I. Eighteenth-Century Christianity and Slavery: Historical Treatments

Scholarship on Christianity and slavery in eighteenth-century America and the Atlantic world has struggled with how to acknowledge Christianity's potential for good, including, eventually, the well-known reform and abolition efforts of the nineteenth century, while also analyzing its complicity with the development and expansion of the slave trade and plantation economies in the American colonies. For some, the negative weight of the latter erases any recognition of the former. Stephen Stein argued that George Whitefield's defense of slavery should exclude him from consideration as an important forerunner of nineteenth-century humanitarian efforts.Footnote ⁷ Forrest Wood demonstrated the power of Christian conceptions of election and covenant in American history—ideas which eventually appealed to slaves themselves—and acknowledged that “the sense of obligation that accompanied the privilege of being chosen” could result in “humility, generosity, humanitarianism, compassion, and an open mind.” Yet the overarching argument of Wood's book is that North American Christianity was (and is) beset by the “dark side” of this “favored-people doctrine,” which contributes to the “arrogance, conceit, indifference, contempt, and closed minds” that create and buttress “institutional racism.”Footnote ⁸

More recent studies continue to wrestle with how to acknowledge the ways in which eighteenth-century Christianity and its missionaries were initially motivated by a scripturally-based “conception of human unity” while at the same time highlighting how these missionaries used their faith to differentiate themselves religiously and racially, often in service of their own economic interests. Christians relied on scriptural descriptions of kinship and lineage to support their understanding of human unity and the need for mission—and eventually Christian slaves would use the same hermeneutics to assert their right of resistance—but such scriptural passages could also be used, as Colin Kidd has shown, in a “more sinister capacity to encourage the importation of divinely authorised categories of blessed and cursed.”Footnote ⁹ Conceiving of Christianity in scriptural terms of lineage also allowed, Rebecca Goetz has argued, white masters to limit Christianity to a “heritable characteristic” tied to whiteness.Footnote ¹⁰ Finally, as Travis Glasson has explained, “the belief in essential human unity,” which initially motivated missionary organizations like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), was strikingly weakened once the SPG became entangled in the economies and practice of slavery itself, in some cases contributing to the tightening of racially-based legal definitions and slave codes.Footnote ¹¹

Studies of slavery in Georgia have generally highlighted the political and economic reasons for both its restriction (in 1735) and its eventual reintroduction (in 1751), while barely touching on religion—except where religion has been analyzed as a “tool” used for social and economic ends. Frank Lambert wrote that religion—specifically seen in the goals of evangelization and the economic survival of the orphanage Whitefield founded in 1740—offered convenient reasons for Whitefield to justify his acceptance of slavery; likewise, Alan Gallay argued that Whitefield used religion to defend and support the economic institution of slavery, paving the way for the nineteenth-century use of “religion as a form of social control,” which would become “an essential element in the ideology of the southern master class.”Footnote ¹²

Scholarship on Christianity and slavery in the eighteenth century has emphasized how protestants became complicit in the great economic and social evil of their time and did so by disregarding their own ideal of human unity or by merely using religious language in order to justify ulterior motives. While not denying the social and economic motivations behind Christians’ defense of slavery, this essay argues that their acceptance of slavery relied on a significant theological tradition of providential thought and retrospective narration. This tradition—the same that motivated their missionary efforts—was not disregarded nor simply used for social convenience; rather, mid-eighteenth-century protestants like Whitefield and the Pietists understood their acceptance of slavery as a demonstration of their trust in God's guidance over human affairs and narrated this acceptance with the same providential language they used to describe their mission.

II. Providential Conceptions of Mission: Whitefield's Reliance on the Pietists

In 1742, George Whitefield wrote Gotthilf August Francke and reported on recent Christian efforts in the colony of Georgia. Whitefield saw his missionary work in Georgia as part of a transatlantic movement to convert the world to Christianity, a movement in which Francke played a vital role as the director of the well-known charitable and educational Francke Foundations in Halle. Whitefield had met two Pietist missionaries from the Francke Foundations in the community of Ebenezer, Georgia, and he observed in their work—particularly in their orphanage, organization, and industry—an example for his own.

