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ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award
The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Award of Distinction–History and Biography
Men of their time?
Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield were the three most prominent early evangelicals-and all three were deeply compromised on the issue of slavery. Edwards and Whitefield both kept slaves themselves, and Wesley failed to speak out against slavery until near the end of his life.
In Ownership, Sean McGever tells the true story of these men's relationships to slavery: a story that has too often been passed over or buried in scholarly literature. Laying out the dominant attitudes among Christians toward slavery at the time, McGever sets these "men of their times" in their own context, inviting us to learn how these shapers of American evangelicalism contributed to the tragic history of racism in America. He also explores how Christians finally began to recognize that slavery, which they'd excused for most of Christian history, is actually wrong. It's a story that white evangelicals must wrestle with today.
Ownership is more than a book of history. It's an invitation to examine our own legacies and to understand-and take ownership of-both our heritage and our own part in the story.
The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Award of Distinction–History and Biography
Men of their time?
Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield were the three most prominent early evangelicals-and all three were deeply compromised on the issue of slavery. Edwards and Whitefield both kept slaves themselves, and Wesley failed to speak out against slavery until near the end of his life.
In Ownership, Sean McGever tells the true story of these men's relationships to slavery: a story that has too often been passed over or buried in scholarly literature. Laying out the dominant attitudes among Christians toward slavery at the time, McGever sets these "men of their times" in their own context, inviting us to learn how these shapers of American evangelicalism contributed to the tragic history of racism in America. He also explores how Christians finally began to recognize that slavery, which they'd excused for most of Christian history, is actually wrong. It's a story that white evangelicals must wrestle with today.
Ownership is more than a book of history. It's an invitation to examine our own legacies and to understand-and take ownership of-both our heritage and our own part in the story.
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Reviews
"Among the tragic inheritances of the English Dissenters in America are the oppressive inequities they built and perpetuated around race and ethnicity, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, and the condoning and expansion of enslavement. If Whitefield, Wesley, and Edwards were not 'founding fathers' of the United States, they were spiritual founders of America's evangelical tradition. These fig
Kenneth P. Minkema, Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University
"This book is unusually well researched (showing that Wesley, Edwards, and Whitefield actively or passively supported slavery even after Quaker Bible believers had published solid arguments showing the system's evil). It is patiently argued (bending over backward to explain charitably why these landmark evangelicals acted as they did). It is also painstakingly self-reflective (asking, If we condem
Mark Noll, author of America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–19