Rev Jonathan Edwards personally bought and owned slaves all his adult life.

He also wrote a paper defending the right of pastors to buy slaves. In it he told abolitionists to; stop causing “disturbances and raising uneasiness among people against their minister, to the great wounding of religion”. And says they must, “be silent and confess that they were too sudden and rash in casting such reproaches on their pastor, to the great wounding of religion.”. And challenges them to prove harm of “partaking of negroes’ slavery, or confess that there is no hurt in partaking in it”.

In all the chat I heard about the passionate and pious Jonathan Edwards, why did no one mention that? It’s concerning that he is put forward as an exemplar of holiness to young people.

“Edwards purchased a succession of slaves during his career in Northampton and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The first, a teenaged girl named Venus, who was kidnapped in Africa; the last, a child named Titus, in 1756. Other slaves that we know of that he owned were named Leah, and Rose, and a married couple, Joseph and Sue.

Jonathan’s wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, daughter of New Haven’s leading clerical family, actively sought to procure slaves from family members and from her husband’s ministerial colleagues.”

“Jonathan Edwards enjoyed a lot of study time, in large part, because of his slaves”

Quotations of Edwards own words from Princeton: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/jonathan-edwards


See also this article from Pathos, on John Piper’s approach to Edwards:

John Piper’s “Wishful Thinking” about Jonathan Edwards and Slavery