“Our Lord intends to do great things for Georgia yet,” Whitefield effused to Francke, and with that “yet,” Whitefield enunciated his belief in God's direction over his and his fellow missionaries’ actions. Whitefield's phrase recognized both past efforts that remained unfulfilled and hope in the anticipated but unknowable future. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed in God's providence over human affairs and was convinced that this providence was currently directing a dramatic expansion of Christ's kingdom on earth, both through local charitable work and revivals and through more distant missions. Seeking to record this providential expansion, Whitefield longed to hear reports from Gotthilf Francke on the Pietists’ missionary work in Halle and the American colonies, and Whitefield, in turn, wanted to share news of his revival work in the colonies, England, and Scotland:

In his scripturally-laden description, Whitefield acknowledged differences among missionaries, but he saw them all as contributing to a single end: the new Jerusalem prophesied in the Book of Isaiah.Footnote ¹⁹ In recording the cumulative and far-reaching efforts of himself and his contemporaries, Whitefield found evidence of God's providential oversight over missionary endeavors and hope for the prophesied peace, unity, and salvation.

The Pietists Whitefield met in Ebenezer, in fact, reinforced a longstanding influence of Pietism on Whitefield's missionary endeavors. In his 1742 letter to Francke, Whitefield excitedly recalled the effect of Francke's father's famous account of his orphanage in Halle. August Francke's account of his charitable efforts in Halle, Segensvolle Fußstapfen des noch lebenden und waltenden liebreichen und getreuen Gottes (The blessed footsteps of God, who is faithful and rich in love, who still lives and reigns), first appeared in 1701. It was very popular, quickly translated into English, and published in 1705 under the title Pietas Hallensis: Or a publick Demonstration of a Divine Being yet in the World. By 1706, Francke's account began appearing in English under what would become its more popular title: An Abstract of the Marvellous Footsteps of Divine Providence.Footnote ²⁰ It was read by evangelicals in both Old and New England, with the puritan Cotton Mather reporting: “All the World has read the amazing Story.”Footnote ²¹ For Whitefield and others who were involved in the early Methodist movement in England and missionary efforts in Georgia—including the brothers John and Charles Wesley—the story of the Francke Foundations spurred their own desire to found an orphanage in colonial Georgia. As Harry Stout writes, for Charles Wesley “such an institution would serve the cause of both charity and piety. It would be a place that redeemed young orphans in body and soul.”Footnote ²²

Whitefield wrote Gotthilf Francke that the memory of his father “is still precious to me. His account of the Orphan house hath, under God, been a great support & encouragement to me in a like Undertaking.” August Francke's account shaped Whitefield's excitement for his work and the connection he felt to the transatlantic evangelical community. Whitefield wrote Gotthilf Francke, “For tho‘ I never saw You in the flesh, yet I love You in the bowels of Jesus Xt, & wish You much prosperity in the work of the Lord.”Footnote ²³ Whitefield described a spiritual connection of common, evangelical purpose that surpassed any personal meeting.

In his letter to Francke, Whitefield enclosed the 1742 account he wrote of his own orphanage, Bethesda, founded south of Savannah in 1740. This account was a defense of Whitefield's fundraising for Bethesda. Crucial to his defense were letters and accounts that emphasized the expansive and providentially-directed nature of the contemporary revivals and Bethesda's place within these revivals. Whitefield included a letter from Benjamin Colman, a New England Congregationalist minister, which made this case by suggesting a parallel between Bethesda and Francke's orphanage in Halle. Whitefield seconded Colman's parallel with his own description of the Francke Foundations, and then transcribed large sections of Francke's account. Indeed, Whitefield filled the remainder of his Bethesda account—pages 26 through 82—with text directly taken from Francke's account.Footnote ²⁴

