Bearing Witness: What the Church Can Learn from Early Abolitionists (Daniel Lee Hill) - Review
Jim Wallis called slavery America's
original sin. Although many Americans would like to forget or diminish the
impact of the sin of slavery on American life and history, the stain remains
present on American life. During the years that slavery existed in the United
States, movements of abolition rose up, calling attention to this stain. These
abolitionists represented various religions and ideologies, but they held in
common the belief that slavery was a form of evil that must end. Many people in
the United States, especially White evangelicals and supporters of Trump’s MAGA
movement, in its effort to rid the country of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and
Inclusion), would like to forget the past or at the very least create a version
of the past where the United States remains unstained by such sins. If we
choose to take a different path, one that acknowledges the sins that stain our
history, might the church learn something from early abolitionists, especially
if they were Black? In learning from these abolitionists as they stood against
the sin of slavery, might the church learn something about its own public witness?
Questions about slavery and
abolitionism stand at the heart of Daniel Lee Hill’s book, Bearing Witness:What the Church Can Learn from Early Abolitionists. Hill, who holds a Ph.D.
from Wheaton College and serves as an assistant professor of theology at Truett
Theological Seminary, seeks to retrieve resources from America's abolitionists,
while thinking theologically about the church's public witness in the present
and future. Hill approaches these two concerns from a particular vantage point.
First, he is an African American, and secondly, he is an evangelical Christian.
From that vantage point, Hill seeks to call evangelicals back to a form of
public witness that seeks the common good. One note on terminology, throughout
the book, Hill uses the descriptor Afro-American. Since that is his choice of
descriptors, I will use it in the remainder of the review.
In the first section of the book,
which Hill titles “Giving the Faithful Dead a Vote,” Hill focuses on the
witness offered by three Afro-American abolitionists: David Ruggles, Maria
Stewart, and William Still, three figures who lack the name recognition of a
Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth, but whose contributions are worthy of
note. In the four chapters in Part 1, Hill invites the reader to listen to
their ancestors, in this case, nineteenth-century Afro-American evangelicals
who offered a public witness that addressed the evils of slavery. As we reflect
theologically on the work of these ancestors, Hill reminds us of the need to
keep in mind their context and the ways they responded. We also must remember
the past faithfully, such that the community continually undergoes reformation.
In choosing these three figures, to each of which Hill devotes a chapter, he
notes that they all share a common social location—the nineteenth-century
antebellum United States.
Hill begins Part 1 of the book by
offering the reader a historical introduction (chapter 1) that sets up the
conversation as it moves forward. In this chapter titled “Freedom in the Time
of Slavery,” Hill wants to help address the strangeness of nineteenth-century
America, with its institution of slavery, and the attempts to find freedom in
such a context. Along with the descriptions of slavery in the United States,
Hill describes the larger abolitionist movement. He helps us better understand
both the stain of slavery and the men and women who stood against it as they
engaged in an improvisational effort (Chapter 1). As Hill moves on to chapter 2,
he takes up the story of David Ruggles. The subtitle to this chapter is
“Learning to Read and Imagine the World.” Ruggles was a free-born Afro American
abolitionist who lived and worked largely in New York City, advocating for
fugitive slaves and opposing efforts to kidnap fugitive slaves while also
advocating for free-born or emancipated Afro Americans. Then, in Chapter 3,
subtitled “Nurturing the Seeds of Change,” he focuses on Maria Stewart, who
presents a very interesting face to the abolitionist movement. She was known as
a writer who encouraged the building of new institutions and renewing old ones,
but most of all, she focused on creating communities of character. The third
figure is William Still, whose life and work is explored in chapter 4. Still
was involved in the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia, documenting every
fugitive who came through Philadelphia on their way to freedom. His work
provides an important record of the work of abolishing the evil institution
that was slavery. As such, Hill writes of William Still, that he “reminds us
that we need to be people who continually look backward in remembrance,
understanding memory as a necessary resource for navigating life in the
present” (p. 110). Each of these three figures has a different story, but each
contributed significantly to the struggle to overcome America’s original sin.
While Hill wants us to remember
figures from the past who exemplify resistance to slavery, he also wants to
speak to the present and future. So, after we examine the lives of these three
important figures who are not as well-known as Douglass or Harriet Tubman,
their stories provide us with important information about what it means to bear
public witness for justice. Having shared the stories of the three
abolitionists, Hill moves in Part 2 to "The Twofold Work of Public Witness.”
In this section, Hill seeks to engage in theological construction using
readings from Romans 8 and Galatians 5-6, together with the witness of the
three historic figures, to provide the foundation for an evangelical public
witness that pursues the common good. This section provides two chapters. The
first chapter (Chapter 5) is titled "Lament as Public Witness." In
this chapter, Hill lifts up the church's witness in the midst of "suffering,
futility, and decay." In doing this, Hill seeks to call the church to
engage in lament over the nation’s sins so that it might offer the world a word
of hope. Then in Chapter 6, he addresses the church's "Burden bearing as
public witness." Thus, even as the church engages in lament, it also joins
with the Holy Spirit in bearing the world's burdens. This involves sharing in
the common good and in temporal goods. He writes that "one of the primary
ways that Christians attest to the freedom that God has opened up for them in
the person of Christ is by seeking their neighbors 'good.'" (p. 142). This
involves, he believes, three things: extending, preserving, and cultivating
temporal goods. The point here is that the church is not just called to engage
in "spiritual things" while neglecting common temporal goods. By
doing this, the church offers public witness to God's realm— something the
three figures did in their own context.
Hill has a specific audience in
mind. He hopes to speak to fellow evangelicals, calling for them to embrace the
principles he finds in the historic past among Afro American evangelicals.
While evangelicals are the target audience of the book, Hill offer the larger
church a message rooted in scripture and history that needs to be heard by all
Christians whatever their tradition at a time when many wish to embrace a
mistaken view of the past that has implications for the present, especially if
you are a black or brown person. As I noted above, the implications of Hill’s
thesis address the kinds of propaganda that many are offering people in the
United States as if it were actual history. Such efforts not only distort
history they also distort the mission and message of the church in the United
States. Therefore, Daniel Lee Hill’s Bearing Witness is a book that
needs to be read and pondered if Christians are to fulfill their calling.
Copies of Bearing Witness can be purchased at most outlets, including my Bookshop.org affiliate and Amazon affiliate.
Comments