On July 4, 1776, South Carolina Gov. Charles Pinckney and future Gov. Edward Rutledge were among the 56 delegates to the Constitutional Congress who became signatories on the Declaration of Independence. Their bodies still rest in the St. Philips churchyard in Charleston, S.C., today. It is no secret that Pinckney and Rutledge were slave owners, like most prominent Southern politicians and businessmen in the 18th and 19th centuries. I often wonder how they reconciled slave ownership with the second sentence of the declaration they signed, which reads, in iron resolution, “that all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I cannot pretend to either understand or excuse the enslavement of black men and women in that day, especially by many who claimed the name of Christ. Every human being is created in the image of God, full of dignity and worthy of respect. How could our founding fathers not see the error of their day? I also cannot comprehend why God was so merciful in the establishment of this great nation, even through the godless evils of slavery that evaded the blinded ignorance of well-meaning, courageous men. But He was.
At the Constitutional Convention, several mottos were put forth for consideration. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson proposed, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” and sketched a design of Moses crossing the Red Sea with Pharaoh close behind. It is tragically ironic that an appeal to biblical emancipation was made at the same Constitutional Convention which ignored the slavery of an entire race. When I reflect on the tragedy of slavery in early America, my heart races with righteous anger. Then I am reminded how coldly and ignorantly I often turn a blind eye to God’s Word in my own life. May God save me from my own spiritual ignorance, and may He save others around me from the destructive evils it bears.
The motto that prevailed at the 1776 Convention was one with which the founding fathers were already acquainted, as it was popularized in revolutionary magazines during the first half of the century: e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”). Curiously, the Bible speaks to the same anthropological axiom. Acts 17:26, in the Latin Vulgate, reads, “fecitque ex uno omne genus hominum” (“from one, he made every race of men”). Black men and women, enslaved by those who courageously declared the freedom of “all men,” were of the same blood as their Anglo-Saxon oppressors. They had come from the same “one” as the revolutionaries themselves. From one, many.
The eyes of history have watched millennia unfold in which humans sought to reconcile the many races and the one man. In 2024, we are still working through the consequences of those evils born from us and to us many generations ago. Ultimately, governments, socioeconomic systems, rioters and revolutionaries have all failed. But there is one who has prevailed — only one. With words infinitely more immortal than the great Declaration itself, and with bold resolution and acute instancy, Ephesians 2:14 declares that Jesus Christ “is our peace, qui fecit utraque unum (“who made both groups one”) and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.” Sin turned beautiful diversity into prideful division. Christ turned prideful division into cruciform unity.
This February, during Black History Month, let’s celebrate the cultural, scientific, theological, literary, artistic, and innovative gifts that have come from the minds, hearts, and hands of black Americans. Let’s also acknowledge that although we work that the righteousness of heaven is reflected in the laws of man, no government of man can ultimately accomplish the righteousness of God. So, SCBaptists, let’s promote unity through diversity where it can only be found — at the cross of Christ.There, alone, has the hostility been put to death.
— Tony Wolfe is executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.