. The point is not that we should not be faithful and hope that a godly society results; we should. The point is that if that becomes our focus such that we find ourselves changing our ethic, we are in trouble. And we’ve done that more often than we’d like to admit.
Your history here is all wet Matthew. The Scottish Presbyterians that came to America did not affirm racial slavery and “change their tune” once they got here. All the “Puritans” that people seem to be pointing to in New England were English Congregationalists, not Scottish or Scot-Irish Presbyterians.
This is a giant strawman operation.
Matt, I’d encourage you to interact with Rev . Glaser’s point.
We’re using “Puritan” on this blog in a way which lacks specificity, and that is causing problems.
Matt, I think you are using Puritan to refer to anyone who is theologically Reformed who wants to reform society according to Christian principles, i.e,, apply their Reformed theology to civic life.
That definition is not the historic definition of the word, and it isn’t the theological definition of the word.
For example, it would be hard to deny that Martyn Lloyd-Jones is a giant of modern Puritan theology, but it would be very hard to argue that he would support the policies of Cromwell, Knox, or Calvin with regard to civil government. I am not an expert on Lloyd-Jones’ political views, but from what I have read, it does appear he can best be understood from his Welsh roots with the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist movement, which has an entirely different set of roots from those we normally deal with in the modern Reformed world.
Let me say at the outset that I have no problem with saying I affirm Puritan or experiential Calvinist theology, sometimes called the neo-Puritan movement. In that sense, I stand in the same camp as successors of the Dutch Nadere Reformatie like Dr. Joel Beeke, successors of historic Scots-Irish Presbyterianism such as John Gerstner and Joseph Pipa, and numerous modern Reformed Baptists who trace their theology to Spurgeon. I may disagree with some of the men I’ve just cited on secondary points, some of which are very important, but I concur with their basic emphasis on experiential theology.
Furthermore, if forced to categorize myself in the Dutch tripartite division between Reformed Scholastics, Reformed Piestists, and Reformed Kuyperians, I’ll call myself an experiential Calvinist, throwing my lot with the people who emphasize personal conversion, and **NOT** with the Kuyperians, with whom I agree on politics and culture though definitely not on personal piety. I have said many times that what I like about New England is that they didn’t divide the way the Dutch did — New England Puritanism emphasized the importance of rigorously systematic academic theology, deep personal piety, and cultural transformation.
However, if we’re speaking of church history, “Puritan” is a term which can be applied historically only to the segment of English nonconformists who sought to remain within the Church of England and purify it of abuses. That eliminates the Pilgrim Separatists of Plymouth.
We tend to forget today that Scotland and England were different countries during the Reformation and immediate post-Reformation period, only loosely united in the person of the King, and not always even in that. Oliver Cromwell actually went to war at one point with an army composed mostly of conservative Scottish Presbyterians.
For that reason, considered as a historical term, “Puritan” eliminates virtually all of historic Scottish and Scots-Irish Presbyterianism. Matt, I think that is Rev. Glaser’s point — you are confusing New Englanders with Southern Presbyterians. They didn’t see themselves as being in the same camp in the 1600s or 1700s. Even the 1800s, Old School Presbyterians were pretty severe in their condemnation of the influence of New England, and while I concur with many of their criticisms of aberrant theology, Old School Presbyterians criticized not only the anti-Calvinist theology of New England radicals but also many of the historic presuppositions on which New England Puritanism rested. Obvious examples include the role of New England voluntary societies rather than viewing the institutional church through the presbyteries, regional synods and general assemblies as the primary instrument of mission work, but a lot more can be and probably should be said about how classic Old School Presbyterianism was fundamentally different from New England Puritanism, or for that matter, from Puritanism in England itself.
Baptists don’t even figure in the equation except perhaps as a part of the most radical wings of English Nonconformism. I readily grant that Oliver Cromwell tolerated lots of things including Baptists (and I happen to agree with him on that point), but most Puritans certainly would not have viewed Baptists as being brothers in the faith until at least the First Great Awakening, and realistically for quite some time afterward. Personally, I have a pretty big problem disfellowshipping people like John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, but most Reformed people in the heyday of the Puritan movement in the early and mid-1600s would have done so.
My point here, Matt, is that you are using the term “Puritan” in ways which is unnecessarily antagonizing people, which is historically wrong, and which doesn’t even work very well theologically.
The result is you’re making unforced errors and “taking fire” from people like Rev. Glaser and me.
Puritanism, considered theologically, really doesn’t have very much if anything to do with the culture wars and has nothing at all to do with racism. Puritanism, considered historically, doesn’t even include some of the key people you’re criticizing for “Puritan” views of culture.
Scott, we (especially me, an ethicist) have to engage these issues because a) racism is still a problem; b) the hurt due to racism is still present; and c) the church remains divided due to past racism; d) we have to determine where our theology potentially malfunctioned to make this racism possible in the past. The best thing I can do is to urge you to read Thabiti Anyabwile’s excellent comments here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/2012/10/02/the-puritans-are-not-that-precious/
Darrell you might want to check those comments out too.
Benjamin, I beg to differ. Are you completely unfamiliar with the legacy of Scottish Presbyterianism in the South? You may want to check out Ernst Trice Thompson’s three volume history of Presbyterianism in the South.
I don’t mind if you disagree with me, but please stop pretending or claiming that this is a straw-man operation. The historical record is there. Present the facts and debate them, but I prefer to keep insults out of the comment stream.
Darrell, despite all your criticism of Thornwell as representing a two kingdoms problem, note the following assessment of one prominent historian:
Thornwell, in the words of Professor Eugene Genovese, attempted “to envision a Christian society that could reconcile-so far as possible in a world haunted by evil-the conflicting claims of a social order with social justice and both with the freedom and dignity of the individual.”
Southern Presbyterians were not Puritans, so they are outside the purview of this discussion.
Benjamin, I made a statement (illustrative) about the Scottish Presbyterians. You responded by saying that it was bad history. I pointed out that it was good history and noted the data. Now, instead of defending (or retracting) your own highly provocative and mistaken claim, you want to define what can and cannot be discussed in an open comment stream on my blog. I would appreciate a little bit more respect. I don’t usually edit comments, but when things get out of control, I reserve the right.
I have already shown that the Scottish Presbyterians, like the Covenanters, did not “change their tune” when they came to the colonies. You moved the goalposts to include southern Presbyterians post-1800.
This entire discussions was started because some “rapper” charged “Puritans” with being racist.
Benjamin, you have shown that some of them did not change their tune. I agree; I have never denied that. My wife’s formation in the Reformed tradition came in the RPCNA. I get it. I’m familiar with it.
But since when did Scots and Covenanters stop being Scots and Covenanters when they stepped across the Mason-Dixon line? The whole point of my bringing this up was to illustrate that many of them changed their tune when they changed their context. It’s a simple, uncomplicated, illustrative historical point. Remember, this post is about Reformed theology, not just about the Puritans.
Matt, I wrote my October 5, 2012 at 9:07 am comment to you before I read this subsequent interaction between you and Rev. Glaser.
If we’re talking history, Scots Presbyterians are not Puritans. Neither are Scots-Irish Presbyterians. Neither are the Separatists like Browne or Barrow, or the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Puritan means simply those who wanted to remain inside the Church of England and purify it from abuses.
If we’re talking theology, Puritanism means an emphasis on experiential Calvinism and is a far broader term which has very little if anything to do with the culture wars. Lots of people in the Nadere Reformatie, the First Great Awakening, the Welsh Revivals, and the Scottish Seceder movement were pretty strongly **ANTI-CULTURAL.**
Also, the RPCNA is not the same as the PCUS (and before that the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America, and before that, the Thornwell-Dabney wing of the Old School Presbyterians).
Definitions count.
If you’re going to define Puritans as people who want to advocate culture transformation according to Reformed principles, you have a definition which is not the one usually used either historically or theologically for the term. I don’t happen to have a problem with that concept, but there are lots of people who claim the name of Puritanism, thinking in theological terms, who will push back against you pretty strongly.
In fact, I think if you spend much time in theologically Puritan circles, you might just find that a lot of people don’t have much use for culture transformation and view it as a distraction from their primary purpose of personal conversion. I have been known to gently chide such people for throwing in the towel to a premillenial dispensational view of the world, and suggesting that they need to read more Puritans before the First Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards. My view is that personal conversion is primary, but once people are converted, they need to apply their Christian faith to all areas of their life and not dichotomize their lives into privately religious and publicly secular models. Obviously politics and culture cannot take primary place over personal conversion, but in a free republic like ours, we can and should act like Christians in the voting booth and in our business lives.
For you to add the false issue of racism to the mix just makes the problem worse. That simply is not a relevant issue. Go take a look at the way the Reformed Baptist movement is making use of black Baptist preachers, and how even one of the most radical and extreme Puritan publishers, Still Waters Revival Books, is promoting Rev. Voddie Baucham and his work.
Now Matt, I have a long history of fighting racist bigotry. I’ve been doing it longer than you have been alive. I have an interracial marriage. I was attending and helping integrate a predominantly white Reformed church in an inner-city Grand Rapids neighborhood when your father was still pastoring in the Christian Reformed Church up in Canada; that church is now predominantly black and reflects its neighborhood. The Christian school my adopted Korean daughter attends has a large percentage of Hispanic and black minority children, and even a few Asians like her. I know very little about the church you attend or the Christian school in which you were educated, but I think very few URCNA people outside Southern California have had more experience with racially integrated church, school, and cultural environments than I have.
When I see racism in the church, I yell much louder (and, I think, more effectively) than you’re doing here. Just get me going sometime on what I think about Dutch ethnocentric bigotry and I’ll turn the air blue with invective from my years growing up in Grand Rapids. Here’s a hint — I used to remind people who were excessively proud of their Dutch heritage that the Frisians were the last cannibals in Europe, and liked to turn the skulls of their Christian enemies into drinking gourds. When Dutch people were stupid enough to make jokes about “short Italians,” I’d remind people that their ancestors destroyed European civilization by conquering the Roman Empire.
Let’s agree that racism is an evil. But let’s not blame Puritanism or Reformed theology for somehow being supportive of or more susceptible to racism. That simply is not true, either historically or theologically.
Darrell, I have to admit, I find this a bit frustrating. I am not using the word ‘Puritan’ in the broad sense you seem to assume here. I understand the difference between Puritans and Presbyterians. But if you would go back and read the original post, you will see that I used the discussion of the Puritans as a point of departure to discuss the Reformed tradition in general. I specifically mentioned Southern Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed in the blog post.
Perhaps you could explain how I am antagonizing people, because I certainly have no intention of doing that, and I apologize if I have said anything antagonizing.
But referring to some of the sins of the past and asking questions about whether or not there are theological connections with those sins is not antagonizing. It’s called reflecting thoughtfully on one’s own treasured heritage.
Honestly, I think most people would be absolutely bewildered that certain Reformed people find this sort of discussion so threatening. I also think it harms our witness when we refuse honestly and openly to confess what we have done wrong. I personally believe we take our forbears far more seriously when we thoughtfully engage their words and actions, taking it seriously enough to demonstrate where we agree or disagree with them, rather than dismissively writing them off as simply being products of their time. That’s why my work focuses on John Calvin, and that’s why it is both historical and critical-constructive. I know of no other way faithfully to engage one’s tradition.
I am still trying to figure out who these people are that are running around defending the view of southern Presbyterians and a few New England Congregationalists on slavery and race.
Is the issue that the rest of us don’t start every treatise with “Southern Presbyterians and New England Congregationalists were wrong slavery, now let’s talk about their view of Imputation….”?
Matt, I responded in my post at 9:51 am before I saw this last past. I think I’ve partially answered your questions posted above at 9:17 am.
Let me be clear that I have absolutely no problem with condemning racism.
Why am I so strongly opposed to racism? I firmly believe we are prohibited by the Word of God from fearing those who fear God. A converted Christian man is my brother. A converted Christian woman is my sister. Their race is irrelevant — and furthermore, since all of us Gentiles are branches grafted onto a much older tree, if there is any place at all for pride in ethnicity, it doesn’t belong to any of us Gentiles but rather to the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Apostle Paul said a few things about believing that salvation is by race rather than by grace, and having grown up in Grand Rapids, I think if anyone in the modern Reformed world needs to repent of that sort of ethnic pride and generational racism, it’s the Dutch. Matt, I have said that message many times in many ways in your own ecclesiastical circles, and I have not made myself popular in doing do.
Let me also be clear that I do not have any problem with criticizing Reformed men from the past who said or did bad things; as I’ve said many times before on this blog, we have no Protestant saints and we should have no Protestant hagiography.