Francke's account had enormous influence in encouraging missionary activities like Bethesda, even though Francke repeatedly denied any human agency or direction in the foundation of his charitable institutions. This denial, however, gave the account its significance and adaptability for other missionary endeavors. Whitefield found in Francke's account and its retrospective attribution of all success to God a basis for his own efforts. Throughout the portion excerpted from Francke, Whitefield printed manicules—or pointing fingers—in the margins, in order to direct readers to passages especially relevant to Whitefield's situation. In the end, there were several manicules per page, and almost all pointed to passages praising God's direction. Whitefield was convinced that “God can help us in Georgia, as well as he helped Professor Franck in Germany.” Indeed, “Professor Franck met with unspeakably more Contempt and Calumny, whilst he was building the Orphan-House in Germany.”

Through the lens of Francke's retrospective account of his providentially-inspired successes, Whitefield could both perceive and present Bethesda's present troubles as a sign of God's providential direction over his work. August Francke's account detailed his early struggles, many of which involved finances and accusations of wrongdoing, struggles with which Whitefield strongly identified. With Francke in mind, Whitefield proclaimed that he would not be ashamed of his fundraising efforts on Bethesda's behalf. The need to provide funding for Bethesda actually spurred Whitefield's itinerancy: fundraising was “one great Means in [God's] Hand of bringing me out to preach the everlasting Gospel in so many places, and to many Thousands of poor perishing Souls, who I doubt not (be it spoken with all Humility) will evidence my Commission thereto, by being my Joy and Crown of Rejoycing in the last Day.”Footnote ²⁵ Humble or not, Whitefield—like Francke—saw and narrated God's direction in his missionary work, both that already accomplished and that planned.

Whitefield highlighted passages from Francke that emphasized, through retrospective voice, God's past and continuing providence. For Francke, the account represented a “Duty” to both the present and future: narrating the Francke Foundations’ amazing story would, per Hebrews 10:24, inspire others to grow in “Christian Charity.” According to Francke, his contemporaries suffered from “ungrateful Unbelief” and often failed to perceive God's providence; publications like Francke's were God's merciful means to provide a “present Narrative for a Memorial to After-ages, that they may magnify his Name.” Although focused on the future, Francke nonetheless hoped that his contemporaries might recognize God's support and “Bounty” in the past and present and have faith that God “was ready to do still greater Things” in the future, “if we could but believe.”Footnote ²⁶

In fending off his contemporary critics, Whitefield relied on Francke's retrospective narration of his activities and efforts to discern God's providence, even in describing economic and physical setbacks. In Francke's account, when the Halle orphanage faced financial troubles or sickness, he trusted God, and “the Lord provided,” whether through a donation, an apothecary, or a physician. While attributing all to God, this retrospective attentiveness to God's continuous guidance also motivated and defended human action in the present with trust in the future. The account's capacity to spur action and to narrate setbacks explains, in fact, its citation and afterlife in later transatlantic missionary endeavors. For Francke himself, if people disagreed with his efforts, he referred them not only to past providences but also to the future, writing: “I never as yet have miss'd my Aim, when I have undertaken any Thing in Dependence upon the Lord.” Francke waited on “the Day . . . wherein the Lord will make manifest the Counsels of the Hearts.” Francke's comment is a reference to 1 Corinthians 4:5, in which the apostle Paul worries not about human judges but waits on the future, when Christ will come, peer into the deepest motivations behind human actions, and judge all that is past. In response to critics, Francke, citing the proto-missionary Paul, insisted that he did not presume to know God's plan or judgment but strove to undertake God's work by pursuing it with humility.Footnote ²⁷

