BY Kerwin Webb
Schools and academic institutions around the world are tasked with shaping the minds and preparing individuals for success in the world. Since 2000, institutions of higher education - colleges and universities - have undoubtedly seen an increase in enrollment and graduation numbers. According to a 2019 article, the number of people who had obtained a Master’s degree doubled to 21 million. Overall, the article reported that “13.1 percent of American adults have an advanced degree, up from 8.6 percent in 2000.”
On the one hand, the rise in educational attainment is extremely positive for individuals and the economy at large. On the other hand, the information being conveyed to students inside the classroom can also yield major unintended consequences.
In 2016, Princeton Theological Seminary’s president, Dr. Craig Barnes commissioned a study into the institution’s connection to slavery. This study - the Historical Audit on Slavery - was conducted over a two-year period, with the results being published in a report entitled Princeton Seminary and Slavery: A Jourrney of Confession and Repentance. This quote, directly from the report overview, highlights some of the goals of the project.
“This research provides a critical reckoning with our past, and was the basis for a year-long conversation involving the entire Seminary community about the ongoing legacy of racism that is rooted in this history. As a school related to the church, Princeton Seminary has a responsibility to reckon with its history in a theological framework, making confession and repentance when necessary, recognizing the human failures and frailties that damage our relationship with God and the world God so loves. Confession of sin and repentance have always been vital to the health of a spiritual community.”
In October 2019, the Board of Trustees adopted a multi-year plan to repent for the seminary’s relationship to slavery. Part of the plan includes recommendations and suggestions from the seminary’s task force, faculty, administration, and student groups on campus, including the Association of Black Seminarians (ABS).
I served as Vice-Moderator of ABS in 2018 when the seminary released the findings of the Historical Audit. Working closely with members of ABS, the seminary task force, and President Barnes, the 2018-19 academic year was filled with discovery, dialogue, and debate. We wrestled with difficult questions such as: what good is confession and repentance without corrective action? How do you adequately and properly compensate victims - many of whom have been effectively erased from history? What does it mean to be a leading Christian institution that finds itself complicit with the institution of slavery?
While the seminary report makes the case that the seminary did not directly utilize slave labor in building the campus, the cognitive dissonance displayed by its early leaders and professors is astounding. Simultaneously, religious leaders in the denomination and academic leaders at the seminary taught that people were created in the image of God, yet somehow developed theological justifications to support human subjugation. Even worse, there were some leaders who owned slaves and others who supported the development and growth of the American Colonization Society, as a means of removing “free blacks from the United States and settling them in Africa.”
“Together, our government and the institutions of civil society both have separate roles and responsibilities to play in ensuring that human flourishing is achieved.”
I do not presume to know the answers to the questions above. Nor do I believe that the questions have all been adequately adjudicated by Princeton Seminary’s administration, nor by leadership in the Presbyterian Church USA. What I do know, however, is that my time as a Sacred Sector Fellow during the summer of 2018 helped prepare me for many of the conversations surrounding this incredibly painful subject.
The Sacred Sector Fellowship provided me with a framework to critically examine the role of institutions as it relates to public justice and also provided additional language to name the right roles and responsibilities of the same. According to CPJ:
the principle of public justice recognizes that much of what contributes to human flourishing is not government’s task. This limits the scope of government’s work to promoting policies and practices that uphold the ability of other institutions and associations to make their full contributions to human flourishing. The principle of public justice also recognizes that much of what contributes to human flourishing is government’s task. Government is authorized by God to promote what is good for human flourishing.
The overall goal of public justice is to ensure human flourishing. Governments are instituted by God to promote flourishing. Limited in scope and power, governments rely on the institutions of civil society - individuals, families, faith based organizations, schools, civic organizations - to also help promote human flourishing. Together, our government and the institutions of civil society both have separate roles and responsibilities to play in ensuring that human flourishing is achieved.
As an institution of civil society, Princeton Seminary has an obligation to speak into the realities of America’s history of race and slavery and its own institutional complicity. Part of Princeton Seminary’s mission statement includes the following:
Princeton Theological Seminary prepares women and men to serve Jesus Christ in ministries marked, by faith, integrity, scholarship, competence, compassion, and joy, equipping them for leadership worldwide in congregations and the larger church, in classrooms and the academy, and in the public arena.
With a mission statement and vision that includes preparing men and women serving Jesus Christ in the church, the academy and the world, the faculty and administration at Princeton Seminary have a huge role in shaping the direction of the Christian life in the country. The seminary leaders should be commended for taking the first step in admitting one of its most consequential and historical errors. As leading Christian institutions, Princeton Seminary - and the Presbyterian Church USA - have an obligation to atone for its sins as well as ensuring the correct teachings of Jesus Christ are promulgated into the broader society. A public justice perspective recognizes that this initial step cannot be all that is done.
Princeton Seminary is not the only institution of higher learning that has recently began to critically examine its past in dealing with the issue of slavery. Georgetown, Rutgers, Harvard, and Brown are named in a 2017 article as institutions that published reports documenting their historical ties to slavery. As the trend continues, it will be interesting to see how other elements of civil society - individuals, families, churches, businesses - react and respond. The government, for its part, has effectively outlawed slavery - although there are certain exceptions - and has indicated little appetite to take any efforts towards meaningful repair. It is now time for other civil society institutions, like Princeton, Georgetown, Rutgers, Harvard, and Brown to begin examining their own historical stance on American slavery and the needed repair.
On the campaign trail, some current and former 2020 presidential candidates expressed interest in at least taking a serious look at reparations. The cynic in me finds it hard to believe that this was anything but a ploy to attract support for their candidacy. Aside from that, rarely is there any serious talk about substantive repair for the damage done by American chattel slavery. Finding meaningful ways to atone for America’s legacy of slavery is extremely difficult. This does not, however, absolve America and her institutions of their responsibility to do so.
In the wake of the release of the seminary’s report, the Association of Black Seminarians (ABS) worked to develop recommendations for the Board of Trustees. During the process, it was understood that the process would be a difficult one. In the end, many of the recommendations developed by ABS were adopted by the Trustees. To be clear, there were many who were disappointed with the trustees’ actions; some believed that the recommendations that were adopted did not go far enough. That aside, what resulted from the process at Princeton Seminary is a framework to apply in other places. I feel that being a part of the Sacred Sector Fellowship and learning the fundamentals that undergird CPJ helped equip and position me to be a meaningful part of the process. As we look forward, it is important to ensure that all institutions of civil society are engaged in bringing about human flourishing in the world. This is our Christian calling and should be our national calling.
Kerwin Webb serves as the youth and young adult pastor at Second Baptist Church of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Kerwin was a 2018 Sacred Sector Fellow, previously served as editor of CPJ’s Public Justice Review (PJR), and is the current president of the Greater Red Bank NAACP in Red Bank, New Jersey. He is a 2019 graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, where he earned a Master of Divinity degree and a Certificate in Black Church Studies. During the 2018-2019 academic year, he served as the vice-moderator for the Association of Black Seminarians (ABS), as seminary administration and the Board of Trustees acknowledged the institution’s complicity and entanglement with American slavery.
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