Was Eighteenth-Century Arminian Anti-Slavery Also Anti-Racist?

Abstract

Despite portrayals of John Wesley and early Methodist leaders as proto-proponents of civil rights, their Arminian anti-slavery stance was hardly what scholars Ibram X. Kendi and Anthony G. Reddie term ‘anti-racist’. There remained in their writings evidence of empire that upheld racist constructs. What if, rather than decrying colonists’ desire for independence, Wesley had helped them see that fighting for enslaved persons’ freedom might assist their own efforts at liberation from tyranny? Confronting the persistence of racism even amid anti-slavery in Wesley and early Methodism aids in developing an alternative lens to empire that can help their descendants today.