Whitefield found in Francke's faith and retrospective narrative a model for defending and encouraging mission based on God's providence, both past and future. From the first pages of his defense of Bethesda, Whitefield followed Francke's model, retrospectively accentuating his powerlessness as he explained how his motives in founding the orphan house were focused on “the Salvation of Souls” and that “God put it into my Heart to build this House.” Further, Whitefield attributed all of the orphanage's success—both spiritual and economic—to God. In response to his critics, Whitefield emphasized not only this past and present humility but also a future perspective. Regardless of their suspicions, Whitefield asked his enemies “at least to pray” that he go about his work in resignation and with an eye to God's will. With these prayers, Whitefield was convinced, “they will see happy Issue of this Work and future Ages have reason to bless God, for ever putting it into my Heart to build an Orphan-House in Georgia.” Following Francke, Whitefield defended his motives and the rightness of his work by arguing that his critics would someday see the fruits of his labor and God's ultimate direction, regardless of any presently perceived setback.Footnote ²⁸

Through retrospection, Whitefield and Francke anticipated the future resolution of difficulties in their evangelical endeavors. Whitefield exemplified this attitude in his 1742 expression of optimism to Gotthilf Francke: “our Lord intends to do great things for Georgia yet.”Footnote ²⁹ Whitefield's hope in the future, his faith that God's blessing would yet further and confirm contemporary missionary zeal, and his willingness to live in delayed certainty demonstrate the deep permeation and resonance of providential, retrospective narration in eighteenth-century protestantism.

III. Providential Defenses of Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Georgia

Despite Whitefield's efforts and confidence in God's mercy, Georgia struggled economically. By the 1740s many in Georgia became convinced that the economic survival of the colony required slavery. In the colony-wide debates over the introduction of slavery, Whitefield and the Pietist pastors in Ebenezer came to sharp disagreement. Scholars have emphasized the different economic circumstances faced by Whitefield and the Pietists. Bethesda was in constant financial straits, and Whitefield's plantation-owning benefactors in South Carolina were key proponents of slavery. Meanwhile, the Pietists in Ebenezer achieved moderate success without slaves and actually feared economic repercussions from the introduction of slavery—such as less land and employment for white settlers, who would be edged out by the larger plantations and unpaid labor that came with slavery.Footnote ³⁰

In explaining the acceptance of slavery among evangelical Christians in Georgia, scholars have privileged these economic contexts and motivations and overlooked the importance of providential thought. Alan Gallay has argued that evangelicals like Whitefield and the Bryans used religion—meaning particularly the hope of slave conversion and future salvation—to “rationalize” the brutality of an institution that they made little real effort to reform or change.Footnote ³¹ Such an argument misses the significance of Whitefield's providential language and suggests that slavery was primarily an economic and not a moral issue for Whitefield—and that religion served only as a convenient justification. In fact, the economics of slavery were understood within the belief in God's providential oversight and the accompanying retrospective narration that had proven central components of eighteenth-century protestant mission.Footnote ³²

In debating slavery, both Whitefield and the Pietist pastors relied on the same commitment to God's providential guidance, albeit in different ways. Based on his past experience and faith in God's guidance over his life and mission, Whitefield promoted slavery, seeing it as a means given by God to promote the flourishing of evangelical religion in Georgia: slave labor would provide economic support for Whitefield's missionary efforts at Bethesda, and the importation of slaves itself represented an opportunity to convert Africans to Christianity. The Pietists also eventually accepted slavery; although they had anxieties regarding its introduction and had trouble perceiving God's direction in the present, they also relied on a tradition of providential thought. They insisted that God worked through temporal authorities and had a plan for slavery that would, eventually, become clear in retrospect.

Despite their differences of opinion on slavery, the common dependence on providence—albeit distinctly interpreted—actually allowed Whitefield and the Pietists to remain united in their missionary efforts. In nineteenth-century slavery debates, as Mark Noll has argued, Christians developed different interpretations of the same scripture, which irreparably damaged the once-shared hermeneutical practices of evangelical protestants in the early American Republic.Footnote ³³ In eighteenth-century slavery debates, however, providential thought and narration allowed protestants to emphasize or accent different interpretations of the past and hopes for the future while remaining firmly committed to a common idea and language of God's direction and Christian mission. This commitment brought them together, and it was, importantly, in their united efforts that they saw confirmation of the great and widespread outworking of God's grace.

