How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery

[struggle4progress]

35. What were John Brown's beliefs?

... Brown's Christian faith was a central and defining theme of his life ... He believed that God had called him to give his life (which included the likelihood of dying) in the antislavery cause and for the black man's freedom. He did not have a wacko view of religion. Most people in that era believed in divine providence and "vocation," or calling. Brown believed God had called him to this work and he felt compelled to try to do something and after failing at Harpers Ferry, he happily resigned himself to dying for the cause. If this makes him appear fanatical today, it's probably because we are far more secular overall as a nation, and tend to judge religious people of the past from our psychological, agnostic oriented intellectualism ... Despite being a theological conservative, John Brown was socially progressive, particularly when it came to matters of "race" and justice ... John Brown was not only anti-slavery, but believed that blacks and other non-whites were made in God's image and that all peoples were equals as humans. This is also a religious belief, but it had such a complete impact upon his social and political life that he was seen in his day as "fanatical" because he was among a relatively small segment of whites in the U.S. who actually treated blacks and Native Americans as peers and colleagues ... He believed in Christianity and the vocation of the United States as the inheritance of the "city on a hill" vision of the early Puritans. He believed that a republic was fundamentally incompatible with chattel slavery and racial prejudice. He believed that black people, if given freedom and power, would function as well as whites because we all come, in the words of St. Paul, from "one blood." Notwithstanding his humanity, errors, and failures, Brown believed in freedom, equality, and human rights for all people when many of the "greatest" leaders in this nation either were outright racists or were conflicted, hypocritical, and inconsistent advocates of "liberty" ...

http://abolitionist-john-brown.blogspot.com/2010/11/q-what-were-john-browns-beliefs-my.html