Radical Orthodoxy: The Connection Between Revival and Justice

Rehearsing history to inform the present

Photo by adrianna geo on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

Much has been made recently of events that have been taking place at Asbury University, a non-denominational, Wesleyan-based institution in Kentucky. Great revival has descended upon the campus, with students participating in a continuous chapel service since February 8, with many testifying that God has visited the student body in powerful ways.

There’s been a lot of analysis and critique of the revival, with many on the right claiming it’s too charismatic, and many on the left claiming it’s not bearing enough practical fruit in works of justice and mercy.

I don’t have any interest in offering an opinion about whether it’s of God or not—which would be extremely foolhardy for someone who’s 1200 miles away—though I’m inclined to believe the Spirit is touching hearts, for which I can rejoice.

What did catch my eye, however, were some reflections on the event by Tom McCall, who’s a professor of theology at neighboring Asbury Theological Seminary. After recounting the way the events unfolded at Asbury, McCall notes how, in the past with significant revivals, “there has always been fruit that has blessed both the church and society” (emphasis mine).

He then makes this keen historic observation: “Even secular historians acknowledge that the Second Great Awakening was pivotal to bringing about the end of slavery in our country.”

Though I’ve definitely run across this idea many times before in my reading, McCall’s articulation of it in light of current events struck me as incredibly relevant—and all the more so since we’re also in the midst of Black History Month here in the US (the UK celebrates Black History Month in October, by the way—which, if you hadn’t noticed, is a longer month than February).

Simply put: historically, there has been an indissoluble link between Christian revival and works of societal justice, seemingly pointing to the fact that you can’t have one without the other.

Indeed, as McCall rightfully points out, historians have seen the major revivals that took place in America in the early- and mid-nineteenth century—what is sometimes called the “Second Great Awakening”—as a critical reason for the abolition of slavery.

This is not at all to deny other factors, of course—or to imply revival was the only cause.

But many people across the US who were touched with the revivalist spirit also became deeply animated by an activist spirit, recognizing that embracing the liberating gospel necessarily leads to calls for societal liberation as well.

Perhaps the most famous of all was Charles Finney, who was simultaneously America’s most notable revivalist preacher and one of its most outspoken abolitionist champions. Finney had originally taken a “gradualist” attitude toward slavery—that is, he hoped slavery could be abolished gradually, by appealing to Southern enslavers to voluntarily emancipate those they enslaved—but quickly realized such an approach was a dead end.

He thus adopted “immediatism,” openly and repeatedly declaring, with great zeal, that America needed to immediately abolish slavery. This led him, among other things, to deny communion to enslavers and those who sympathized with them, believing that failure to pursue immediate abolition was a significant factor in retarding America’s revivalist goals.

There were many, many others who saw the inextricable connection between revival and societal justice as well.

My own denomination was particularly active on this account. As Adventist historian Kevin Burton has noted, “From the rise of the Millerite movement in the early 1830s through the end of the Civil War, adventists of all varieties used the tactic of moral suasion to warn pro-slavery Americans that God would soon return and judge them if they did not immediately repent and reform.”

Indeed, so committed were Adventists to this cause that they were even willing to forfeit their ability to evangelize in the South—spreading their convictions about Christ’s soon-return—because of their open commitment to and promotion of abolition.

Perhaps no Christian abolitionist intrigues me more than William Goodell, who was a vocal abolitionist and political activist who grew up in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Goodell, along with William Lloyd Garrison, helped form the American Anti-Slavery Association in 1833 (of which Frederick Douglass became an integral leader), and started and edited many abolitionist newspapers, including The Emancipator. He also helped start the Liberty Party in 1839, which had a strict abolitionist platform, and even became their nominee for president in 1852.

Goodell’s dogged commitment to abolition was not despite his theological commitments, but precisely because of them. In fact, he coined a phrase I absolutely love: “radical orthodoxy,” which served as the theological basis for his abolitionist agenda.

Radical orthodoxy, according to Goodell, posited that slavery was a moral sin, irrespective of its terrible consequences, and that the gospel taught that one must immediately repent of their sins. Thus, repentance for, and abolition of, slavery needed to be immediate and complete.

He referred to these convictions as “Bible politics,” and, in no uncertain terms, proposed that “to reject ‘modern abolition’ is to reject orthodox Christianity, and vice versa.”

Indeed, Goodell insisted that those who hated the idea of “modern abolition” actually hated the “doctrines of orthodox Christianity.”

For Goodell, it was clear: a radical commitment to the gospel and the theology of the gospel would be accompanied by a radical commitment to societal and racial justice. And to deny one was to deny the other.

Now what?

Rehearsing such a history is important and good, but the temptation is to assume that what happened among these Revivalists was anything but remarkable. After all, abolition is such an obvious choice for those of us living nearly 200 years later.

But it wasn’t so obvious for every Christian living in America in the nineteenth century, especially those who weren’t endued with the revivalist spirit.

One story that acutely illustrates this comes from Samuel Hopkins, who is perhaps the most famous disciple of Jonathan Edwards, arguably America’s most influential theologian. While Edwards’s own attitude about slavery was fairly dubious—at best—one thing that seemingly cannot be disputed is that most of his most ardent disciples (as well as his son, Jonathan Edwards Jr.) became radical abolitionists.

Hopkins—who provided Goodell with much of his inspiration—was of this ilk.

One argument Hopkins apparently employed has been labeled by historian Steve Gowler as the “ask the slave” test. Playing off the golden rule, and pointing out how Christians should ever act toward others in their best interest, Hopkins proposed that one way to determine whether enslavement was immoral, and should therefore be abolished, was by simply asking an enslaved person whether they enjoyed being enslaved.

Hopkins put this test to Joseph Bellamy, also a disciple of Edwards’s, who responded with ambivalence about how his own slave would respond. Bellamy believed his slave was “so happy in his servitude, that he would, in the opinion of his master, refuse his freedom, if it were offered to him.”

Nevertheless, they called him in, and to Bellamy’s utter surprise, he responded by indicating that “as happy as he [was] with his good master Bellamy, he would be happier still if he were free.”

Bellamy freed him immediately.

Again, to us, 200 years later, such a response is obvious.

But as I think about how we might live out our own revivalist impulses today, and the ways in which it could express itself in works of justice, I wonder what might be obvious to people 200 years from now that might not be obvious to us today. And how might we figure that out?

Perhaps we can take a page from Hopkins’s book and simply ask people of color—and then genuinely listen to their answers.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.