Whitefield outlined the advantages of slavery in providential language as early as the 1742 published defense of Bethesda. He argued that “a limited use of Negroes” would make Georgia “as flourishing a Colony as South-Carolina.” In line with the providential style of narration that shaped the rest of the tract, Whitefield promoted this change “with the greatest Caution and Circumspection,” relying not on man but on God, who, “having helped me and mine so often, encourages me to trust him again.”Footnote ³⁴ If Georgia was meant to have slaves, Whitefield believed, God would provide.

Whitefield was not alone among Anglican missionaries in his acceptance of slavery as a part of colonial life and evangelization. The SPG had been sending Anglican missionaries to North America since the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the goals of shoring up the loose organization of the Church of England in the American colonies and converting Africans and Native Americans to Christianity. Many of these missionaries, however, were overwhelmed by the work among dispersed communities of English people and claimed to have little time to visit and catechize Africans and Native Americans. Catechizing slaves also depended on the masters’ cooperation; masters were often reluctant to allow slaves time off for instruction or opportunities to gather in large groups.Footnote ³⁵

In order to gain the cooperation of masters, SPG missionaries became increasingly aligned with the planters’ interests. Some missionaries became slave owners themselves and the SPG eventually owned and operated a plantation in Barbados. As Travis Glasson has argued, by 1740 this “tightening relationship with slavery had begun to have serious effects on its missionary program,” as the SPG “and its supporters had become enamored with the power and profits that slaveholding promised.”Footnote ³⁶ While SPG missionaries did not entirely give up working with slaves and attempting to reform slaveholding, their efforts further decreased in the wake of the religious revivals known as the Great Awakening. According to Glasson, the revivals of this period inadvertently strengthened ties between the SPG and slavery. In responding to the social disorder caused by revivalists—including Whitefield—Anglican missionaries reiterated their commitment to upholding the social order and their alliance with plantation owners.Footnote ³⁷

Whitefield and the SPG had their differences when it came to revival, but both depended on the economic support made possible by slavery, and Whitefield's writings demonstrate how this economic support was understood within God's providence.Footnote ³⁸ Bethesda's success as a missionary enterprise depended on its financial stability; and both the mission and its finances, Whitefield wrote, ultimately relied on God. Whitefield knew through Francke's example that accounting for Bethesda's finances would help demonstrate God's direction over Whitefield's work and would, in turn, attract and reassure supporters. Whitefield's providential understanding of missionary economics is evident even in his correspondence from before the slavery debates. In 1740 Whitefield wrote Henry Newman, a Pietist representative in London, who forwarded Whitefield's letter to Gotthilf Francke in Halle. Whitefield described God's blessing on the Ebenezer Pietists, evidenced not only in their spiritual achievements but also in their economic flourishing. He ended with reference to Psalm 16:6: “Surely God has answered their Prayer, has cast their Lot at lenght [sic] in a fair Ground, and given them a goodly heritage.” Whitefield sought the same providential blessing in the economic success of his own missionary and institutional efforts, and promoted, like the Ebenezer community, cottage industry. He reported that he hired spinners and a weaver for Bethesda, who had produced “above a hundred yards of home-spun cloth.” For materials, they used cotton harvested by the Bethesda orphans. As Whitefield explained, “Picking Cotton is excellent employment for my little orphans.” Whitefield understood that missionary success relied on economic success, and both—in language Whitefield had adopted from Francke's account and from Psalm 16—depended ultimately on God's providential oversight.Footnote ³⁹

Whitefield's followers in Georgia and South Carolina embraced his faith in God's providence and corresponding commitment to mission and promoted Bethesda's economic success on behalf of this faith and commitment. In March of 1747, the brothers Hugh and Jonathan Bryan purchased a plantation and slaves for Whitefield in South Carolina, where slavery was legal. Whitefield wrote that God inspired his friends to this purchase, which would provide financial support for Bethesda's mission, and he named his new plantation “Providence.” Meanwhile, James Habersham, the superintendent of Bethesda from 1740 to 1743, recognized that the orphanage's flourishing depended on Georgia's success and accordingly created an economic plan for the colony. This plan influenced the trustees’ 1749 decision to legalize slavery.Footnote ⁴⁰

