ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award

The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Award of Distinction–History and Biography

Men of their time?

Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and George Whitefield were the three most prominent early evangelicals—and all three were deeply compromised on the issue of slavery. Edwards and Whitefield both kept slaves themselves, and Wesley failed to speak out against slavery until near the end of his life.

In Ownership, Sean McGever tells the true story of these men's relationships to slavery: a story that has too often been passed over or buried in scholarly literature. Laying out the dominant attitudes among Christians toward slavery at the time, McGever sets these "men of their times" in their own context, inviting us to learn how these shapers of American evangelicalism contributed to the tragic history of racism in America. He also explores how Christians finally began to recognizethat slavery, which they'd excused for most of Christian history, is actually wrong. It's a story that white evangelicals must wrestle with today.

Ownership is more than a book of history. It's an invitation to examine our own legacies and to understand—and take ownership of—both our heritage and our own part in the story.



Sean McGever (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is an area director for Young Life in Phoenix, Arizona, and adjunct faculty at Grand Canyon University. He is the author of several books, including Born Again: The Evangelical Theology of Conversionin John Wesley and George Whitefield and Evangelism: For the Care of Souls.







Vincent E. Bacote (Ph.D., Drew University) is assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is the author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper (Baker) and a contributorto The Gospel in Black and White (IVP), The Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Baker) and Best Christian Writing 2000 (HarperCollins). His work has also appeared in such publications as Re:generation Quarterly, Urban Mission, Christianity Today and Journal for Christian Theological Research.



Foreword by Vincent E. Bacote



1. Why Slavery? Slavery Has Nothing to Do with Me



Part 1. Influences: Born into Slave Societies

2. Three Men Who Would Change the World

3. What Proceeded Them: A Brief History of Slavery

4. What They Assumed: English Christian Beliefs About Slavery



Part 2. Participation: Participating in Society

5. Wesley in Georgia: Encounters Slavery

6. Whitefield in Georgia: Encounters Slavery andEnslaves Others

7. Edwards in Massachusetts: Enslaves Others

8. Wesley's Thirty-Seven Year Silence



Part 3. Action: Action Against Slavery

9. Unlikely Voices: Quakers

10. Wesley Speaks About Slavery



Part 4. Legacy

11. Three Legacies

12. Ownership Today



Acknowledgments

Notes

Index