The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale: Jonathan Edwards and Slavery
The
name of Jonathan Edwards, the famous eighteenth-century
British-American Protestant theologian, is nearly synonymous with modern
revivalism and evangelicalism. He remains one of the most studied
figures in early American history. His influence across many regions,
institutions and movements around the world has to this day been
profound. Yet, Edwards was a slaveowner, a defender of the institution
of slavery as biblically ordained, and an agent in depriving Native
Americans of their lands and culture.
The Works of Jonathan Edwards and
its successor, the Jonathan Edwards Center, based at Yale University,
have had as their long-time mission the publication of Edwards' writings
in modern print and digital formats, and of encouraging research and
dialogue on his historical significance. At a time when our country is
reckoning with the long-term effects of slavery and the injustices of
racism, the Jonathan Edwards Center acknowledges the role that Edwards
played in perpetuating the sin of racism by holding persons of color in
bondage and in displacing Natives Americans.
The
Edwards Edition has not shirked from openly showing the negative side
of our subject, not only in regard to his attitudes about Native
Americans and his participation in enslaving people of African descent,
but in regard to other, less than estimable aspects of his writings that
make him a person of his time and place. Decades ago, members of our
project discovered the facts about Edwards' slave-owning and his
theological and biblical apology for slavery, and immediately brought
that to the attention of the wider scholarly community. We also showed
how Edwards, as he aged, came to oppose the illegal kidnapping of free
people from Africa--the so-called "slave trade"--and how his
Revolutionary-era disciples and his son, Jonathan Edwards Jr., adapted
his thought to forge the first concerted call among white Americans for
the complete abolition of slavery and immediate emancipation of enslaved
persons, even while opposing an integrated society.
More
recently, we have used a variety of methods, including publishing
journal and magazine articles, participating in online interviews and
panel discussions, and taking part in the Yale and Slavery project, to
state plainly Edwards' views and practices on race and slavery. As we as
a society take into account the persistence of racism, carefully
studying and understanding the complicated histories behind this and
other awful legacies, without obfuscation and with careful attention to
what the historical sources will yield, becomes all the more vital. The
Jonathan Edwards Center commits itself to this task by making available
the full and unexpurgated range of Edwards' writings and by encouraging
student and scholarly engagement with all aspects of his life, thought,
and legacy.