Given enough time, I could probably make a long list of things the Puritans said and did which were unnecessary, unwise, or flat-out wrong. I simply do not believe that it is fair to blame them for racism when virtually every Englishman of their time held virtually the same views. Englishmen of the time despised not just people of African ancestry but also people of Irish ancestry. They hated nearly everyone of French ancestry, with the obvious and ironic exception of John Calvin himself, and in North America, the history of the French and Indian Wars gave the British good reason to detest the French. Their attitude toward the Scots and the Scots-Irish was that they were barely civilized backwoods barbarians who could be fierce warriors but were uncultured, uneducated, and filthy people who made bad neighbors and fought constantly even with each other in their own families. I’ve got several books on my shelf about the Scots-Irish immigration to America and how the New England Puritans, despite a shared Calvinism, treated the Scots-Irish terribly.
Since you have mentioned South Africa repeatedly, Matt, go do some reading about how the British treated the Boers. The two main white groups in South Africa didn’t particularly like each other, either. This is not ancient history — not that many years ago, the editor of the Banner (the CRC magazine) was still attacking the Boy Scouts for many reasons, among them that they were supposedly an evil organization founded by Robert Baden-Powell on the model he had seen of the Mafeking Cadet Corps, which functioned as a cadet branch of the British military while the Boers were besieging a city held by Baden-Powell’s troops in South Africa. I’m not particularly interesting in defending the long-dead Banner editor or attacking the Boy Scouts, but the argument that youth organizations must be rejected if they do not have a distinctly Christian and Reformed focus is directly behind the creation of the Calvinist Cadet Corps, and clearly shows the difference between the British idea of civil morality and the Dutch Reformed view than morality which is not founded on Reformed confessional principles leads to Unitarianism and liberalism.
All of that was wrong because the British confused race and culture — a Scotsman, Frenchman or Irishman is not good or bad because of his race but rather because of his culture, which in the context of the 1600s and 1700s, was most emphatically based on his religion. (The Boers were wrong, too, but at least they understood that religion takes precedence over race and culture.)
Politically, we have to evaluate nations as nations. When the French declared war on the British, Jonathan Edwards knew that every French soldier on the frontier had to be regarded as a legitimate target whether he was a Catholic or a Huguenot, of which there were very few in French Canada, anyway.
However, in our personal and church lives, we need to treat individuals as individuals and not blame individual people who may be personally converted for the characteristic vices of their culture. To turn the tables on their heads, Koreans have good reason to assume that because I am an American I should be assumed to have low personal morality until proven otherwise. Our own national sins as Americans are not minor; we’ve become known worldwide not as a Christian country but rather as a cesspool of immorality spreading wickedness through the world.
However, there was nothing in the confessional stances of the Puritans which required or even addressed racial issues.
If you’re going to criticize Jonathan Edwards, which you did by name, then be consistent. To the credit of Edwards, I’ll point out that while he didn’t especially like French people (understandable considering the depredations of the French and Indian Wars) he began his pastorate serving a Scottish Presbyterian church, ended it as president of what is now Princeton, and served as a missionary to the Native Americans. Furthermore, his son turned against slavery and became an early abolitionist in the days when that was not a popular thing to do.
Now on to your next question, who are you antagonizing here? Well, to name two of us, me and Rev. Glaser, plus several people who have emailed me privately to say some version of “attaboy, Darrell, go get Matt.”
Rev. Glaser’s point, if I understand him correctly, is that you are confusing New England Congregationalists and Southern Presbyterians. They just aren’t the same animal.
He’s right. However, my point is somewhat different.
I am very happy to condemn racism. I have done it for many years, and have done it from pulpits in churches where what I said definitely was not popular.
Here’s one example: a large Korean church in Los Angeles not long after the Los Angeles riots, in which I said that bad Korean business practices in the inner city had given Korean Christians a terrible reputation in the black community, and Korean businesspeople need to pray for their customers and apply Christian principles not just on Sunday but to the rest of their lives.
Here’s another example to which you may be able to relate a little more closely: a large Dutch Reformed congregation, shortly after it seceded from the CRC, invited me to preach. The leading elder in the church told me the invitation came because I was the most non-Dutch person they could think of to bring into their pulpit, and by having me preach they would prove to their people that seceding from the CRC wasn’t cutting themselves off from the broader church but rather opening themselves up to ties with a much larger world of Calvinists outside the CRC.
Darrell, I’ll say it for the last time, I am not defining the word Puritan in the broad ways you are describing here. I am using the word in the classic sense of the term, referring to the religious/political group that emerged in England and dominated New England.
We are certainly running in circles here. Given how many Reformed theologians have offered a theological defense of race-based oppression, I think your insistence that we can’t even talk about it is highly problematic. Given that there are many people who do still wrestle with this legacy (and some for whom it is a massive obstacle to Christianity), that insistence comes across (to many) as defensive and self-righteous, somewhat akin to the way Catholics sometimes respond to criticism over the sexual abuse scandals that have wracked that body. It is tribalist and in that sense an obstacle to the credibility of our own tradition. You may say we should just write all these people off. I say we should be all things to all people and allow a thoughtful, humble conversation.
Given that your whole approach to the issue is thoughtfully addressed by Anyabwile, I think you should read his post on the subject before restating all the same points. Unless you have further thoughts in relation to his points, I’d be happy to leave this discussion where it is: we can agree to disagree.
Matt, part of the problem we’re having is that our notes are crossing in cyberspace. The result is that I am responding to something you may have written an hour or two ago, and while I am writing, something new gets posted. That’s nobody’s fault; it’s an inherent problem of the blogosphere.
I’m going to take your advice and read the post by Rev. Thabiti Anyabwile to which you originally directed Scott Oakland. I was going to do it anyway, and I have the article open on my screen in a different window. I’ve read some of his work before, though I am not an expert on him. Any minority pastor or elder who is truly Reformed deserves to be listened to on racial issues.
The irony here, Matt, is that you’re fighting some of the same battles against bigotry today that I was fighting in the 1980s. We should be agreeing with each other. My problem with you is not so much your conclusion — after all, racism **IS** bad — but rather with the way you get there.
Bad rationales do not help build a solid case for legitimate conclusions.
The bottom line is we are not to fear those who fear God. Let’s go bash racist bigots who call themselves Calvinists. They need bashing.
Lots of them have “VanderSomething” as their last name. I understand your point about tribalism. An ex-CRC minister who you probably know likes to say this: “the Dutch aren’t a church, they’re a tribe.”
You’re part of that tribe.
Don’t forget that I grew up in Grand Rapids, and I worked in an inner-city Grand Rapids church. I know what I’m talking about when it comes to the Dutch.
