조나단 에드워즈의 노예제에 대한 시각 고찰, 1730-1780 = Jonathan Edwards’s Thoughts on Slavery, 1730-1780

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Before the rise of antislavery ideology and political movements for abolition during the revolutionary period, a number of Anglo-American evangelicals expressed their antipathy toward slavery below the surface of proslavery discourse. Many researchers have treated this antipathy as a spontaneous feeling, but it was quite new phenomenon that ‘low level’ antislavery elements appeared more frequently in evangelical epistles, tracts and sermons and spread into the British Atlantic world through the transatlantic evangelical network in the mid-eighteenth century. This research treats this transformative process of the evangelical mind through the scrutiny of Jonathan Edwards’s thoughts on slavery, which has not been the subject of intense investigation.
Edwards distinguished the slave trade from slavery and supported the justification of slavery while strongly opposing the former. He asserted that the institution would be justified only when African slaves were purchased legitimately and masters’ treatment coincided with Christian benevolence. However, the slave trade broke this premise and thus could not be supported to any extent. He exemplified his seemingly inconsistent idea as a rhetorical weapon against immediatism in one sense. However his assertion also reflected an intermediary stage between unquestioning acceptance of slavery and restriction on the institution.
Edwards himself accepted slavery as a part of the established order and thus can be categorized as “proslavery”. However, his perception of conflict between benevolence and the nature of slavery spread through the transatlantic communication channel of evangelicals and presented the grounds for evangelical antislavery ideology in the late eighteenth century. In this sense, his thoughts on slavery and the slave trade still have historical importance.