“To Seek the Welfare of the City”

Andrew Fuller is mostly read in light of his missiological fervor and rarely cast into political light. However, a successive reading of Andrew Fuller on patriotism, benevolence, and slavery will expand our understanding of antislavery narratives and the development of immediatism among religious activity in Europe. Here, Fuller demonstrated how close religion and politics were linked and advocated why piety informed politics well after the English Civil Wars (1642–1651). Moreover, this study illustrates how Calvinistic Baptists both encouraged and resisted civil polity so long as it was informed by biblical interpretation and not the Enlightenment ideals of deistic altruism. While Fuller, and other Calvinistic Baptists, did not possess the same influence as other contemporary Christian abolitionists, such as William Wilberforce (1759–1833), his thoughts on patriotism reveal that the webs of antislavery and abolitionism within the historical and theological veins of the Reformed tradition have yet to be untangled.