Unholy Alliances: John Wesley and the Global Economy
By Bill Wylie-Kellermann
Monday, October 28, 2002
John Wesley preached against slavery and tobacco as sinful forces of economic profit at the expense of human wholeness and dignity.And what is their gain? Is it not the blood of these men? Who then would envy their large estates and sumptuous palaces? A curse is in the midst of them: The curse of God cleaves to the stones, the timber, the furniture of them. The curse of God is in their gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that burns to the nethermost hell! Blood, blood is there: The foundation, the floor, the walls, the roof are stained with blood!i
Now, it is your money that pays the merchant, and through him the captain and the African butchers. You therefore are guilty, yea, principally guilty, of all these frauds, robberies, and murders. You are the spring that puts all the rest in motion; they would not stir a step without you; therefore, the blood of all these wretches who die before their time, whether in their country or elsewhere, lies upon your head. "The blood of thy brother" (for, whether thou wilt believe it or no, such he is in the sight of Him that made him) "crieth against thee from the earth," from the ship, and from the waters. O, whatever it costs, put a stop to its cry before it be too late: Instantly, at any price, were it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from blood-guiltiness! Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, thy lands, are at present stained with blood.ii
These two texts which, apart from certain archaisms, ring like copy for a passionate leaflet at a Pentagon or a WTO direct action, are actually remarkable utterances of prophetic ire by John Wesley, founder of Methodism in the 18th century. What may indeed be most striking is that both concern economic violence, though in their similarity the first is directed to the distillers and the second to slavers.
This same ethical coincidence is reiterated in Wesley's general rules, the lifestyle discipline of the Methodist movement. Under the rule of nonviolence ("do no harm") are found these same two injunctions side by side: against ". . .buying or selling slaves. . ." and ". . .buying or selling spiritous liquors. . ."
What is so remarkable about this conjunction is that without benefit of the modern tools of social analysis as such, John Wesley has put his fingers instinctively on the two pivots of the trans-Atlantic triangle with its infamous "middle passage." He had thereby set the Methodist movement not merely against a set of immoral practices, but effectively against a deadly structure, an imperial system with a global reach.
In it's most straightforward version, the notorious triangle worked like this: sugar cane, which had been brought to the Americas by Columbus, was grown with slave labor in the West Indies, first Barbados and then Jamaica among other islands. Molasses, a by-product of sugar refinement was taken by ships to their homeports in New England (Boston and Newport primarily) where it was distilled into rum. Much of this spiritous liquor was in turn loaded back onto the ships sailing for the Gold Coast of Africa at which point it was used to purchase slaves who were packed as human commodities into coffin-like holds and taken to the West Indies to work the sugar plantations. From whence, says Wesley, from sea and earth, their blood cries out to the God.
Two bitter ironies of this system occur. One is that the slaves were forced to produce the very thing which procured their enslavement. (To think of it, this is actually the case with most all forms of domination and exploitation, though perhaps not with such immediate clarity). Another is that in the historical scheme of things, New Englanders were the slavers, and with respect to capital development New England was benefiting more than the southern colonies from slavery.
A similar, earlier, and more original triangle
The connection of the slave trade to the Industrial Revolution itself is much debated. The enormously profitable traffic in human beings and the fruits of their labor taken by force is said to have virtually financed industrial development in Europe.iv A ship making a cycle of the triangle could be counted upon to make anywhere from 100 to 1000 percent profit (not a bad return even by today's accounting standards). Allowing for the risks and losses (think nightmarish deaths in the dark holds of the middle passage), slaves which cost $50 in Africa would be sold for up to $400 in the West Indies.v
Though the Liverpool slave trade oligopoly was tied up by a mere ten firms, many slavers were financed by a more "democratic" pooling of resources by "attorneys, drapers, grocers, barbers, and tailors" who were shareholders in these capital ventures.vi Such pooling was precursor to publicly held corporations. And then there were the jobs: it is calculated that by 1800, over 18,000 British seamen were directly or indirectly employed in the slave trade.vii Plus the spinoff employment of shipbuilding itself: clerks and bookkeepers, sailmakers, riggers and ropeworks, ironmongers and, of course carpenters to build those coffin-sized compartments belowdecks. It all added quickly up.
Moreover, sugar and rum comported well with the quickened tempos of urbanized working class life. So it was that their increased consumption also coincided with the Industrial Revolution. Initially a luxury confection of the aristocracy, sugar became the first mass-produced exotic "necessity" of working people. England's sugar imports came consistently to exceed its combined imports of all other colonial produce, though a goodly portion was slated for refinement and export.