Also, don’t forget that I have an interracial marriage, I’ve personally seen the accusations of “race-mixing,” and my own marriage would have been illegal in the state where I now live until the Supreme Court finally overturned anti-miscegeneration laws. I’ve often wondered how, with the presence of Fort Leonard Wood in the middle of the Ozarks, our locals managed to handle all the “war brides” coming back from Japan following 1945 and Korea beginning in the 1950s. Even before that, one of our community’s founding fathers was married to a Filipina girl he met during the Spanish American War, and as far as I can tell, people around here just flat-out ignored state laws against interracial marriages when they involved soldiers.
Now ask yourself, Matt, what would have happened if you had married the daughter of a black minister whose father had started a Christian school, especially if you were seeking a call to a URCNA church in rural America or in Canada. Questions would have been asked — not necessarily to your face, but rather behind your back — which are not being asked about you marrying a white Presbyterian woman with an RPCNA background whose father, if I remember correctly, was a public school principal.
Then, ask yourself why you know would have more problems in the URCNA with a black wife who went to Christian school than you’re probably having with a white wife who went to public school. Christian schooling is pretty close to mandatory in the Dutch Reformed world, but you’re getting a pass, despite marrying outside the Dutch world, in ways you would not necessarily be getting if you’d married a Reformed woman who was not white.
Is there any good theological reason why you’re having fewer problems in the URCNA with an “outsider wife” who is white but went to public school than you would have if you had an “outsider wife” who is black? Is it maybe because a blonde blue-eyes woman can pass for Dutch?
(If that’s too personal, take comfort from the fact that my father-in-law assured his Korean relatives that, when the word got out that she was soon to marry an American, it’s okay because unlike most Americans, I’m short and have black hair, so the kids won’t look too strange.)
By contrast with that kind of thing, I think the Southern Presbyterians have, in general, done a good job of “taking out” their trash, at least in public. The PCA — including conservative leaders, work pretty hard to separate themselves from racial bigotry in ways that simply do not happen as often in the Dutch Reformed world. The PCA doesn’t have a lot of black members, but it does have a lot of Koreans, and the PCA leaders, including a fair number of conservative leaders, go out of their way to reject racial bigotry.
I don’t think that can honestly be said about the conservatives in the Dutch Reformed world, with the important exception of California. I’ll give Westminster-West credit for that, even if I can’t agree with them on a lot of other important items.
Darrell, I would take more seriously your charge of antagonizing if you would demonstrate the ability to actually engage with what I’m saying rather than just reacting, which is exactly what you seem to have been doing.
First, you claim I’m confusing the Puritans with the Scottish Presbyterians. Where have I done so? I have distinguished them from the beginning.
Second, you claim I’ve criticized Jonathan Edwards. Where did I do so?
Third, Benjamin claimed my history was all wet and that I was propping up a straw man. In what way?
Let’s get back to point 1. What have I actually said, ACTUALLY SAID (not what you or Benjamin worry that I’m saying), that is so problematic?
Remember Calvin’s old distinction between offense given and offense taken. That you, and others, have an inability to discuss the historical record without being offended or antagonized says a whole lot more about you than me. If I’ve actually said something offensive, false, or inappropriate, I am more than willing to apologize. But I cannot apologize for the fact that other people are offended by my willingness to acknowledge and think about what other people have done.
Okay, Matt, you’re asking fair questions. Let me try to go through them one by one. This will take some time, partly because I’m also reading the essay by Thabiti Anyabwile and all his links at the same time I’m responding to you and Rev. Glaser.
“Second, you claim I’ve criticized Jonathan Edwards. Where did I do so?”
Actually, my original word was “cited,” but that’s a minor point. You’re correct that I did use the word “criticize” later in this thread.
You quoted Bradley’s comment about Edwards here, in your initial post: “Is this a slippery slope? Does testing and critiquing leads to this? Did Martin Luther’s comments about Jews incline people to hate him and reject him? Or John Calvin’s execution of Michael Servetus? Or Abraham Kuyper’s racism? Or Jonathan Edwards slave owning? I could go on.”
Did I misunderstand that you approved of Bradley’s comment in which he criticized Edwards?
Personally, I am very willing to criticize Edwards, and have already said he was wrong to own slaves because they were stolen property, but he doesn’t seem to have thought through the issues.
Let’s interact with the rest of Bradley’s comment.
Luther did think through the issues and changed over time in his attitude toward the Jewish people to become markedly more hostile. Luther’s comments about Jews were very different from the general Reformed attitude and stem from a fundamental difference in the view of the Old Testament between Reformed people and Lutherans. I am not an expert on Kuyper’s views of racism, but I’ve seen enough to be very unhappy with him on that issue. (The same, by the way, could be said at a less serious level about J. Gresham Machen’s opposition to allowing black students to live in the dormitories. It must be immediately granted, to his credit, that Machen also advocated educating black students in the Reformed faith — he just didn’t want to have white students living in the same dormitories as black students.)
You already know enough about my views on church-state relations to know that I don’t think the city of Geneva was necessarily wrong to execute Servetus. Every civil government of the day, whether Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed, would have done the same, so why does Calvin get a bad rap for doing to one universally acknowledged heretic what Catholics did to thousands of people?
Do not get me wrong. We have a Constitution in the United States, we are bound by it, and I am not advocating execution of heretics. In a day when radical Muslims are trying to use long-dormant blasphemy laws in Europe to prosecute Christians and nonreligious opponents of Islam for criticizing their Prophet Mohammed, I may be rather glad we have the First Amendment which protects religious speech. I’m not in principle opposed to blasphemy laws, but we’ve had our Constitution for two centuries and I’m not inclined to try to fix things that aren’t broken.
As you may have guessed, this isn’t my first go-around on Edwards and slaveowning. This didn’t just pop up yesterday with a rap music song. People outside Reformed circles have been attacking Jonathan Edwards for a long time in terms far worse than anything Bradley said, and they’ve been doing it for decades, perhaps all the way back to the 1800s. My response is that the Edwards family, by the standards of their day, were rather progressive on racial issues, and Edwards’ son became a leader in the anti-slavery movement.
To repeat what I wrote earlier: “In fact, your citation of Jonathan Edwards’ background as a slaveowner is especially problematic. Not only was Edwards a missionary to the Native Americans and a defender of the tribes at Stockbridge against English abuses, his own son explicitly rejected slavery. By the standards of the 1700s, the Edwards family was far closer to believing in the dignity and worth of non-whites than the vast majority of their fellow white colonists.”
