Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald W. Dayton

Author:Donald W. Dayton [Dayton, Donald W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL015000, REL067000
ISBN: 9781441246431
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2014-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

Lewis Tappan: Christian businessman and entrepreneur who financed and led many social causes

This incident gripped the attention not only of the American public, but also of the whole Western world. American prejudices against Africans were strong (were they not murderers and perhaps even cannibals?), and major questions about the future of the slave trade would depend on how the United States government handled the case. Lewis Tappan immediately formed a committee for the defense of the blacks and took upon himself their physical and spiritual care. He carried the case all the way to the Supreme Court and then raised money to send the blacks back to their homes in Africa—along with a few missionaries from Oberlin.

The Amistad Case led directly into another philanthropy of Lewis Tappan. The Tappan brothers had become increasingly disenchanted with the benevolent societies. The American Bible Society had refused to make slaves and freedmen particular objects of Scripture distribution. The American Tract Society had not only refused to issue abolitionist tracts, but had also edited out offending passages in British materials. The missionary societies did not hesitate to send out proslavery missionaries. After failing in his efforts to change such practices, Lewis Tappan finally moved toward founding a separate antislavery missionary society. The Amistad committee was merged into a few other organizations to form the American Missionary Association (AMA), a “living protest” against the societies that refused to take a stand on slavery.

Lewis Tappan said of the AMA that “its single object is to send out a pure gospel free from any compromise.” The AMA supported as many as two hundred missionaries (including a number sent to the South) and expended a million dollars in its first decade. Though not always able to break completely out of the paternalistic mold, this society was far in advance of its time. Tappan asked abolitionist Amos Phelps for advice in running the West Indian mission. Among the principles advocated in Phelps’s report was “dealing with the people in all things as men and not as serviles.” This included enabling them to find economic self-sufficiency and encouraging the missionaries to avoid expensive, comfortable quarters, in order to “identify themselves with the people.”

The American Missionary Association attempted to express the goals of equality to which the Tappans had long been committed (often in advance of other abolitionists who wished to rid the country of the sin of slavery, but had no interest in “social intercourse”). For the Tappans the abolitionist struggle was not just against slavery but also explicitly against “prejudice” and the “hateful caste feeling that so extensively prevailed in the country.” Lewis Tappan was especially concerned that children be raised sensitive to the issue of race so that as adults they would “be able to meet at the polls, sit on juries, attend political meetings, practice at the bar, unite in processions, and mingle with their fellow-men in the various walks of life, on equal terms, as the religion of Jesus, and the laws of the land require.”

These

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