A Review of “Race and Redemption in Puritan New England” by Richard A. Bailey

I don’t think often about the reality of racism. It’s not something I am proud of; a luxury afforded me for being born white. I hadn’t thought much about racism in conjunction with the Puritans either. Over the last few years the reality that these great men of the faith were in fact also slave owners has hit me. It’s a subject often overlooked by the church, but it warrants our attention. Despite the many frustrations I have with his book Richard A. Bailey knows the importance of talking about the Puritans’ racism.

Race and Redemption in Puritan New England attempts to draw connections between the theological beliefs and the racial abuse found among the colonists. This idea actually caught me off guard initially. My approach to racism among the Puritans was to try to draw out an explanation for how they could hold to their theology and yet also hold to their racism. But Bailey actually posits that it was to some degree their theology that allowed them to hold to their racism. He notes the purpose of this book is to contend that “race was created, at least in part, out of the spiritual freedoms offered by New England Puritanism” (7). Though Bailey doesn’t break them down this way exactly, he touches on the Puritans’ views of the Imago Dei and evangelism. These two doctrines, examined from different vantage points, helped to formulate Puritan racism, according to Bailey.

One particularly important aspect of this theology was their development of a racialized sense of sin. Bailey notes, in this work, several ways in which the Puritans utilized formulated theological beliefs along the borders of racial identity. While many of the Puritans affirmed that the Natives and Africans among them were created in the image of God – though some weren’t sure about even this – they struggled to explain the obvious physical differences between them. Over time these differences began to be utilized to construct a theological framework for thinking about these other New Englanders. Blackness of skin, then, was translated into blackness of soul. And the imago Dei in Natives and Africans was limited and diminished. “The clergy,” says Bailey, “also imagined that New Englanders of color had proclivities toward specific sins.” He continues, stating: By means of such a racialized sense of sin, then, they imagined Indians and Africans as children of the devil, stressing what they perceived as the ‘moral capacities and disabilities’ of men and women of color” (54). When they focused on the subject of redemption too they tended to racialize their evangelistic theology. To evangelize the “savages,” then, meant to civilize them. Some even spoke of salvation in the afterlife as a transition to “whiteness” for their neighbors of color. Bailey exposes in all its unsettling nature the language of the Puritans, and a language grounded in a theology.

It should not, however, be assumed that this book is flawless in its presentation of this information. While I found the concepts of Race and Redemption in Puritan New England extremely important there were moments where the development of this content was less than impressive. Bailey, at times, does not seem to understand Puritanism. In chapter one he seeks to explain the theological framework that led to Puritan racism by basically describing a series of contradictions within Calvinism. What he calls contradictions, however, are more precisely known as antinomies or tensions. To say that God’s love and wrath are a contradiction is to misunderstand not simply Calvinism, but more precisely God’s love and God’s wrath. There are moments in this chapter where Bailey seems to suggest that the Puritans had simply settled themselves to a life of inconsistency and as such were more than able to embrace racial prejudice while holding to the imago Dei. Such a view, even overlooking his misunderstandings of Puritan theology, is simply too simplistic. There are also moments where he suggests that their view of their African and Native neighbors as “pagans” or “children of the devil” was unique. He attempts to correct this at times, noting that the Puritans saw all non-Christians this way. He views their efforts at evangelism as condescending and arrogant, when in reality they are simply part and parcel of a whole Christian worldview, not rooted in racial bias. It’s clear that these doctrines took a different shape as they were applied to Natives and Africans, but Bailey doesn’t do a great job at time distinguishing between the difference.

In order to ground all of this in reality of course the author has to demonstrate the racism from the colonial literature. In general Bailey does a great job of this, but at times his use of quotations is sketchy. He quotes single words or phrases from literature but with little to no context. He gives us glimpses into their writing but not full pictures. Sometimes he even takes the liberty to suggest what the scene was like with no historical documentation. In these cases he makes clear that he is suggesting what may have happened but it certainly leaves an impression of realism on the reader. I don’t doubt Bailey’s conclusions, but I sometimes question the means to that end.

Overall I think this is an important book for students of the Puritans to read. It exposes us to the life of these great heroes of the faith that too many ignore or are simply ignorant of. We need to consider carefully failures not only in their morality but more pointedly in their theological expressions. How might their theology have been abused to defend their racism? How might it do the same for us if we’re not careful. We may learn from our Puritan forebears in more ways than one, and in the area of racial prejudice I believe we need to learn from their failures. Richard A. Bailey in Race and Redemption in Puritan New England can help us.