Rebecca Protten and the Importance of Context

Awhile back, I took the Clifton Strenthfinder test to determine what my leadership strengths were. According to the test, my number one strength is context. People who are strong in the context theme like to look at the past to better understand the present. We collect random facts in our brains in the hopes that one day these random facts will make the present less confusing. We are the people you want on your Trivia Pursuit teams.

Context is also a useful strength to have when you read a religious biography. In this week’s assigned biography, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World by Jon Sensbach, Sensbach is interested in how Rebecca’s context (the eighteenth century Century Atlantic World) shaped her biography. He argues that Rebecca’s life stood at the cross roads of the expansion of the slave trade, the Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle, and the rise of Black Christianity, and that Rebecca’s ability to navigate this context makes her an interesting historical figure in her own right (235).

The growth of the slave trade shaped Rebecca’s life because Rebecca became a Christian while a slave. The island of St. Thomas, where Rebecca grew up, was controlled by the Danish, who always intended for the island to be a sugar colony run by Africans (14). In order to secure the labor needed to run these sugar colonies, the Danish merchants contracted with African slave dealers to supply them with captives (15). Oftentimes this meant that the slaves working the sugar plantations were captured from Africa and sold to plantation owners who required slave labor (35). Rebecca was not born in Africa but in Antigua (30). While we don’t know whether she was a slave or free in Antigua, we do know that she was kidnapped from Antigua as a small child and sold to the von Braverhouts family (33). Rebecca became a domestic servant of the von Braverhouts family where she was educated, became a Christian, and freed (35-37). Though the reasons for Rebecca's freedom remain unclear, it is likely that religion played a role (37). Rebecca’s experience with the slave trade helps modern readers understand the context of slavery in the Atlantic World.

Another important way we can understand Rebecca’s context is by looking at the Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle. Kidnapping people, and forcing them to do menial labor, created some tension in the eighteenth century Atlantic world. But the specific tensions of famine and violence mobilized the freedom struggle. The slaveowners on St. Thomas used “a frightening inventory of extremities” to discipline their slaves (9). For example, they cut out a slaves tongue after he deigned to speak to a white person (9). Sensbach argues that the entire economy of St. Thomas was dependent upon a system that caused slave-owners to live in fear that their slaves would slit their throats (10). One way slaveowners kept this fear in check was through violence, but another way was through not feeding their workers (21). Slaveowners allowed their slaves to eat only the food they harvested themselves after the days work was done (21). When famine struck St. Thomas, Africans, “strangely resistant to having their limbs amputated by Europeans, decided rebellion was their only option (22). The Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle is important for understanding Rebecca’s biography because even though she did not participate in the struggle her world was limited and regulated by the struggle. The struggle teaches us how difficult it was for her to proclaim the gospel in a world that understood racial violence as normative.

A final way we can understand Rebecca’s context is by looking at the rise of Black Christianity. For Rebecca, proclaiming the gospel was “dusty, unglamorous, and dangerous work” (69) because slaveowners were concerned that Christianity might incite further rebellion. The goal of Black Christianity in the eighteenth century was to spread the gospel through baptisms, not by preaching a gospel of social justice. Any talk of equality was relegated to the afterlife. We see this tension most clearly during Zinzendorf’s speech after Rebecca and her husband Matthaus were released from jail for their “illegal” marriage. He instructs the crowd gathered,  

Remain faithful to your masters and mistresses, your overseers and bombas, and… perform all your work with as much love and diligence as if you were working for yourselves. You must know that Christ himself puts each one of his children to work; for the Lord has made everything Himself-kings, masters, servants, and slaves. And as long as we live in this world, everyone must gladly endure the state into which God has placed him and be content with God’s council (141-142).

This statement only makes sense if we examine the context in which it was spoken. Zinzendorf was an aristocratic Moravian preacher uninterested in challenging the existing social order. He saw no theological issue with baptizing slaves, because the change the slaves underwent in baptism was ontological, not physical. Also, Zinzendorf understood that if he wanted to keep the mission alive in St. Thomas, he had to prove to the slaveowners that Christianity was not a threat to the existing social order. The devil’s bargain he made to secure Rebecca and Matthaus’ release required him to give a rousing pro-slavery oration.

 Leaving the eighteenth century Atlantic world behind, I think context is also really important in the life of the church today. It is much easier in our churches to assume we know why a person acts the way that they do, instead of taking the time to get to know a person’s history so we can look to see if patterns emerge. One gift of the context theme is that it reminds us that we are all a part of a story larger than ourselves- the story of a community of faith which is intimately tied to God’s story of creation and redemption. Rebecca’s story helped me to see that understanding a person’s context will not just make you a great Trivial Pursuit player, it will allow you to visualize how an individual’s story fits into God’s story of creation, redemption, and reconciliation.

