Theology Today - Vol 47, No. 3 - October 1990 - BOOK REVIEW - Race and Religion in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, 1850-1877: Protestant Parochial Philanthropists

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Race and Religion in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, 1850-1877: Protestant Parochial Philanthropists
By Joseph R. Washington, Jr.
Lewiston, New York, The Edwin Mellen Press, 198 8. 711 pp. $109.9 5.

This two-volume work is the tenth book-length publication by Joseph R. Washington. His Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity was first published in 1964 and was reprinted in 1984. Most scholars knowledgeable of the history and nature of African American Christianity lambasted its thesis that black American Christianity was a folk religion, a poor imitation of the authentic faith found among whites. Washington's 1967 publication, The Politics of God, appeared to be a retreat from this shocking characterization of African American Christianity. His other book-length publications include: Black and White Power Subreption (I 969), Marriage in Black and White (I 970), Black Sects and Cults (1972; reprinted 1984), Anti-Blackness in English Religion (1984), and his latest, Puritan Race Virtue, Vice, and Values 1620-1820 (1988).

The present work has its strengths. Washington has attempted an historical, interpretive essay on the social ethics of some of the major American religious figures during the mid-nineteenth century. The central concern in these volumes is to examine the degree to which mainly white, but also a significant number of black, Christians related their ethical ideals to issues involving race-African colonization, suffrage, abolitionism and the slavery controversy, and the efforts during the Reconstruction period to include blacks as equal citizens in the American commonwealth. Washington terms his exercise an "American Christian Ethics experimental interpretive essay" focusing on "the social (secular/civil) ethics of religion and race relations in the life and thought of pivotal paradigmatic princes of principle and Protestantism." He focuses upon Congregationalists and Unitarians mainly but, particularly in the second volume, also gives considerable attention to Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. Given his main concentration on Congregationalists and Unitarians, it is not surprising that great attention is paid religionists of the north, especially New England. Since his massive work abruptly ends with no concluding chapter or epilogue, he provides no critical, systematic, final review of those investigated.

Though the title of the volumes dates his work from 1850, it might be permissible to date it from the 1830s and 1840s given the persons Washington treats. The extensive research and comprehensive treatment of a vast array of historical players would seem ideally suited for general and religious historians, social ethicists, and scholars of African

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American studies. The author examines extensively the ethical ideals and activities of Theodore Parker and discusses considerably Horace Mann and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He also gives significant coverage to Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, Lyman Abbot, Lyman Beecher, Alexander Kinmont, James Birney, Horace Bushnell, Jabel Curry, and Atticus Haygood, among others. Interwoven in Washington's investigations are black Christian notables such as Harriet Tubman, Theodore S. Wright, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, William and Ellen Craft, Martin R. Delaney, Amos G. Beman, John B. Russwurm, Paul Cuffe, and Frances Grimke. The first volume takes the reader up to the Civil War. In Volume II, Washington investigates the relationship between ethics and faith in the post-Civil War, Reconstruction era. The contents of Washington's work go far in providing relevant African American religious history, even though his main goal is concern with ethics. By focusing on the manner in which significant white, "classical," American religious leaders such as Theodore Parker and Horace Bushnell responded to the oppressed conditions of African Americans in the nineteenth century, Washington helps us to evaluate these persons in a more comprehensive manner and perhaps better understand their actions and stances on other issues as outlined in the traditional American religious and church histories.

Joseph Washington, thus, has provided information crucial to the construction of African American church history and the reconstruction of general American religious history. But this two-volume work is a profound disappointment. My first set of concerns may be minor in importance. His work would have been enhanced if Washington had provided us some background information on Trinitarians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and black denominations. The sometimes poor syllabification of words at the end of the printed lines is perhaps not the fault of the author. The placing of all footnotes in the second volume is rather inconvenient for the reader, especially in light of the fact that the first volume is longer. There is a very good index in the second volume, but no bibliography! Finally, it is particularly unfortunate that a project of more than six hundred pages covering so much information is allowed such an abrupt ending with no summary or analysis of what was supposedly accomplished.

But the major source of my grievance and profound disappointment is Joseph Washington's poetic but repulsive writing style. There are long, convoluted, and confusing phrases and sentences overburdened with frequent and sometimes long parenthetical clauses and expressions. These constructions, which permeate the two-volume work, would repel any except the most doggedly-determined investigator. An example will illustrate my concern. In his foreword to the reader, Washington writes: "The color constituent component, in the cultural conflict of high Christianity and civility consciences and their church and civil constitutions,

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is not a missing link in the ruling White religion (of race reason and revelation revolving around a rich ritual in reality) but an unmistakable connecting one in this cultural chain composed of class conducing caste connective linkage."

Although Washington is sometimes more clear and straightforward, too many of the above and similar constructions, unfortunately, are found throughout the texts, including the last sentence of Volume II on page 632: "Whence a projected comparative class and caste ethics analysis will exam [examine?] singular ones of the significant reason/ revelation-replete religion and race relations rewards and punishments that during the end of their Protestant century selective power people elected to provide Black folk in reality."

If the reader wishes (a) to struggle for 632 pages through this bewildering array of sentences and phrases and/or (b) to possess this two-volume set as a reference tool on the ethical ideals and activities of some very prominent white, black, male, and female religious figures in American history, then I would recommend this publication. On the other hand, if the reader does not find (b) to be worth the effort of (a), then I would sadly direct his or her attention elsewhere.

Sandy Dwayne Martin
University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia