Scriptural and Natural Law
I think the first thing to say is that Francis Grimké would have a lot that he would want us to know about racial prejudice. He preached prolifically on this topic and had so many thoughts, and so there’s much to be learned today by going back to his sermons, which, in many ways, have aged pretty well. Go back to those sermons—many of which are available online.
As you read and reflect on those sermons, there are a couple of principles that you’ll find that will be helpful. One is that he is willing to reflect both on laws that are revealed in the Bible (scriptural laws), and at the same time, he also reflects quite a bit on natural law and explicitly so.
Depending on where he is, he will refer more to one kind of law than to the other. If he’s preaching a sermon for a congregation in a church, he’s leaning into applying Scripture. But if he’s out in the world, he’s certainly not afraid to appeal to the Bible, and he regularly does.
Born enslaved, Grimké dedicated his life to preaching the gospel and confronting the injustice of his time. This book presents Grimké’s vision of the Christian life, helping readers address important issues within the church today.
At the same time, sometimes he’s aware that it’ll be more persuasive for him to think about creational arguments or even arguments that are widely accepted in the world around him as the basis for his arguments. So whether you call that law of nations (widely accepted arguments) or creational principles (natural law), he’s willing to engage in those kinds of arguments.
And he’s really wise about where he is when he is speaking. That’s something we should pay attention to today as we’re thinking about race: Who am I talking to? What kind of audience is this? What will be most persuasive? Of course, what is true is the most important thing, but we also want to think about how we persuade people.
Morality and Politics
So that’s one principle that you find in him. The other one is his distinction between morality on the one hand and politics on the other. And he’s able to see that, of course, all of politics is morally laden and you can’t fully separate these things out. At the same time, there is a difference between asking if this is wrong, on the one hand, and what we should do about it, on the other.
And so in that way, he distinguishes between morality and politics. And because of that, he has an ability to engage controversial issues that are related to morality and politics, like race, in a way that cuts across some of the questions and even some of the political parties of his day.
And so he is an equal opportunity offender, and also he’s an equal opportunity listener. And in a time like ours that is as polarized as it is, we can benefit from seeing wise leaders negotiate those kinds of circumstances over time. One of the things that really stands out about his ministry is that he is never mushy. There’s not an overly simplistic in between. He’s genuinely willing to cut both ways and to push in both directions. And it seems to me that that’s something that we need nowadays.
Drew Martin is the author of Grimké on the Christian Life: Christian Vitality for the Church and World.
