Ownership

About this book

Men of their time? Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield were the world's three most prominent early evangelicals -- and all three were deeply compromised on the issue of slavery. Edwards and Whitefield both enslaved Black people, and Wesley failed to speak against slavery until the end of his life. In Ownership, Sean McGever tells the true story of these men's involvement with slavery: a story too often passed over or buried in scholarly literature. Laying out the dominant attitudes among Christians at the time, McGever sets these "men of their time" in their own context, inviting us to learn how these shapers of American evangelicalism contributed to the history of racism in America. He also explores how Christians finally began to recognize that slavery, which they had excused for most of history, is wrong. 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. -- Back cover.