Matt, you wrote: “First, you claim I’m confusing the Puritans with the Scottish Presbyterians. Where have I done so? I have distinguished them from the beginning.”
I’ve gone back and re-read what I’ve written on this issue. I think my point was that Rev. Glaser is saying you’re confusing the two. Perhaps “conflating” rather than “confusing” would be a better term.
In any event, I think I need to leave that issue between you and Rev. Glaser.
Matt, you wrote: “Third, Benjamin claimed my history was all wet and that I was propping up a straw man. In what way?”
I need to defer to Rev. Glaser on this. I don’t think I’ve used those words.
Matt wrote: “Let’s get back to point 1. What have I actually said, ACTUALLY SAID (not what you or Benjamin worry that I’m saying), that is so problematic? Remember Calvin’s old distinction between offense given and offense taken. That you, and others, have an inability to discuss the historical record without being offended or antagonized says a whole lot more about you than me. If I’ve actually said something offensive, false, or inappropriate, I am more than willing to apologize. But I cannot apologize for the fact that other people are offended by my willingness to acknowledge and think about what other people have done.”
Okay, Matt, you have a fair point.
My problem is not primarily with you criticizing individual Puritans for being slaveowners or being racists. I agree with you there, and I’ve been saying many of the same things for years.
My problem is with the title of this thread “on Criticizing the Puritans: The Reformed Tradition and Racism.” That title is a problem, as is the underlying presuppositions in the article to which you link.
Blast individual Calvinists for being bigots all you want. We have no problem with each other.
Blame the “Reformed tradition” for somehow being sympathetic toward or susceptible to racism, and we have a big problem.
Matt, I was doing lots of blaming and blasting of Dutch bigots before you were born, back when racism and ethnic bigotry were much more acceptable than they are now. You can level your attacks on racism today more or less with impunity. That emphatically was **NOT** the case back in the 1980s or even the 1990s, when there was still a tremendous amount of quiet racism in the church caused by people who personally remembered being driven out of their family homes and neighborhoods during the riots and subsequent white flight of the 1960s.
(My family got driven out too, by the way, so I know what it feels like to flee. The difference is that as an adult, I moved back into those neighborhoods, first because as an idealistic young adult I didn’t think white flight made sense and wanted to work in an inner-city church, and then later because, as a crime reporter, I understood the value of living in the neighborhoods I was covering rather than being a “honky” outsider to the blacks or a “gringo” outsider to the Hispanics.)
More than a decade before this discussion ever started, I was posting on Christian message boards about the issues with Jonathan Edwards being a slaveowner. I don’t remember when I learned about J. Gresham Machen’s views on not allowing black students to live in the dormitories, but I’ve been citing that as an example of unbiblical racism probably back since the 1990s and maybe back to the 1980s.
But let’s bring this point closer to home. To talk about racism, we don’t need to limit ourselves to talking about men like Edwards who have been dead for centuries.
I have direct knowledge of how Westminster-East and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church treated a small number of Asian and other minority students at Westminster in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s pretty bad. For better or for worse, much of that bad history has been lost or will soon be lost to history because I think all of the professors are dead and almost all of the students involved are dead or retired.
There are limits to what should be said publicly, but it involves professors and pastors who wrote the books many of us read — men who were stalwarts in the Reformed faith and the fight for biblical orthodoxy. Much of it involves confidential comments and conversations. It’s one thing to blame Machen, Edwards, or someone else for doing something publicly; it’s another thing to blame a professor or pastor for doing things that were not public, and for which there may have been another side that is not known.
What I can say is that Dr. Cornelius Van Til deserves credit for rejecting the anti-Asian attitudes that predominated in America of the 1930s and 1940s. He, unlike most people, seems to have clearly understood the need to put theology ahead of race or country.
For all his fiery conservatism, Van Til was a man far ahead of his time on racial issues. Knowing some of the personal and private stories about what he did to defend minority students at Westminster against racist nonsense, I don’t think he got anywhere near as much credit as he deserved. Dr. Van Til being who he was, that doesn’t surprise those who knew him — he probably would not have wanted to be known for publicly attacking fellow Westminster professors who shared the common racial attitudes of their day, and preferred to quietly stop their actions in private. He was more effective in the seminary faculty than he was in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, so several people who would have preferred to be OPC ministers ended up in certain other Reformed or Presbyterian denominations instead.
As one person I personally know was told back in the 1950s before he left the OPC and was eventually ordained in the CRC, the Dutch are bigots but when they said “separate but equal,” they actually believed it and would leave minorities alone to function in their own churches. Let’s just say there are reasons the PCA today has so many Korean presbyteries, and why the OPC had the opportunity to begin a predominantly black church long before the start of the civil rights movement but passed on it, and why certain other people chose to go into the old UPNA or the CRCNA rather than the OPC.
Some of those reasons are good and some are not. A case could reasonably be made, in light of subsequent developments, that some of the students involved were not Reformed enough to be OPC ministers — but that case certainly could not be made with all.
Details do not need to be said because they involve private mistakes by individual people, but what can be said is that the treatment today of minority students who are quiet and reserved students struggling in class with their English may come back to bite many years later when they are in positions of power.
Matt, you’re going to be a professor someday. Don’t forget that lesson that how you treat your students today may have a long-term effect on the church.
My guess is there are a lot of Puritans who treated blacks a lot better than they’re being given credit for today, but did it privately, much as Cornelius Van Til did at Westminster. I wish there had been more of them, but we can be grateful for those who, as Joe Thorn points out in his interview with Dr. David Bailey, did speak out publicly as well as privately.
Scott,
Apparently you think the public sphere is only important when it comes to certain issues–such as abortion and property rights, but NOT so important when it comes to racism and the past practices of owning slaves. Maybe this is one reason why some 2K people are a little leery about the enthusiasm of cultural transformationists–they have an agenda which doesn’t quite match up to Scripture.
Again, this talk really amazes me. We turn a blind eye to our history, and then we wonder why we as Reformed people have little credibility in the African-American community.
I’ll ask this question one more time:
Who exactly, specifically, is downplaying/ignoring the racist past of SOME people in the history of the church in America?
Benjamin, perhaps you should do a google search of the issue. You may find there a lot more than you would expect. I have no desire to lay out a bunch of names here; it would be inappropriate to this forum. But I could easily do so.
