The enslaved African Americans who first gathered for illegal worship sessions on the eighteenth and nineteenth century plantations also had burning bush experiences. In the African American Christian traditions, the Exodus motif has been utilized as an inspiration of God’s liberating power. Much like how Moses met God at the burning bush, the enslaved Africans experienced God in the brush arbors. It was the invisible institution where the enslaved Africans held their own religious meetings to worship God independent of white oppression.[1] While meditating on God’s righteousness underneath an apple tree, former indentured servant Lemuel Haynes found Jesus. He described the ordeal: “One wretched evening underneath an apple-tree, I hope I found my Saviour. […] I pluck some fruit from the tree and carry it home: it is sweet to my taste. I have fears that I am deceived, but I still have hope.”[1] Haynes realized that only one acknowledges the justice of God can one become justified and join the struggle for righteousness. Haynes’s ministry became one of the first evangelical efforts to proclaim the sovereignty of God and the election of the oppressed.
The Black church in the United States has a legacy of preachers who have been able to speak truth to power and hold Uncle Sam accountable to remain faithful to his promises. For the northern part of the United States, the nineteenth century evangelist Lemuel Haynes became a prophetic voice for divine justice, freedom and racial reconciliation. Haynes believed that the spiritual kingdom of Christ existed in the here and now and that true liberty could only be found in God’s arms.[1] As a Calvinist, Haynes preached about the omnipotence and sovereignty of the God of the Bible who was capable of overcoming human sinfulness. Haynes was one of the first black abolitionists and educated preachers on American shores. The African enslavement was part of God’s plan, in Haynes’ view, to expose the wickedness of humanity and the need for liberation.[2] Since he came from the federal theological tradition, the Abrahamic covenant was theme for his political theology. He insisted that just as God heard the cry of Hagar, Sarah’s servant, God listens to the wailing of the oppressed.[3] God’s new covenant in Christ made all members of the penitent to be fellow-citizens in the Trinity’s household. Lemuel Haynes’s preferred political affiliation was the federalist party; clerical activity in the realm of politics was normative for this group. Versus Federalist contemporary George Washington’s arguments, Haynes insisted that a state could not afford to be purely secular since God was the foundation of all moral virtue.[4] Haynes was an advocate for a covenantal republican form of government based on the truth that God “had made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth.” Lemuel Haynes, as an adherent to the doctrine of total depravity, rejected the doctrine of universal salvation on the grounds that the world was filled with universal misery and not joy.[2] Satan and his evil empire rely the illusion that all is well with the world when in reality suffering and injustice prosper.
The Calvinist, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions each affirm the three offices of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Lemuel Haynes, the eighteenth century black Calvinist preacher declared, “Whenever a person takes on him the baptism covenant and is baptized into the all-adorable Trinity, he solemnly gives himself to God and accepts Christ as prophet, priest, and king and thereby professeth that he is willing to be ruled by his [Christ’s] as to be saved by his [Christ’s] merit.”[5]Reverend Haynes would use Jehovah and Christ interchangeably in his sermons; his Yahweh Christology became a large part of his covenantal theology and theological ethics. For example, he exhorted to a crowd, “Let Jehovah-jirah, the Lord will see and provide, be written on your door posts, and on the fleshly tables of your hearts. […] O! that I could with success proclaim in your ears this day the expostulatory declaration of the great deliverer […] The door is wide open—Jesus is ready to break your bonds asunder.”[5] In another sermon on Zechariah 11:13, Haynes again argued that Jesus is Yahweh and that we as human beings were all guilty of selling Christ for silver.[5] Yahweh is personified in three different ways in the First Testament: Wisdom, Word, and Spirit.[6] In the Second Testament (the New Testament), Christ embodies all three personalities.
Lemuel Haynes represents a long line of African American preachers who have engaged the American political system and challenged it to a more covenantal and truthful way of operation. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Katie Canon, Gardner C. Taylor, Bishop Vashti McKenzie, and many more saints have always been at the forefront of petitioning our government to open up the political process to those who are powerless.
[1]Albert Rabouteau, Canaan Land, 43-44.
[2] Timothy Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of Lemuel Haynes, 41.
[3] Lemuel Haynes, “On Baptism” in Black Preacher to White America, 243.
[3] Lemuel Haynes, “The Prisoner Released” in Black Preacher to White America, 227.
[3] Lemuel Haynes, “Outline of a sermon on Zech. 11:13”in Black Preacher to White America, 239.
[4] Salliant. Black Puritan, Black Republican. P.85
[4] Salliant. Black Puritan, Black Republican. P. 114.
[4] Ibid, 110-112.
[4] Ibid, 123-25.
[5] Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, 41.
[2] Lemuel Haynes “Letter to the Reverend Hosea Ballou.” In The Life and Character of Rev. Lemuel Haynes, 109.