In promoting slavery, Whitefield and his supporters used the powerful providential and retrospective language that provided such critical motivation to eighteenth-century Christian mission and revivalism in the Atlantic world. Whitefield and his supporters were firmly convinced that the slave trade could benefit Christian mission by contributing to the economic success of Bethesda. They also believed, as discussed below, that the introduction of slavery offered opportunities for the conversion of Africans and the growth of Christianity. Expanding the picture beyond Whitefield, however, demonstrates that there was disagreement on this issue among eighteenth-century protestants and reveals the different ways in which protestants relied on providential thought and its corresponding retrospective language in debating slavery.

Whitefield's friends and contemporaries, the Pietists in Ebenezer and Halle, illuminate both the diversity among Christian attitudes toward slavery at the time and the common commitment to providential faith and language. Instead of emphasizing a future perspective that would reveal the benefits of the slave trade to Christian mission, the Pietists were skeptical of slave conversion. They focused, rather, on the importance of obedience to providentially-appointed governing authorities and a future perspective that would reveal God's wisdom over the issue of slavery, even if they encountered it with anxiety in the present.

In September 1747 Hermann Heinrich Lemke, the assistant minister in Ebenezer, wrote Gotthilf Francke concerning community disagreements over slavery. Ebenezer's loyal support of the trustees’ policy to exclude slavery had opened the community to criticism from the colony's slavery proponents, affecting even the longstanding friendship between the head pastor of Ebenezer, Johann Martin Boltzius, and Whitefield. Boltzius opposed slavery for economic and moral reasons, and his economic evidence—Ebenezer's success—particularly aggravated those slavery advocates who were convinced that white settlers could not succeed agriculturally in Georgia's heat. By the late 1740s, slavery proponents tried to undermine Boltzius's authority by accusing him of exercising “spiritual tyranny” over Ebenezer and pointing to Ebenezer settlers who wanted slaves. Lemke's 1747 letter addressed this development.Footnote ⁴¹

Lemke described the controversy over slavery within Ebenezer by foreshadowing its providential resolution and highlighting a scriptural parallel that illuminated the Pietists’ attitude of obedience to God-appointed temporal authorities. He explained first that many inhabitants were tempted to own slaves, but the ministers feared slavery would destroy the community, bringing “great and manifold” misery. The community's surgeon, Johann Ludwig Meyer, convened the householders, however, and “the affair attained a good outcome that, through divine governance, no one desired such black slaves any longer.” Lemke emphasized the role of the layman Meyer in settling the community's dispute in order to stress that the stance on slavery within Ebenezer was not dictated by the ministers but shaped by a lay civic leader. In reporting the account to Francke, nonetheless, Lemke explained the situation and its resolution not by detailing Meyer's words or argument but by referring to a scriptural parallel: the biblical story from 1 Samuel 8, in which the Israelites asked Samuel to appoint a king, so that they might be like other nations. Samuel discouraged the Israelites—explaining the rights a king would have over them—but they persisted. Lemke saw the community's temptation for slaves stemming from a worldly desire to be like slave-holding neighbors in South Carolina. Like the Israelites, community members had not fully grasped the long-term consequences of their worldly desire: they would be beholden to the new political system they had prayed to God to create. Unlike the Israelites, however, the Ebenezer community was convinced, for a time, by warnings of the repercussions for worldly desire.Footnote ⁴²

Before it was legalized, the Ebenezer ministers promoted a providential interpretation of slavery as a symptom of human lust, to which community members would become servants, and which would bring God's future wrath. Were slavery introduced, Lemke wrote, “the judgment of God must be brought upon the land, and many perish in body and soul.” Even if this disaster were temporarily averted, the community would always be in danger of disregarding its spiritual health for “the love of the world, the lust of the flesh, and harmful concern for the stomach.” The leaders tried to convince parishioners, but the success of these efforts, Lemke emphasized, ultimately depended on God: “we . . . can go nowhere but to God, who wants to help. Let him preserve those among us who belong to him, and protect them from evil.” Lemke recognized God's providential power but, unlike Whitefield, did not find within that power the inevitability of slavery. He saw instead an evil to be avoided with God's help.Footnote ⁴³

