The Faith...in the Economy

Lately there’s been news about the Slave Bible from 1807 that reduced the whole Bible of more than 1,100 chapters to a mere 232. It excluded passages that might have incited rebellion. Firstly, there’s the audacity of reducing the Bible to only the non-controversial bits. Secondly, it’s important to realize that there were more than 900 chapters, more than 80% of the Bible, that would have shamed and challenged the slave owners and their practices.

While reading Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise, a historical review that is also about the future of the American church, there were lots of time that the American church and the believers in it could have stopped an unjust system of exploitation. Virginia in 1667 enacted laws that prevented a slave from being freed after being baptized into the Christian faith, a practice that occurred in England and other places. Leading up to the Civil War, many denominations split over the issue of slavery: Southern Baptists from their northern brothers and sisters; similarly the Methodist Episcopal Church, South split away over whether a bishop could own slaves; Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) was originally the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America.

Many of the ‘heroes’ of the American church owned slaves. Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening time (“America’s Greatest Theologian”) from Massachusetts bought his first slave at 28 years old, after taking over his grandfather’s church...and two years before a revival broke out. (It’s another discussion on whether faith revival affirms individual or social practices. For a short example, think about Roman Empire in the time of Christ: which people did God favor and love?) George Whitefield, a Wesley contemporary and ‘intercolonial religious celebrity’, called for more humane slavery practices, and allowance to evangelize among the slaves, but did not call for abolition. To keep an orphanage in Georgia economically viable, he bought a South Carolina plantation so the profits could fund the orphanage and accepted gifts of slaves and petitioned the Georgia colony legislature to amend their laws to allow slavery there. Georgia originally disallowed slavery so that poor Englishmen wouldn’t have economic competition.

There’s more...unfortunately...as America gets through its Civil War (e.g. read the declarations given when the southern states seceded), Reconstruction and Jim Crow and more. If someone had to cut out 80% of the Bible to avoid embarrassment, shame, faith challenges, then something’s wrong. Can the American church now find its relevance on the current injustices in our society? Can we attract the Religion-None and Religion-Done crowds by facing the issues that hurt people, even in the name of economic prosperity?

If you want to learn more about Tisby’s book, there are some nice pre-order bonuses.