However, comments like this one, from Darrell, don’t help much: “I simply do not believe that it is fair to blame them for racism when virtually every Englishman of their time held virtually the same views.”
I’m sorry Darrell, we are gonna have to disagree on this. Apparently you and I simply have different standards for justice and righteousness.
Rev. Glaser, unfortunately it **IS** happening in some Reformed circles. It used to be worse.
The PCA is taking out its trash. Google Neill Payne and the debacle in Black Mountain, N.C. Fortunately, conservative leaders like Joel Belz and Dominic Aquila were on the right side of this fight.
I wish I could say the same for everyone in conservative Reformed circles.
I’ll give the Puritans a pass for the same reasons I don’t blame Augustine for being a bishop, or J. Gresham Machen for being politically libertarian. They were wrong, but they were also men of their times.
No excuse can be made for people who advocate similar views today. We’ve had enough discussion of the issues that anyone in leadership who takes the wrong side knows both sides and deliberately chose to be in the wrong.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a hundred years from now, people are going to be asking how some misguided conservative Reformed Christians at Westminster Seminary back in the early twenty-first century could possibly be arguing that they shouldn’t apply their faith to politics or saying they could see a Christian case might be made for homosexual civil unions. Maybe my Korean great-grandkids in Seoul will be making excuses and saying, “You know, they were Americans who had a long tradition of tolerance going way back before people understood where unlimited tolerance leads. You’ve got to understand them as men of their times.”
We all have our cultural blinders. One point where I think we can both agree with Matt is that as Reformed Christians, we’re supposed to be testing everything by the standards of Scripture and holding fast to the truth.
Darrell, I should add that ethicists like Anthony Bradley and I are quite aware that there is a cost to speaking openly and honestly about things like this. Many of our people just don’t like it, aren’t comfortable with it, aren’t sure how to handle it. And all of that suggests that they haven’t exactly come to terms with it (i.e., they are in denial).
But we do not deserve to be ethicists if we cannot have these conversations, as well as the criticism that we get as a result of them. We have no right, before God to pander to the left or to the right, to pussy-foot around the sins of our own tradition past or present, no matter how contextually understandable many of those sins were, and no matter how much we genuinely admire the people who committed them.
Speak all you want about people being antagonized and offended. Until I see where I have failed to conform to Christ, or where I am distorting the historical record in what I’ve actually said (again, not what you imagine me to be saying), I will chock up such criticism to suffering for the sake of righteousness (Matt 5:10).
This is also part of having a “renewed mind” and not being conformed to the patterns of this world. Covering up history and giving our forefathers in the faith a “pass” on issues such as this does no one any favors, especially when we are vocal in pointing to the sins of non-Christians in the public sphere . And it is a poor witness to a watching world.
Well put Darrell, and in this last comment I fully agree with you (except for the point about giving the Puritans a pass; I think racism is far more serious and clear Scripturally than issues of ecclesiastical polity or political theory; I suspect explicit racism is more analogous to something like affirming homosexuality, which you are right, may be a massive blind spot for some Christians today).
Matt, we agree on this.
Racism is evil. The very first Christian racists were Christians of Jewish heritage who didn’t want to eat with Gentile Christians. Many sections of the New Testament deal with that issue, and even in the Old Testament where salvation was closely connected with national identity, it is clear that when a “stranger” gave up his false gods and came to worship Israel, he was to be treated as a member of the people of God. Ruth the Moabitess is an obvious example of why salvation is by grace and not by race, and others could be cited.
Paul rebuked Peter to his face over the issue, which is the model for why, with open public sins, we are not obligated to follow Matthew 18 but rather may (and sometimes must) rebuke the offender directly and publicly.
However, the farther back we go in church history, the more often we need to ask ourselves whether the people we’re discussing understood the issues. I am constrained by my membership vows not to say much on church government, but I will say that the episcopacy into which Augustine was ordained has been a tremendous cause of damage to the church. Do I want to blame Augustine for that? Absolutely not. He dealt with the church as he found it sixteen centuries ago. I deal with the church as I find it today. Not everything can be changed, and what can be changed usually can’t be changed overnight. Most things take time, nearly all things take patience, and frankly, we often have bigger problems to fight so we have to prioritize what we fight about.
I’ll fight on the racism issue and I have a long history of fighting.
There are other issues on which I will speak my piece so I can say I’ve said it, and then go back to quietly tolerating things I don’t like.
There are still other issues I don’t choose to deal with at all because they’re not worth my time and will just cause unnecessary problems.
For example, I live in public life and am very well-known in the community where I live. I choose to use the terminology of fundamentalism and evangelicalism around here whenever I can to avoid unnecessary fights with fellow Christians, and I steer clear of virtually all discussion of infant baptism. Even so, what I write is public and I know people Google. The result is I’ve had people in my own community find things I’ve written on blogs like this one and have been surprised to learn that I am theologically Reformed. It would be nice if someday it were possible to start an explicitly Reformed church in this community which speaks English rather than Korean, but I don’t see that happening anytime in the foreseeable future.
So far, all the Christians who have discovered I am Reformed have been curious rather than angry, but I’ve run into a fair number of left-wingers who add my Calvinism to the list of reasons they don’t like me. In their mind, being a “Calvinist” or being a “fundamental Baptist” or a “tonguespeaking Pentecostal” are all equally bad.
A hundred years from now I would be extremely unhappy if my grandchildren blame me for not taking a stand on some sort of current cultural evil that I either never thought much about or on which I decided not to “push the envelope.” On the other hand, if my grandchildren blame me for not starting an English-speaking Reformed church in this community, they may have a point. I’m fully aware that my Puritan theological forebears would have pressed that point pretty hard with me about tolerating “false worship and idolatry,” applying those terms in ways I would not to Baptists and Arminians and Pentecostals.
We all have to pick our battles. For better or for worse, I’ve picked mine, and they don’t include fighting with fellow conservative Christians who, using Schaeffer’s terminology, are “co-belligerents” in the culture wars.
Is that being consistent with the confessions? I’m not so sure. But it gives me willingness to be patient with people in other ages and other places who were mostly right on many things and fought hard on the key issues of their day, but didn’t push on some other issues which are very obvious to us but much less obvious to men of their day.
Matt-
You have exhibited a large amount of patience in your comments. I think you should be commended for this.
Matt:
I appreciate what you are seeking to do here.
I took one of your main points of concern in all this to be that insofar as our forbears have sought political power, this has lead, at times, to religious compromise. I think that your adducement of the Half-Way Covenant (1662) in colonial New England is a good illustration of this.