All citations taken from:

Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.      Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Francis Asbury and the Characteristics of Religious Leadership

 

In my Church and Sacraments class, our professor asked our class to define some characteristics of religious leadership. Is religious leadership characterized by exceptional preaching? By maintaining a color coded Google calendar? By cultivating a faithful prayer life? So far, all my class can agree on is that the characteristics of religious leadership are complicated, and contextual. Thankfully, this week in American Religious Biographies, we read a biography from a historian wrestling with these very questions as he tries to make sense of the life of Francis Asbury.  

This week we read American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John Wigger. Wigger is a professor of history at the University of Missouri. As an American historian, Wigger writes to prove that Asbury is not just an important patriotic figure in American history, but an American Saint (417). Wigger suggests that Asbury was an American Saint by claiming, “Asbury wasn’t an intellectual, charismatic performer or autocrat, but his understanding of what it meant to be pious, connected, culturally aware, and effectively organized redefined religious leadership in America” (13).  

Wigger proves his argument that Asbury is an American Saint by illustrating how Asbury’s piety, connectedness, cultural awareness, and organizational skills redefined what it means to be an American religious leader. Asbury is perhaps best known for his piety. He would often awaken between four and five am to read Scripture, pray, and read theology (40). After leaving England in 1771, Asbury never owned a home, sleeping for more than forty years in the homes of Methodist believers (23). Asbury never married, partially because he wanted to devote his energies to his ministry (417), and partially because many of the circuits could not financially support married preachers (369).

Amongst American Methodists, Asbury is known as “the people’s saint” because of his connectedness and cultural awareness. In a letter to Wesley, dated March 1784, Absury wrote:

“we must suffer with, if we labour for the poor, being often obliged to dwell in dirty cabins, to sleep in poor beds, and for retirement, to go into the woods. Yet how else would [we] find the people who most needed the gospel?” (127). For Asbury, his personal suffering was the best way for him to connect with the people he was trying to minister to. Later in life, Asbury lamented the disconnectedness of married preachers from their congregations writing, “our preachers get wives and a home, and run to their dears almost every night: how can they, by personal observation, know the state of their families it is part of their duty to watch over for good” (370). For Asbury, it was more important for a preacher to be connected than comfortable.

Asbury also cultivated a reputation as “the people’s saint” through the cultural awareness he demonstrated in his sermons. Asbury never became a great preacher (285). He never went to college, or seminary. His sermons were “close to home” sermons. Every sermon began with a reading of Scripture, and the sermon comprised of anecdotes and analogies from everyday life (284). As an itinerant preacher, Asbury prepared his sermons while traveling on horseback. Also, Methodism, during Asbury’s ministry was largely comprised of poor men and women with little formal education. By focusing on exhortation instead of doctrine, Asbury’s “close to home” sermons ensured that the greatest number of people could receive the gospel.  

Finally, Asbury is also known for his administrative gifts. During his ministry, Asbury founded what historians have labeled, “the Asburyan Episcopacy.” The Asburyan Episcopacy relied on itinerant preaching. Every year at Conference the bishop (Asbury) would hand out assignments dictating where his preachers were to travel that year. All assignments were final. This system existed so that the greatest number of people had a chance to hear the gospel (365). A system reliant on itinerant preaching required incredible organization on Asbury’s part. For example, from 1769-1806, Asbury was responsible for assigning 1,250 itinerant preachers (366). Disorganization on Asbury’s part would mean that parts of the country would have no Methodist preachers to proclaim the gospel.

What then, can the church today learn from Asbury’s understanding of religious leadership? I believe that the characteristics of religious leadership Asbury exemplified, piety, cultural awareness, connectedness, and organization are important characteristics of religious leadership. Our task is to ask ourselves how to embody these characteristics in our current contexts. What follows are a few ways to imagine each characteristic in our modern context. As you go about your life and ministries this week, I invite you to reflect on what you believe to be the characteristics of religious leadership, and how you might interpret them in your current context.

 

Characteristics of Religious Leadership

Piety

·         a willingness to cultivation a devotional life that includes prayer, Scripture reading, and theological texts

·         a willingness to cultivate a disciplined life that includes maintaining personal relationships, self care, exercise, hobbies, leisure, and rest.

·         an willingness to discern the call God has places on your life, and rearrange your life choices accordingly.

Connectedness

·         investing in personal relationships with the women and men under your care.

·         a willingness to set your personal comfort aside for the sake of the kingdom.

·         a willingness to engage with whatever means of communication the men and women under your care use (for some that means learning how to write church newsletters, for others it means learning how to use Twitter).

Cultural Awareness

·         a willingness to investigate what’s going on in the world. You don’t have to be glued to the news, but you should have a basic sense of what’s happening in the world.

·         a willingness to discern which elements of the culture are helpful in fostering Christian discipleship, and which elements are unhelpful.

 

Effectively Organized

·         a willingness to organize your responsibilities and commitments in a way that allows you to use your time efficiently.

·         a willingness to say no to projects that you have neither the time, or the responsibility for.

·         a willingness to work well with others and delegate responsibilities accordingly.

 

All citations taken from:

 

Wigger, John. American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. London: Oxford University Press, 2009.