The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters

2. Managing Blackness: Protestant Readings of Psalm 68:31 in Colonial America

2 Managing Blackness Protestant Readings of Psalm 68:31 in Colonial America The conversion of Ethiopia is the realization of Christianity’s explicit universalism . In the Christian view of history, salvation is universal. Through his redemptive death and resurrection, Christ, as the New Adam, erases the sin of the original Adam, the father of all human beings. Hence, Christ is the new father for all people who are reborn in him. His redemptive deathandresurrectionareeventsprefiguredinJewishscriptures,andthey indicate that human history is subject to God’s providence. Starting with Paul and continuing through the Church Fathers to the emergence and success of Protestantism, it is a Christian conceit that Christ was first revealed to Israel (both through the shadow of the scriptures and his life in Galilee and Judea), which rejected him, but that his message, crucifixion, and resurrection, were universal as foretold in Jewish scripture. In short, salvation through Christ is given to all peoples. The appearance of Psalm 68:31 in the writings of George Fox, Samuel Sewall, and Cotton Mather initiates the reconfiguration of Ethiopia in British and colonial English letters. The earliest recorded New World usage of Psalm 68:31 occurs in Protestant sermons and dialogues about the Negro and Indian. Pricked by the presence of Negroes and their enslavement in the Americas and the quest to evangelize the world, Protestant conscience—largely Quaker and Puritan—addressed the question of the Negro’s spiritual fate and legal status at the end of the seventeenth century. Protestant writers frame their worldview, their conscience, and their Negroes within the textual boundaries of Genesis to Revelation, the imaginary limits of their biblical hermeneutical prowess, and their ability to objectify the world as subjects of knowledge. For Fox, an early 36 / The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters advocate for the manumission of Christian slaves, Christian masters have a covenantal obligation to Christianize their slaves and the Indians: “And therefore Christians, you that have received it, do you preach the everlasting Covenant, Christ Jesus, to the Ethyopians [sic], the Blacks and Tawny-moors [Native Americans], as Philip did” (Gospel Family-Order 16). For Sewall, slavery was wrong because whites lacked both the legal and moral authority to enslave Negroes, their brothers and fellow human beings: “It is most certain that all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other outward Comforts of Life. God hath given the Earth [with all its Commodities] unto the Sons of Adam, Psalm 115.16 . . . thee outward Estate of all and every of their Children [Adam and Eve’s], remains the same, as to one another. So that Originally, and Naturally, there is no such thing as Slavery” (Sewall 7–8). For others, such as Cotton Mather, slavery was not morally objectionable , but it was unconscionable that Christian masters would not bring their Negroes, who were their neighbors, to the truth of the Gospel and Christianity: “Truly, to Raise a Soul, from a dark State of Ignorance and Wickedness, to the Knowledge of God, and the Belief of Christ, and the practice of our Holy and Lovely Religion; ’Tis the noblest Work, that ever was undertaken among the Children of men. . . . O all you that have any Negroes in your Houses;. . . . Let not this Opportunity be Lost” (Negro 1–2). Despite Fox’s, Sewall’s, and Mather’s different understandings about what should be done with the Negro, the Bible served as the authorizing textthatlegitimatedtheir contraryinterpretationsandpositions,andprovided the ground where their interpretations gathered. Slaves and Servants are Family Members The synchronization of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, English colonization of the New World, the establishment and holding of African slaves by Anglophone masters, and the centrality of the Bible and reading the Bible to Protestantism brought about the reemergence of the Christian figures of Ethiopia derived from Psalm 68:31. In 1671, George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends or the Quakers, admonishes Christian masters to “preach Christ to your Ethyopians [sic] that are in your Families .”1 Fox’s Gospel Family-Order is a sermon given to Christians living in the New World, specifically Barbados, which gives examples of Christian piety and how to Christianize Black and Indian slaves and servants. Using Managing Blackness / 37 the figural method of interpretation established by Paul and institutionalized by the Church Fathers, Fox argues that biblical slaves who were members of Jewish households...