May 1, 1748, George Whitefield preached to "a large company of Negroes" as well as "a number of white people who came to hear what I had to say to them," nearly 1500 people in all:

"I said, their hearts were as black as their faces"

😳
Whitefield had prayed for "divine" "wisdom" in order to preach just the right message to Black people. He wanted to "touch the negroes, yet not to give them the least umbrage to slight or behave imperiously to their masters"

iow, he needed them to be "good christian slaves"
Black people had expected Whitefield to "speak against their masters."

GW: "Blessed be God, that I was directed not to say any thing to masters at all, though my text led me to it"

He went *against* the grain of the text to *avoid* preaching on the sins/duties of white people
And then he dresses it all up in spiritual sounding scriptural language:

"Everything is beautiful in its season. Lord, teach me always that due season, wherever I am called, to give either black or white, a portion of thy word!"
you can find this in:

Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield (1772*), pages 165–166

books.google.com/books?id=TZwHA…

*MDCCLXXII - did I do that right?!?
Needless to say (but I'll say it), this mingling of white supremacy and evangelism was a corruption the doctrine of sin ("black as their faces"), and hence salvation (saved from blackness to ... ???).

And George Whitefield is a "founding father" of #WhiteEvangelicalism
I had wanted to mention that this incident took place while George Whitefield was preaching in the Bermudas:

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More from @danieleleven32

Jul 15
Let’s break down this March 15, 1747 letter by George Whitefield:

“the constitution [of Georgia] is bad”—it prohibits slavery and rum, both of which Whitefield commented on elsewhere

“impossible for the inhabitants to subsist themselves without the use of slaves”—*impossible*!
“But GOD has put it into the hearts of my Carolina friends…” — he credits *GOD* for the means to enslave Black people on his new plantation.

“for the support of Bethesda” — the profits off the backs of these enslaved laborers would support his orphanage
“Blessed be God, the purchase is made” — the pious language that you find everywhere in Whitefield’s letters becomes hard to stomach when you realize that he includes the ability to enslave others among these “divine” “blessings”
Read 5 tweets
Jun 17
In 1752, evangelical pastor James Hervey gave a "gift" to his friend George Whitefield. What was it?

"£30, for the purchase of a negro; and may the Lord Jesus Christ give you, or rather take for himself, the precious soul of the poor slave.”

biblioskolex.wordpress.com/2022/06/17/eva…
Whitefield replied:

"I think to call your intended purchase Weston, and shall take care to remind him by whose means he was brought under the everlasting Gospel.”

"Weston Favell" was the name of the city where Hervey was pastor
In a bizarre twist, one admirer of Hervey tried to frame this as an act of "charity" comparable to the famed English abolitionist William Wilberforce

books.google.com/books?id=Go9CA…
Read 7 tweets
Jun 16
When I first published "John MacArthur on Robert Lewis Dabney" in 2018, I just looked at his sermons, not his books. I've since updated the post which is nearly twice as long.

The oldest is from 1977, calling Dabney a "Reformed stalwart":

biblioskolex.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/joh…
MacArthur cites Dabney, _The Five Points of Calvinism_ in his New Testament Commentary on 1 Timothy
MacArthur's edited book on Preaching recommends Dabney:

"Although R. L. Dabney wrote over a century ago, we join him today in urging that the expository method . . . be restored to that equal place which it held in the primitive and Reformed Churches"
Read 7 tweets
Jun 15
Just this week a friend sent me an article by Albert Mohler, "Why I am a Baptist"

Overall the article is fine (I am myself a Baptist, after all), but this one paragraph is trash, intended to frame an utterly shameful act as something praiseworthy:
The SBC formed as a split out of existing missions organizations (the Baptist Convention for Missionary Purposes, founded 1814, and the American Baptist Home Missionary Society, founded 1832)
They “did not leave their first meeting without establishing mission boards” bc they had just all left the existing boards bc they wouldn’t appoint slave-holders as missionaries.

In order to facilitate that, they had to form their own. That's literally all they were doing
Read 10 tweets
Jun 14
"Did it appear when you captured those slavers that they had ever been cleaned out?

No; so much so that you may smell the stench to a very considerable distance

a 1/4 of a mile?

A considerable distance;" Image
"there is a peculiar stench that no one who has ever been on board a slaver but can recognize

When you board a slaver you know by the smell whether she is a slaver?

Yes, even before she is boarded

5–600 yards off you could smell it?

As close as a vessel could safely go to her
from British Parliament -- Report from the Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting (1848)

books.google.com/books?id=ZnZbA… Image
Read 6 tweets
Jan 28
Wow. PCA pastor @ZacharyGarris on Robert Lewis Dabney and racism:

"Though the Bible affirms that all humans are made in God’s image and that Jesus redeems people from every nation, there is nothing in Scripture that teaches that all men are created equal."
Garris had published an article praising Dabney's views of hierarchy "Remembering R. L. Dabney"

"We will find few defenses of hierarchy better than those contained in the writings of Robert Lewis Dabney."

chroniclesmagazine.org/remembering-r-…
Someone wrote in pointing out "Dabney's Blind Spot"

"The article mentions hierarchal views of biblically sanctioned authority. It does not mention the extension of this to his racist views... This blatant blind spot was worth mentioning in the article."

chroniclesmagazine.org/dabney-s-blind…
Read 11 tweets

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