I remember sitting in the third-story office of my master’s program supervisor, looking out at the historic St. Mary’s College quad. He suggested I study the conversion theology of early evangelicals, a topic with many compelling questions yet to be explored.
A primary step for PhD research in the United Kingdom involves reading everything written by your subjects. Because John Wesley and George Whitefield were prolific writers, this task took nearly two years. Before this research, I knew very little about them or other major figures of the era, such as Jonathan Edwards. As I encountered their works for the first time, I found content that made me deeply uncomfortable. While sitting in the King’s College Divinity Library—an institution founded in 1495—the books spoke loudly even if the walls remained silent. I plodded through their writings hour after hour until I noticed that both Wesley and Whitefield frequently described people groups in racist and demeaning ways. When I brought these concerns to my supervisor, he offered no excuses; he was just as unsettled by the comments as I was.
Historian and activist Jemar Tisby writes, ‘Many individuals throughout American church history exhibited blatant racism, yet they also built orphanages and schools… very rarely do historical figures fit neatly into the category of ‘villain’’ (Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019). My study of Wesley and Whitefield confirmed they did not fit neatly into one category, yet I could not simply label them ‘men of their day’ and move on. My academic path eventually led to Jonathan Edwards, another early evangelical, who fit this assessment as well. As Christina Edmondson and Chad Brennan note in Faithful Antiracism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022), if a theologian as esteemed as Edwards can have such a disconnect, none of us are immune to similar traps. I felt compelled to learn more about these figures because of their immense influence on the evangelical legacy I inherited.
What does it mean to say that these historical figures were “men of their times”? Neal Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, interviewed Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University about Gates’s research on Abraham Lincoln (National Public Radio, Talk of the Nation, February 11, 2009, www.npr.org.) Gates learned that Lincoln hated slavery, but also used the N-word, told racist jokes, and hoped to send America’s Black people to Africa. Conan opened his interview by stating, “Intellectually, we know that Lincoln was a man of his times, that attitudes towards race were very different in the first half of the nineteenth century.” Gates helped listeners like me see a more complex, and more accurate, picture of Lincoln than before.
Notice, though, how Gates framed his discussion around the phrase “man of his times.” People use this phrase to introduce a suspension of judgment because of a chronological gap. When we say someone was a “man of his times,” we must also answer what man (or woman) and what time we’re talking about. Skeptics like me ask another question: why should we withhold judgment on that person? In Lincoln’s case, his legacy of abolishing slavery immediately brings the credibility required for sympathetic consideration, and Gates, the eminent Black historian, is on hand to guide the conversation, so listeners know they are in trustworthy hands.
Will you be remembered as a man or woman “of your times”? You might answer that you don’t care how you will be remembered. But you should care. It’s an important question because it isn’t really about future generations—it’s a question that shapes our present decisions. It helps us think deeply about which beliefs and actions are timeless rather than products of our current location, culture, and era.
Many of us have an older relative whose beliefs and actions we filter. Because they are our relative, we tend to grant more leeway than we would give a stranger. Because we know them better than most, we weigh their strengths against their weaknesses and respond with calculated patience when we encounter their uncomfortable beliefs and actions. This approach is common with family members.
Considering how we will be remembered shapes us right now more than it shapes how people in the future will remember us. Imagine if you are that older relative (or maybe you are!). Are your beliefs and actions a reflection of your age, upbringing, and culture? Or are they rooted in something deeper, something timeless? Lincoln’s racist jokes reflect prejudice common among some White men in his time, but his belief that slavery is unjust is timeless.
I want to put you in the shoes of John Wesley because Wesley had the gift of time. Wesley lived the longest (by far) of Wesley, Edwards, and Whitefield, and he eventually played an important role helping Christians and non-Christians alike to advocate for the timeless truth that no human should own another human. Wesley didn’t start his life advocating for this, and if his life had ended earlier (as it did for Whitefield and Edwards), Wesley would be remembered differently.
Wesley had the gift of time. Will you?
How long will you live? What if your days had ended when you were half your age? What if your days end when you are twice your current age? As I write this today, I am forty-five years old. While I’m not all that different from when I was twenty-two years old, I have changed in some ways. If I had a chance, I would challenge twenty-two-year-old me in several areas, and I’d give myself lots of advice. I can only wonder how ninety-year-old me might challenge me today. Experience tells me that I would be wise to listen to the older me. What if I don’t live that long? Or what if I discovered I only had a few years to live?
The lives of John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and George Whitefield provide us a wealth of insight about navigating our lives today as we own what happened in the past in order to better own our decisions today.
Adapted from Ownership by Sean McGever. ©2024 by Sean McGever. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