When the trustees legalized slavery in 1749, Boltzius struggled to contemplate God's providence in the appearance of slaves in Georgia and in Ebenezer, and he deferred to the trustees’ authority. Boltzius would not prevent community members from acquiring slaves,Footnote ⁴⁴ but his journal suggests he remained unconvinced of both the economic necessity and the morality of slavery. Boltzius continued to argue that with a better work ethic more people in Georgia “would succeed without the help of Negro servants.” He worried about settlers borrowing money to buy slaves, thus becoming “slaves of their slaves and of the merchants, and also lazy people.” Furthermore, Boltzius questioned slavery's effect on white settlers who relied on wage labor, which slaves might overtake. As far as moral concerns, Boltzius recorded the opinions of the Council in Savannah:

Despite his dutiful recording of these arguments, Boltzius's other writings suggested that he remained unconvinced that Christians could in good conscience own slaves. In one journal entry from the same period, he cited reports from Pietist missionaries in Tranquebar, on the eastern coast of India, describing how their antislavery stance advanced their relationship with the local population and furthered their missionary success.Footnote ⁴⁶

Boltzius was not alone among evangelical Christians in expressing his skepticism over defenses of slavery, even within the context of supporting temporal authorities. In 1730, the SPG published a tract on its missionary work among slaves that contained an address and two letters by Bishop Edmund Gibson of London. The tract was intended to expand missionaries’ access to slaves and to advance evangelization by convincing readers—presumably white—that they were “an Instrument under God,” working to “see the Gospel propagated,” to promote “charitable Endeavours for the salvation of our Fellow-Creatures,” and to “find a very plentiful Reward from the Hands of God.” The sections written by the Bishop offered reassurances to masters, who, fearing a connection between baptism and civil freedom, limited missionaries’ access to slaves. While the bishop, in the interest of evangelization, reiterated that baptism did not necessitate or entail emancipation, the tract's editor, SPG Secretary David Humphreys, nonetheless concluded the publication by exhorting slave owners to consider seriously whether they, as Christians, would be able to justify either their actions or the common arguments on behalf of slavery when placed in a future position of retrospection:

Both the SPG message for missionizing slaves and Humphreys's foreboding contrapuntal on the morality of Christian slaveholding relied on tensely yet concurrently held providential understandings of God's oversight, the need to work within an existing social order, humans’ missionary work on God's behalf, and a future state of retrospectively based judgment and reward.

Unlike Boltzius and Humphreys, Whitefield perceived only positive signs of God's approval and direction—both in the future and in the immediate context—in his elation over the legalization of slavery in Georgia. In a May 1752 letter to Gotthilf Francke, Whitefield tried to describe his delight in terms with which Francke would agree: God's providence. Whitefield pointed to the missionary potential among the imported Africans. He assured Francke that “the father of earth and heaven” provided slaves and that even Boltzius understood slaves were needed for the cultivation of Georgia. Whitefield hoped “that many negro children will be brought up for the sake of Christ,” telling Francke that there is “no need to despair with Christ as your leader.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Francke responded unusually quickly—a mere two months later—and he also appealed to providence on the slavery issue, writing, “let us entrust the care to God.” He maintained, however, that “if it were for us to decide, we would wish that they [slaves] were not introduced in Georgia.” Based on the Ebenezer ministers’ reports, Francke was pessimistic about slave conversion; he feared that the slaves would be corrupted “because of the sins of those who are accustomed to treat them [slaves] in a non-Christian manner.” Instead of growing the church, Francke feared, slaves’ children would be tempted to sins “which provoke divine wrath.”Footnote ⁴⁹