I have written about this here: http://www.midamerica.edu/resources/journal/14/strange.pdf in an article that focuses ultimately on Edwards, but before that surveys the state of “visible sainthood” in colonial New England, including the adopting of the Half-Way Covenant as part of the attempt to retain the covenant society (something I wrote on years earlier as a part of the Ashley/Edwards controversy, when I was a Historic Deerfield Fellow):
“The Half-Way solution also did not solve the ongoing problem
of increasing numbers remaining unqualified for citizenship. Thus
pressure mounted to lessen the requirements for full membership
so that the civil, or social, covenant would remain viable. In other
words, there was a growing conviction that the cost of retaining the
covenant society needed to be paid in and by the churches. The
churches needed to lessen communion qualifications so that the
idea of a covenant society and the centrality of the civil covenant,
even as enunciated from the very beginning by John Winthrop on
board the Arbella, could be salvaged. If it was thought desirable to
modify the admittedly stringent communion qualifications and to
broaden the definition of visible sainthood, this should have been
done only because the New England divines believed that the Bible
mandated it. To change the standards for table fellowship to save
the social covenant was to allow the concerns of the state to reign
paramount over church.”
There is more along these lines in this article, espeically leading up to this paragraph.
With respect to racism and chattel slavery, while the Covenanters, a minority in Scotland and even more so here, courageously, and rightly, opposed slavery, one could argue that the most staunch defense of it came from Presbyterians, Old School Presbyterians particularly (after 1837). George Bourne, who opposed it in Viriginia in 1815-18, was deposed. The 1818 GA adopted a wonderful statement condemning it. But the ensuing years saw greater polarization, and while some Presbyterians became great opponents of slavery, others provided it with its most vigorous defense. As one who labored in earlier years in 18th century American Intellectual history and in more recent years in 19th, I find it no exaggeration to say that it is the foremost moral issue of the whole period and one from which we have not recovered. If we Reformed, especially Presbyterians, cannot come to terms with this–which is what I hear Matthew pleading for–we will perpetuate past problems in the church that we ought to be able better to address.
Do not be silent on this, Matthew: it is your duty as a Christian ethicist.
Thank you, Dr. Strange.
After reading Rev. Thabiti Anyabwile’s article, after reading all the articles, and after reading several dozen other threads on this with many hundreds of comments and crosslinks, I tried to post a comment here on this blog which had extensive links to other articles on the web commenting on this rapper’s song. I think the hotlinks led to it being canned into Matt’s spam folder. (It’s basically the same thing I posted on CO-URC.)
After spending a long time reading what’s been said on the web about this, I want to encourage the conversation which Matt has begun, but also encourage that it remain within the bounds of the confessions. There are real risks here that a legitimate issue — confronting the racism and ethnocentric bigotry of the past in Reformed churches — will get co-opted by people who have a different agenda.
I’ve been encouraged by the rise of African-American Calvinism in places like the Founders Conference within the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as the “Young Restless and Reformed (YRR)” nondenominational movement. People like Rev. Voddie Baucham, Rev. Thabiti Anyabwile, and Dr. Anthony Bradley, while I don’t agree with everything they say (and they don’t agree with each other, either), need to be encouraged, not discouraged.
While I am not myself a fan of rap music, that is why I am so discouraged by the rapper Propaganda’s actions here. He appears to be factually wrong or at least unclear in his lyrics — to my knowledge, not a single Puritan in the “Valley of Vision” book of Puritan prayers was a slaveowner, and some of them were strongly opposed to slavery.
My concern is that this is no longer an unfortunate choice of lyrics. It risks becoming an attack on Calvinism in disguise.
When a member of Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia can write something like this, there’s a problem:
“I think the claim is not just that the Puritans had good theology they didn’t live out, but that something was flawed in their theology itself that led to their missing slavery. Maybe an overemphasis on sovereignty? God as a god who makes miserable creatures who should be content with their fate rather than a God who redeems miserable creatures from their oppressors, sin and the world.”
Comments like that show a serious underlying problem, right in the heart of one of the “powerhouse” churches of the Reformed world. If not addressed, this is not going to go away.
I would have preferred not to get involved in this dispute about a rap song. My concern is that this war in the blogosphere has now involved some **MAJOR** heavy hitters in the Reformed world, and it’s exposed an underlying problem, even in conservative Reformed circles, with people who seem to want to use “white guilt” methods of argument.
That needs to stop.
There are voices in the PCA and the Southern Baptist Convention who, because of the heritage of those denominations, may want to use race to accomplish things they cannot accomplish by more direct means. I’ll give a pass to black Reformed people who want to say such things if they are conservative Calvinists — honest mistakes need to be dealt with gently, and I want to encourage the spread of Reformed theology in the black community, not beat on someone the first time they say something problematic — but I will give no tolerance or quarter to white “moderates” who use such arguments.
Here’s why.
As someone who has lived and worked in inner-city neighborhoods, and who helped a church make the transition from predominantly white to predominantly black, and who myself has an interracial marriage, I refuse to be intimidated by that line of argument. A quarter century ago I became convinced that the best and possibly only solution to the problems of the inner city is a recovery of a Calvinist work ethic. I am even more strongly convinced that there’s nobody more responsive to the Reformed understanding of salvation than a drug addict or alcoholic or single mother who knows beyond doubt that their only comfort in life and in death is not anything they can do, but rather that they are not their own, but belong with body and soul to their faithful savior Jesus Christ.
To reject the sociological and theological implications of Reformed theology is not being gentle to inner-city residents, but rather wrecking something which can change their lives.
Given my background, unlike a fair number of conservatives, I think I can stand up to reverse-racist bigots who want to yell about white guilt. Anyone who accuses me of racism has some pretty serious fire coming back their way.
However, there are limits to what anyone with white skin can do.
It may be unrealistic to ask lots of black ministers and laypeople to move wholesale out of their historic churches into predominantly white denominations. That runs the risk of being blasted as “Uncle Toms.”
Okay, I get it. Calvinism in the black community probably will happen by black Baptist churches becoming black Reformed Baptist churches, not by lots of black people becoming members of predominantly white churches. Baptism is important, but sovereign grace is more important, and there’s a lot to be said for staying within the existing community structures and making them work better.
Frankly, regardless of what church they attend, we need a lot more conservative businessmen from an African-American ethnic background to stand up, rebuke the racists in their own circles, and demand that black ministers preach against cultural voices which say it’s somehow being “white” to work hard, to study hard, to respect the institution of marriage, and to try to improve one’s lot in life.
