Religion and Slavery in Colonial New England
A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Kenneth Minkema
Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University and Editor, The Works of Jonathan Edwards
A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Kenneth Minkema
Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University and Editor, The Works of Jonathan Edwards
Thursday, February 16, 2023 at 7 pm
Register for the Zoom link.
Sliding scale admission: $5 to $25.
Sliding scale admission: $5 to $25.
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From 1729 until 1750, Northampton’s minister was Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), an internationally known philosopher, theologian, and leader of the Great Awakening spiritual revival. While in Northampton, he enslaved three people –Venus, Leah, and Rose. After his move to Stockbridge in 1751, he enslaved three others—a married couple named Joseph and Sue, and a boy named Titus. In his writings and from the pulpit, Edwards defended the practice of slavery. How and why could a minister uphold the ownership of people and deny basic human rights?
In this presentation, Dr. Kenneth Minkema will examine some of the theological and religious justifications for, and critiques of, slavery and the slave trade, as they were expressed from the colonial incursion in the early seventeenth century to the eighteenth century when Jonathan Edwards and his followers were active. |
Jonathan Edwards by Joseph Badger
Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery |
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Kenneth P. Minkema is the Editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and Director of The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, with an appointment as a Research Scholar at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery” (Massachusetts Historical Review, Vol. 4, 2002) and “Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade” (William & Mary Quarterly, Vol. 54, no. 4, Oct. 1977). Widely published on American religious history, Dr. Minkema’s PhD is from the University of Connecticut.
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With an introduction by Gina Nortonsmith, Historic Northampton Trustee and Slavery Research Project
committee member and Project Archivist, Archives & Special Collections, Northeastern University.
committee member and Project Archivist, Archives & Special Collections, Northeastern University.
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Gina Nortonsmith is an archivist at Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, serving as Project Archivist for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive at Northeastern University School of Law, a digital resource dedicated to identifying, classifying, and providing factual information and documentation about anti-Black killings in the mid-century South. She has been an attorney, professor, and administrator, and has worked on archival projects in the US and Cuba. Gina is a member of the Historic Northampton Board of Trustees and is a member of the Slavery Research Project committee. Gina has a J.D. and an MILS.
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Header image: Artist's conception of Northampton in 1786 by Maitland de Gogorza, 1936. At center is the third meetinghouse built in 1737 during Edwards' ministry. Collection of the Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts.