The Abolitionist Imagination – Part III: The Theology of the Oppressor

“God is my judge. I will not bow down to the oppressor.” — Henry Highland Garnet

Introduction: From Chains to Theology

In the earlier essays of this seven-part series, we traced how Christianity was bent to serve empire and how enslaved Africans reclaimed it as a faith of liberation. This third essay turns to the fruit of that reclamation — the birth of a new theology.

Black abolitionist voices did not simply resist oppression; they redefined faith itself. Their witness created a theology tested in suffering, vindicated in justice, and rooted in freedom. In their hands, Christianity became what it was always meant to be: good news for the oppressed.

Critics sometimes argue that Black Christian abolitionists were not “real theologians” because they did not produce systematic treatises or commentaries like their white counterparts. At best, the argument goes, they were “second-class” theologians — more activists or poets than serious thinkers.

That objection rests on a narrow and Eurocentric definition of theology. If theology is, as Anselm wrote, fides quaerens intellectum — “faith seeking understanding” (Proslogion I) — then the theology of the enslaved was no less profound. Their work simply took other forms: lived, prophetic, and contextual.

This essay reclaims those figures as the first Christian liberation theologians in America — interpreters of divine justice whose witness transformed Christianity itself.

The Many Genres of Theology

Scripture itself contains many genres: law, poetry, prophecy, narrative, and epistle. The church has long recognized that theology need not appear only in systematic form. Augustine’s Confessions and Hildegard of Bingen’s hymns are both considered theology because they interpret divine truth through lived experience.¹

By the same measure, Equiano’s autobiography, Wheatley’s poetry, Walker’s pamphlets, and Douglass’s narratives are theological texts. They wrestle with God’s providence, human dignity, and the meaning of redemption through lived encounters with suffering and grace.

As Psalm 78:4 declares, “We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.” Testimony is theology.

Lived and Prophetic Theology

Black Christians forged theology from the underside of history. They reflected on God’s character not in classrooms but in cotton fields, hush arbors, and makeshift pulpits of oppression.² Their questions were timeless: Where is God in suffering? How does Christ liberate? How do we resist Pharaoh today?

Spirituals such as “Go Down, Moses” and “Steal Away to Jesus” — songs rooted in the Exodus story — proclaimed that God is the deliverer of the oppressed.³ Their theology was not abstract speculation but lived interpretation: God revealed through endurance, solidarity, and the conviction that divine justice will not sleep forever.

Each of these voices — Wheatley’s poetry, Walker’s prophecy, Douglass’s moral critique, Distinct Contributions of Black Abolitionist Theology

Black abolitionist theologians wrote in genres as diverse as Scripture itself, but their claim was the same: God stands with the enslaved.

• Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784): Through poetry she affirmed spiritual equality — “Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”⁴

• David Walker (1785–1830): His Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) warned that America faced divine judgment — a prophetic exegesis of national hypocrisy.⁵

• Frederick Douglass (1818–1895): In his Narrative (1845) Appendix he contrasted “the Christianity of Christ” with “the Christianity of this land,” exposing moral corruption within the church.⁶

• Sojourner Truth (1797–1883): In her 1851 Akron speech (as printed in the Anti-Slavery Bugle) she joined women’s equality and abolition, insisting that the Spirit’s voice speaks through the oppressed body.⁷

• Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882): His 1843 “Address to the Slaves” declared, “Let your motto be RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE!”⁸

• Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897): In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) she wrote, “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women,” developing a theology of prayer, providence, and moral agency.⁹

Together they produced a complete theology — of creation, sin, redemption, and hope — written not in ivory towers but in chains and courage. Their work stands as an American counterpart to the prophetic and liberation traditions of Scripture.

From Exclusion to Prophecy: A New Theology Emerges

Seminaries and presses barred Black students from formal training, and church hierarchies excluded them from pulpits. Their absence from dogmatic treatises is not proof of inferiority but evidence of systemic exclusion.

What they did produce — poetry, autobiography, hymnody, and narrative — were theological innovations born of necessity. Richard Allen’s founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) and its Doctrines and Discipline (1817) codified a theology of freedom and dignity — an ecclesial act of protest and prophecy.¹⁰

The Hebrew prophets were not systematizers but proclaimers of God’s justice. Moses confronted empire; Amos thundered, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Likewise, enslaved and free Black Christians preached liberation avant la lettre. Their faith declared that God sides with the poor, critiques kings, and exposes idolatry — not of golden calves but of racial hierarchy and profit.

Jewish Continuity: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

A century later, Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel carried this prophetic vision into the modern age. Marching beside Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, he reflected, “I felt my legs were praying.”¹¹

For Heschel, theology was not speculative but incarnate — prayer translated into justice. In this he echoed the same logic as enslaved Black Christians: faith without action is false, and piety without justice is blasphemy. Their shared conviction forms an unbroken thread from Amos to Selma: God walks with the oppressed.

Canon Control and the Criterion of Justice

For centuries, white theologians controlled seminaries, publishing houses, and canons — determining who counts as a theologian and what counts as theology. This constitutes what Miranda Fricker calls epistemic injustice — the denial of authority to speak about God.¹²

As a result:

• Luther is taught without reference to his antisemitic tract On the Jews and Their Lies (1543).¹³

• Edwards, Hodge, Dabney, and Thornwell are often taught without reference to their slaveholding and pro-slavery theologies.¹⁴

• Black abolitionists are dismissed as “activists” rather than theologians.

If theology is measured not by complexity of argument but by conformity to divine justice, the hierarchy collapses.

Comparative Table: Traditional vs. Black Abolitionist Theology

This contrast reveals not merely two methods of theology but two visions of God: one abstract and distant, the other relational and incarnate. The first built systems of power; the second built communities of faith. The first defended order; the second demanded justice.

Justice as the Measure of Theology

If we judge theology by its alignment with divine justice rather than academic form, the map of Christian thought changes. Many orthodox thinkers were morally compromised on slavery and racism, while those denied education and ordination articulated a theology truer to the gospel’s core.

Black abolitionist theology defended the imago Dei — the divine image in every human being — against its denial. It proclaimed that salvation must also mean freedom. Their theology outlived the systems that enslaved them.

Conclusion: The Gospel of Exodus

Black abolitionist voices may not have written systematic tomes like Hodge or Calvin, but they forged a theology more urgent — one that declared that God hears the cries of the oppressed, that Christ stands with the enslaved, and that the gospel demands freedom.

Their theology stands in continuity with the prophets of Israel and the liberating vision of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. It measures truth by justice, not hierarchy.

To call them “second-class theologians” is to misunderstand what theology is. They were not marginal but central — the first Christian liberation theologians in America.

Their witness continues to inspire liberation movements across the world. In their hands, theology ceased to be the systematics of empire and became the gospel of Exodus:

“Let my people go.”

Notes

Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia harmoniae celestium revelationum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

Dena J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977).

Phillis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, 1773). Authoritative texts confirm wording (“Negros”). The Poetry Foundation +1

David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (Boston, 1829). NEH-Edsitement +1

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845), Appendix. SparkNotes +1

Sojourner Truth, “Address at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, 1851,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851 (Marius Robinson transcript). Educating for American Democracy +1

Henry Highland Garnet, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” (1843). Full text confirms “RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE! RESISTANCE!” Digital Commons.

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1861), ch. 6; authoritative online editions confirm “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women.” Project Gutenberg +1

The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1817); see Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

Abraham Joshua Heschel, quoted in Susannah Heschel, Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness (New York: Continuum, 2001), 140.

Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).