By 1771, England was also importing two million gallons of rum a year, over and above its own distillery production and not counting that which was smuggled in. In Bristol, dock workers were paid partly in rum (talk about being bound in addiction to your job!) and the industry was further institutionalized in national policy when the English Navy rum ration for adult sailors was set a half a pint in 1731 and increased to a full pint a few decades later.viii The social mechanisms of consumer addiction were in the making.
This is to say that Wesley's opposition and marshaling of the Methodist movement was equally momentous. Note that in his prophetic rant the economic dimension is stressed. It is the "buying and selling" which is at issue, the money that "puts all the rest in motion." John Wesley certainly denounced drunkenness, but he was not opposed to beer and wine as such, both of which he enjoyed and even recommended within limits. His prophetic rage against the distillers, as with the slavers, was rooted in concern for the amassing of wealth by exploiting people and holding the poor in bondage.ix
Biblically and theologically, his critique was predicated on the humanity of the victims and the justice of their cause. "O earth, O sea," he would say, "cover not their blood." Their lives in bondage and death cried out, like Abel's blood, to God. The humanity of the kidnaped Africans effectively summoned the slavers, the distillers, indeed their very system, before the judgment of God.
Wesley employed a striking range of tactics in the struggle against slavery, the first being what we'd call "media work," exposing it to the light of day. Telling the truth. He published a little book both in England and in the States, entitled Thoughts Upon Slavery.x With such resources as he had, Wesley described the culture and politics of the African nations from which the slaves were abducted. It comes to a striking conclusion: "Where shall we find at this day, among the fair-faced natives of Europe, a nation generally practicing the justice, mercy, and truth which are found among these poor Africans?" It was a justice and mercy, as he observed, not introduced but disrupted by the arrival of the Christians upon their shores! Moreover Wesley graphically details their capture, branding, sale
Tactically, he brought the this movement of evangelical renewal into alliance with the broader abolitionist movement, throwing their weight behind it. He made coalition as it were. The last letter of his life was written to William Wilberforce, Anglican layman who led the legislative struggle for abolitionism in the House of Commons. Wesley wrote:
Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as "Athanasius against the world," I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of God and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? . . . O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it. Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by the circumstance, that a man who has black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a "law" in our Colonies that the oath of a black man against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this! That He who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things is the prayer of, dear sir,Your affectionate servant, John Wesleyxi
Here, the distinction between coalition and intercession is negligible. Which is to say, John Wesley treated engagement with these powers and institutions to be substantially, or at least in part, a matter of the spirit. In accord with this, he organized the movement to fast each Friday, "that God would remember those poor outcasts of men; and (what seems impossible with men, considering the wealth and power of their oppressors) make a way for them to escape, and break their chains in sunder."xii Indeed, that God would make a way out of no way.
In England, God did. Within a month of Wilberforce's own death, his legislative abolition passed Parliament, but in the newly independent States the institutional possession and entrenchment was deep. Wesley's intention at first made it's way into the American movement cum church. At the founding Christmas Conference the anti-slavery plank of the discipline was written into the rules. And early on it became a badge of virtue among converted Methodist slaveholders to free one's slaves.xiii But as the bulk of membership, little by little shifted south, the commitment fell to the tempting compromise of mainline convenience. A committee was formed. By 1816, it was compelled to report to General Conference:
The committee to whom was referred the business of slavery beg leave to report, that they have taken the subject into serious consideration, and, after mature deliberation, they are of the opinion that under the present existing circumstances in relation to slavery, little can be done to abolish a practice so contrary to the principles of moral justice. They are sorry to say that the evil appears past remedy; and they are led to deplore the destructive consequences which have already accrued, and are likely to result therefrom.xiv
Notes
i "Thoughts Upon Slavery" Works of John Wesley, Thomas Jackson, ed. 1872 Vol XI pp. 59-79.
ii "The Use of Money" Sermons on Several Occasions (Naperville: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1944), p. 581.
iii Sydney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking Penguin, Inc.), p.43.
iv See the classic initiation of this argument in Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944).
v William Z. Foster, The Negro People in American History (New York: International Publishers, 1954), p.26.
vi Williams quoted in Mintz, p. 168.
vii Foster, p. 27.
viii Mintz, pp. 44, 138, 174, 171.
ix Ted W. Jennings, Jr. Good News for the Poor: John Wesley's Evangelical Economics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990).
x Works of John Wesley, Thomas Jackson ed., 1872, Vol. XI, pp.59-79.
xi Letters, VIII, p. 265 (Balam, February 24, 1791) as found in Albert Outler, John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 85-6.
xii Journal, March 3, 1788, IV: 408, cited in Jennings p. 88.
The Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann is program director for the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE) in Chicago, Ill. He is also on the steering committee of Word and World: A People's School. Bill lives in Detroit, Mich., and may be reached by email at bill@scupe.com.