But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).

McGever, Sean. Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024. 240 pp. $18.00

Sean McGever joins the evangelical deconstruction project[1] with his most recent book, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield.  Like the other books in this genre, Ownership denounces white evangelicals for “their” theology and practice, but not on the basis of Scripture.[2]  McGever tells them right at the outset of his book that even if they deplore the black slave trade of the early modern era,[3] they are still mistaken in their view of slavery in general, among other things.  If they want to learn the truth, they must listen to and affirm the so-called singular black perspective and their white allies (6-8, 10).[4]

According to this purported position, all slavery is a sin which “God hates” (184).  To support this claim, McGever briefly describes early accounts of slavery in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.  He then notes that Exodus 21:1-11 regulates slave acquisition, but he then glosses over the rest of the Old Testament to say that it “imagines slavery as a common component of human societies that is utilized for communal and personal gain and a negative experience that the enslaved person seeks to escape” (34-35; incidentally, McGever does not discuss the stipulations in Exodus 21:5-6 for slaves who “love” their masters and do not want to go free).  McGever does not exegete any of the passages on slavery in the New Testament either, but rather cites John Anthony McGuckin (an Eastern Orthodox priest) to say that it has “considerable tension in regard to the issue of slavery: never quite feeling confident enough to come out and denounce it explicitly, since to do so would have been tantamount to a declaration of social revolution” (36).[5]  But God, McGever implies, wanted believers to infer that slavery was 1) wrong and 2) to be peaceably abolished.

For the next eighteen hundred years of Church history (from Ignatius to the Puritans), most Christians did not see it that way or seek its total eradication.  Rather, to McGever’s dismay, a number of them sought to put limits on slave acquisition and treatment, citing Scripture.  The Great Awakening preachers accepted this reasoning and tried to apply it to the African slavery already in their contexts.  From this group of ministers, only John Wesley questioned the institution of slavery later in life due to the influence of the egalitarian Quakers, and then, he only used “natural law” to condemn it (141).

In the concluding chapters of Ownership, McGever returns his gaze to modern white evangelicals whose “spiritual genealogy . . . originates” with eighteenth century “enslavers” (170).  He exhorts these descendants to own, repent, and learn from the mistakes of the Great Awakening preachers (171, 173).[6]  This repentance, he says, must include “a posture of open arms to people of all races who have every right to navigate our open arms on their own terms and in their own timing” (173).  But even with this, McGever disregards scriptural passages on guilt, justice, repentance, and forgiveness (such as Deut. 19:15, 24:16, Lev. 19:15, Ez. 18:4, Matt. 18:21-35, Luke 19:1-10, Eph. 4:32).  He also ignores the fact that while God uses various (and often imperfect) agents to draw men unto Himself, the spiritual genealogy of every evangelical originates with Christ (I Cor. 3:3-23, Eph. 2:8-10), thus bringing a unity to all believers across time and space (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11).

McGever continues his admonition to white evangelicals by exhorting them to listen to “unlikely voices (like the Quakers for Wesley)” (181) outside of their formative “religious influences” (176) to bring about change that pleases God.  He cites himself as an example of a man who experienced such an alteration:

To question the established norms of my Christian upbringing was something I feared to do out loud.  Instead, I had to do it in private, through hushed personal conversations and quietly learning alternate views wherever I could find them.  Most often, and even in most of my seminary experiences, I had to guide myself if I wanted to consider a different perspective.  Nearly all the Christians I was around tended to provide the best version of their view and the worst (or no) version of alternate views.  It took me quite a while to realize that the church past and present has plenty of beliefs about which faithful Christians disagree, and that there are some things that Christians have come to realize they once believed wrongly – most notably (now), the institution of slavery (181-182).

He then asks: “What alternate voices along the shore of my stream should I listen to?  How should I navigate my own internal questions and instincts about how to honor God?  What are good, less good, and flat-out bad ways to process all of this?”  He says nothing about turning to the Scriptures (Is. 8:20; Acts 17:10-12; I John 4:1), but claims: “These answers require the precious and usually decades-acquired virtue of wisdom” (182).

Since McGever’s own faith was built on a mixture of doubt, instinct, and multiple theological perspectives, he eventually began to:

depart from what I learned in my formative years.  With all due respect to my formative influences, I changed how I balance my time and focus between ministry, family, and personal health.  I changed who I choose to relate to – I have more friends and peers who are women and those who don’t look like me or have the same beliefs as I do.  I changed my views on the roles men and women undertake in the home, community, and church.  Each of these changes came slowly and after much thought and reflection.  Each of these changes represents a departure from what I once believed and how I acted several decades ago (182-183).

McGever now believes that he “cannot predict what specific changes [he] might adopt in the coming decades” (183).  Considering where other deconstructionists have gone before him, it may not be too hard to guess what changes could come next.[7]

Jonathan Peters is an administrative assistant at Reformation Bible Church and Harford Christian School in Darlington, MD.

[1] For a listing of some of the books in this project, see Jonathan Leeman, “Defending Sound Doctrine Against Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism,” 9Marks (October 14, 2021): https://www.9marks.org/journal/sound-doctrine-the-foundation-for-faithful-ministry/editors-note/.

[2] See also Jonathan Peters, “Review: Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond,” Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview 5, no 1 (Fall 2024): 109-111.

[3] Many may do so on the basis of Exodus 21:16, James 2:1, etc.

[4] Deconstructionists at times fail to recognize that there is no monolithic black perspective, just as there is no monolithic white, Asian, indigenous, male, or female perspective.  There are, however, biblical and unbiblical theologies which anyone may embrace.

[5] McGuckin (and McGever) are more or less saying that Christ and His Apostles were moral cowards, contra John 16:8, Acts 5:29, Acts 17:6, etc.

[6] Interestingly, McGever makes no mention of non-white Christians who count the eighteenth century “enslavers” as a part of their spiritual heritage.  One may wonder if McGever would also hold them “responsible” for their spiritual ancestors’ mistakes.  Phillis Wheatley, “An Elegiac Poem On the Death of that celebrated Divine, and eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Revered and Learned Mr. George Whitefield,” Phillis Wheatley Historical Society: http://www.phillis-wheatley.org/mr-george-whitefield/, Thabiti Anyabwile, “This Black Pastor Led a White Church – in 1788,” Christianity Today (May 3, 2017): https://www.christianitytoday.com/2017/05/lemuel-haynes-pioneering-african-american-pastor/, Sherard Burns, “Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner,” in A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2004), 145-17, and Samuel Sey, “Cancel Culture and Christian Culture,” Slow to Write blog (July 3, 2020): https://slowtowrite.com/cancel-culture-and-christian-culture/.

[7] Neil Shenvi notes that the “‘deconstructive’ approach to theology is necessarily a universal acid.  Even if [deconstructive authors] weren’t explicitly committed to challenging evangelical doctrine broadly, their methodological approach makes such an outcome inevitable.  This erosion is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears.  I worry that pastors will embrace these books thinking that their application can be confined to, say, race alone.  But once a white pastor endorses the view that he — as a white male — is blinded by his own white supremacy, unable to properly understand relevant biblical principles due to his social location, and in need of the ‘lived experience’ of oppressed minorities to guide him, how long before someone in his congregation applies the same reasoning to his beliefs about gender?  Or sexuality?”  Neil Shenvi, “Sociology as Theology: The Deconstruction of Power in (Post)Evangelical Scholarship,” Eikon (November 21, 2021): https://cbmw.org/2021/11/21/sociology-as-theology-the-deconstruction-of-power-in-postevangelical-scholarship/.