Thread by @bobrobertsjr

My son for Christmas got me an 1841 track of a church in Newbury, Mass not just condemning slavery but excommunicating pastors & members of other churches who practiced & supported it - how might 1861 been different had they repented?

Roger Williams challenged slavery, stealing Indian lands, & promoted religious freedom for all not just Puritans - he lost the argument but his language won in our founding documents that would ultimately undo slavery

From the Pilgrims, to the colonies, to early America from Winthrop to Edwards & Whitfield it was challenged & condemned as sin - the idea that it was everyone & the way culture was is wrong - it was seen as one of those things that should not be brought to America & left behind

Notice at the top of the page here he repents for not working hard enough for their freedom - it’s personal & it will determine the future of what the church Christianity look like

For 200 years slavery had to be justified by the church for others to practice it - no more - excommunication may have seemed extreme but what had worked? Was it sin? Was it degrading human beings? Selling, raping, abusing - what was left - more revivals without repentance?

What can we learn from this today with regards to racism? How will our children remember what we did? How will history remember us? More importantly how will we stand before God & give an answer

It seems to me we have repented of slavery but not the worst sin - it allows men to be free on the outside but not the inside - the sin of looking down on a man, not treating him/her as sacred in God’s image

These preachers who were abolitionist faced the hardest of times - but history remembers them positively. It is not the purity of your doctrine but the rightness of loving God & Your neighbor that all of the law & the crisis exists for

God have mercy on us - we are known more for debating the forms of ending racism than we are of ending racism. Sin is never ended in a pretty way but in a big mess that must be untangled