Whitefield tried to convince Boltzius of the possibilities of slave conversion, and before the formal legalization of slavery Boltzius participated in meetings to ensure the new code promoted the spiritual care of slaves. Boltzius was unconvinced, however, that slave conversion was a reason to introduce slavery into Georgia. Some have suggested that Boltzius's skepticism over the introduction of slavery was due to racism. He would have preferred that the colony be settled by “white protestant people,” but whether his pessimism regarding slave conversion was due to racial attitudes or local concerns for the economy and security of his particular community is hard to tease apart.Footnote ⁵⁰ Rebecca Goetz has argued that, in colonial Virginia, Christianity was used to create hereditary notions of race that implied the impossibility of true conversion by Indians or Africans, an attitude that developed, in part, from legal efforts to assure planters that baptism would not make slaves free. These efforts came about because missionaries could not otherwise convince slave owners to grant access; unfortunately these arguments, according to Goetz, also implied the diminished “spiritual capacities” of Africans to become true Christians.Footnote ⁵¹ The question of how race affected conversion would eventually shape discussions of slavery in Georgia, including, perhaps, between Francke and Boltzius's successor, Christian Rabenhorst.Footnote ⁵²

For Boltzius, however, the immediate focus remained whether slaves’ conversions were fulfilling, or could fulfill, slavery proponents’ providential expectations of missionary potential. In 1756, Boltzius reported on the 42 slaves who were living in Ebenezer, five of whom were children “born and baptized here.” He explained that “they are better maintained in work, food, and clothing than in many other places, and are not allowed to work on Sundays for their food and clothes.” Nonetheless, Boltzius bemoaned the slaves’ spiritual state: “one unfortunately doesn't take time to bring them to the knowledge of the Christian religion.” Six years after the introduction of slavery, Boltzius still discussed it with bitterness. “I find it terrifying,” he wrote, “that these poor people—the same as cattle—remain in eternal slavery only to serve Christians with their work and in the end should be damned in the service of Christians. When one speaks publicly and privately on the topic and also acts with his office in the service of the negroes, it falls on deaf ears.”Footnote ⁵³

Regardless of the Pietists’ negative assessment of slavery and pessimism over conversion, in the end they referred the matter to providence, citing God's oversight and their hope for a future, retrospective perspective. While Boltzius continued to raise objections to slavery after its introduction, he also tried to understand it in terms of God's providence and care over missionary efforts. Boltzius tried to stop speaking against slavery—because, as he wrote, “God's hand could be involved in this matter”—and to illustrate concrete examples of God's direction over the Ebenezer community.Footnote ⁵⁴ The community faced, for example, an ever-decreasing number of white servants and also lost to epidemics promising children, many on the verge of becoming valuable laborers. In 1750 an epidemic variously identified as Rothe Friesel, scarlet fever, and measles killed 13 children—or approximately 5% of Ebenezer's population.Footnote ⁵⁵ Boltzius considered that perhaps God's hand was involved—both in bringing the epidemic as a judgment and sending slaves as much-needed labor at a time of population decline. He wrote: “I do not feel that I can object when people wish to introduce Negroes into our community; in this as in all things I trust in God, who will show us in good time whether or not this practice is of any advantage [nützlich] to our people here.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Boltzius echoed here the same providential appeals he often made when epidemic and death threatened his fragile mission: he located consolation in hope of future clarity (“On judgment day we will know clearly”) or in the reflection on past experiences, when God had shown mercy and aid (“the Lord always helps us up again.”)Footnote ⁵⁷

In his 1752 letter to Whitefield, Gotthilf Francke came to terms with the legalization of slavery by relying on the providential thought and narration that had guided first his father's and now his own missionary enterprise. He wrote:

Francke rejected Whitefield's conviction that slavery would grow the church, but Francke did accept the authority of Georgia's government as given by God. Like Boltzius, he expressed doubts and disappointment, but he also made peace with the contemporary political situation. Like his father—and Whitefield—Francke found in God's providence consolation for doubts, prescription for action, and hope for God's future resolution and continuing direction in missionary endeavors.