The Reformed faith has sociological consequences, and the same gospel that transformed Scotland from a backwater is perfectly capable of transforming any person or culture which hears and obeys it, regardless of the color of their skin.
Thanks for your kind words Alan, as well as for this helpful take on the history. I think you nail it pretty well, and I’ll have to check out your paper at some point. I worry, of course, is that by not coming to grips with our own history when it comes to racism, we set ourselves up for failing in analogous ways in the present. So while some may get frustrated at what they take to be simply pandering to “white guilt,” I think errors of this sort always stem from some deeper theological problem, and until we sort that problem out, we are bound to fall into some new kind of error.
________________________________
Thank you, Dr. Strange. That was eloquent. It is also our duty as historians/readers of hsitory to point this out.
What is worse?
The Reformed of New England regarding slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Or
The 21st Century church and Abortion, sexual slavery, the work slavery that is still going on in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and any number of things the church today refuses to speak against that we will be judged in our silence by future generations (if the Lord tarries)?. It is ironic of course that the same people championing E2K are slamming the New England Reformed and Presbyterians (they were not Puritans) for not speaking out in a way they would find to be “Transformational”.
This whole discussion smacks of Matthew 7:3-5.
Is there a deficit in Reformed theology that facilitates racism? This is a fascinating subject for me. I am the daughter of dutch immigrants to the US. I was born into the Calvinist/ Reformed faith 46 years ago. I joke that I was born on the front pew of my local CRC. Being a very conservative congregation, we split off the CRC and went URC over the issue of women in office. I spent K-12 in a small, excellent christian school called “Calvin Christian”. For the last 10 years I have attended a church that is not part of the official Reformed tradition, although the leadership and preaching holds to reformed thinking. I still identify myself as a Calvinist and for the purpose of this post, will refer to myself as belonging to the church I grew up in for in a very real sense I do- I just don’t worship there anymore.
Reformed theology has always made perfect sense to me and is a beautiful expression of scriptural truth as far as my intellect can determine. I have no beef with the theology I was raised in and still hold to although I find that there are better and worse ways to express certain concepts. All that aside, I grew up with a certain distaste for attitudes within my local congregational culture. Growing up, I often wondered if there was a theological error that propagated the attitudes that I considered ungodly. I could find none. I am not a reformed theologian and not anywhere near as learned as others posting here…but I am a “local”- having grown up steeped in reformed culture, catechism, Sunday school, and a sterling christian education that included a great deal of top notch biblical instruction.
I do not know how different we are/were from classical reformed theology but I do know that whenever there is controversy, we land solidly on the historical, conservative position. (There is still an organ for congregational singing-piano is a concession due to difficulty of finding organists- guitar, drums, etc. forget it. Traditional hymns and psalms only. Divorce and public education are almost unheard of among the members who faithfully stay married and send their children to the Christian school that sits next door to the church. We hang on to the old ways both theologically and in practice. I love the church people on a personal level, love the theology, but was unhappy with what I shall dub the “local group culture”- the particulars of which are not salient here. But again, I cannot find a causal relationship between reformed theology and what I consider the practical problems. Rather I have always thought that the problem was that the theology wasn’t being put into practice consistently.
I think it is the most basic tendency of fallen man to devalue others relative to ourselves and put our own needs and wants first. We all want comfort and a sense of place. The easiest thing to do is to rationalize a right to abuse. We become willing to get what we want at someone else’s expense. i.e., steal it, take it by force. When society condones whatever brand of evil is popular at the time, the temptation is much harder to recognize as such and harder to resist. When the retention of political power is at stake, you open yet another can of worms altogether. On my best day it takes a concerted effort not to be racist, not to be lazy, not to be arrogant, not to be egocentric, not to be, in a word, selfish. All morality dictates that we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and consider not only our own needs but the needs of others. I can think of no inherent weakness in reformed theology that contradicts, minimizes, or ignores the biblical command to love others as we love ourselves.
We can and should judge between the meat and the bones. That is the situation whenever we are holding up any human being or group as exemplary. Maybe we should pay a little more attention to the way God does it in scripture. I think of David, Abraham, Sampson. We are privy to the good, bad, and ugly. We learn what to do and what not to do. God is the hero- not the person he He is revealing Himself through. Those Puritans who did wrong in regards to racism and slavery have received correction from God. They too needed God’s redemption and forgiveness to cover their sins and have come to a complete knowledge of the full extent of that which was forgiven.
Now I will step out beyond the reaches of reformed theology and extrapolate. I may be wrong. It is my opinion based on what I know of the nature of God, that one day, “those precious Puritans” will be given the blessed opportunity to make restitution to those they mistreated and enslaved. This isn’t as big of a stretch as it sounds. Let me reason it out.
I used to dread the day of judgement when I would be horrified by the exposure of my sin- even though it has been cleansed by Christ’s sacrifice for me which reconciles me to God. (I am a Calvinist remember, so I have complete assurance of salvation by grace alone.) But I am not dreading it any more- not that it is any less horrible- but because I suspect that part of paradise contains the gift of reconciliation between myself and those people whom I have sinned against. And I also think that the reconciliation(s) will be as specific as the sin. You see, my horror has been replaced by a longing know my sin and to be afforded the opportunity to make it up to the person who I hurt. I think I can look forward, in some fashion, to having that happen in heaven.
I think this because I am supposed to do that here. Even when I have asked God to forgive me for hurting someone else, part of genuine repentance will include a sense that I am still culpable to seek the other person’s forgiveness and make restitution if called for. I don’t think the dynamic will be lifted in heaven but rather completed in perfection.
Back to Rapper Propaganda. When one has been grievously harmed by another, it is hard to hear a good word about them. It may even be hard to want God to forgive them for what they did to you when they have not come to you to own their sin and do whatever is possible to make it right. It seems too easy for them. Somehow as sinners, we have no problem asking God to forgive us- but we have a hard time going to the person we sinned against. Sometimes we are too dumb to see what we have done and sometimes it is too late to do anything about it. I don’t think God will allow this inequity to stand. Sooner or later we will make amends- not to God- for that we cannot do and it has been done by Christ- but to our brethren and they to us.
Perhaps this thought might ease Rapper Propaganda’s bitterness toward the Puritans. Those who preach about the Puritans to Africans are certainly guilty of insensitivity or are ignorant of the facts about the Puritans’ failures. Rapper’s point is well-taken and I thank him for pointing it out.
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