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JOHN LOCKE, CHRISTIAN MISSION, AND COLONIAL AMERICA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

JACK TURNER
JACK TURNER*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Washington Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

John Locke was considerably interested and actively involved in the promotion of Protestant Christianity among American Indians and African slaves, yet this fact goes largely unremarked in historical scholarship. The evidence of this interest and involvement deserves analysis—for it illuminates fascinating and understudied features of Locke's theory of toleration and his thinking on American Indians, African slaves, and English colonialism. These features include (1) the compatibility between toleration and Christian mission, (2) the interconnection between Christian mission and English geopolitics, (3) the coexistence of ameliorative and exploitative strands within Locke's stance on African slavery, and (4) the spiritual imperialism of Locke's colonial vision. Analyzing evidence of Locke's interest and involvement in Christian mission, this article brings fully to light a dimension of Locke's career that has barely been noticed. In so doing, it also illustrates how the roots of toleration in the modern West were partly evangelical.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 267 - 297
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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2 I use the term “evangelization” and its variants (e.g. “evangelical”) in the generic sense of “spreading the Gospel and fostering conversion throughout the world,” not in any specific sectarian sense.

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30 Ibid., 30.

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39 CSP 1699, nos. 1014, 1025.

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41 The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669), in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Hereafter FCC.

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44 The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols., ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 1: no. 279.

45 Goldie, Locke: Political Essays, 161.

46 Armitage, “Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises,” 612–14.

47 Marshall, Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture, 595, 600.

48 FCC, 177.

49 Cheves, Langdon, The Shaftesbury Papers (Charleston: South Carolina Historical Society, 2000Google Scholar; first published 1897), 312 n. 2; Haley, First Earl of Shaftesbury, 245–6; Goldie, Locke: Political Essays, 160; Armitage, “Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises,” 607–8; Woolhouse, John Locke, 91. Locke's opposition to establishing Anglicanism as Carolina's official religion might tell against my interpretation of Locke as supporting both toleration and an ecumenical form of religious establishment. But opposition to establishing Anglicanism does not necessarily entail opposition to establishing non-sectarian Protestantism. Locke's opposition to establishing Anglicanism, in fact, might have been an attempt to make Carolina more attractive to non-Anglican Protestants.

50 FCC, 178.

51 Locke, “An Essay on Toleration” (1667), in Locke: Political Essays, 156. It is also crucial to note the practical reasons why Locke and the proprietors extended religious toleration to Carolina's natives. Early English settlers in Carolina relied on Indians for geographical knowledge, military intelligence, and food and supplies. English awareness of the importance of Indian friendship is evident in documents preceding the composition of the Fundamental Constitutions. See “Second Charter Granted by King Charles the Second to the Proprietors of Carolina” (1665), in The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 1, ed. William L. Saunders (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 75–92; “A True Relation of a Voyage upon discovery of part of the Coast of Florida” (1665), in Shaftesbury Papers, 18–25; “The Port Royal Discovery” (1666), in Shaftesbury Papers, 57–82. There are also abundant memoranda written by Locke recording instances of Indian assistance to English settlers in Carolina. See “Locke's Carolina Memoranda” (1670–72), in Shaftesbury Papers, 223–4, 245, 263, 349, 388. For penetrating analysis of these memoranda see Hsueh, “Giving Orders”; idem, “Cultivating and Challenging the Common”; idem, “Unsettling Colonies”; idem, Hybrid Constitutions; and Farr, “Locke, ‘Some Americans’, and the Discourse on ‘Carolina’.”

52 Another reason to suspect that Locke wrote the provision on toleration in the Constitutions is the striking parallel between its language of “good usage and persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness and meekness suitable to the rules and design of the Gospel” and Locke's language of “the meekness and tender methods of the Gospel” in “Toleration A” (1675), in Locke: Political Essays, 231, and “the softness of Civility and good Usage” in A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983; first published 1689), 33.

53 FCC, 179–80.

54 Locke, , A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul to the Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Esphesians, 2 vols., ed. Wainwright, Arthur W. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987; first published 1707), 1: 198Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 202 n. 23.

56 FCC, 180.

57 Jernegan, “Slavery and Conversion”; Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 210–11Google Scholar; Jordan, Winthrop D., White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 180–81Google Scholar; Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London: Verso, 1997), 250–52Google Scholar.

58 Jernegan, “Slavery and Conversion,” 506.

59 Woolhouse, John Locke, 110–11; Farr, “Locke, Natural Law, and New World Slavery,” 497.

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62 Ibid., 389–92.

63 Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 175 n. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Farr, “So Vile and Miserable an Estate,” 273–4; idem, “Locke, Natural Law, and New World Slavery,” 516; Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 FCC, 179.

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66 Rouse, Parker Jr, James Blair of Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 64–6Google Scholar.

67 Quoted in ibid., 183.

68 Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” 143–7; Laslett, “Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Board of Trade,” 397–402.

69 The original is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University: John Locke and James Blair, “Some of the Cheif Grievances of the present constitution of Virginia, with an Essay towards the Remedies thereof” (1697), MS Locke, e. 9, fols. 1–38. For the purposes of this essay, I rely on the authoritative reprint in Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century.” Kammen's commentary is at 141–53, and the text is at 153–69. I cite the commentary as Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” and the text as Locke and Blair, “Grievances of Virginia.”

70 Locke and Blair, “Some of the Cheif Grievances,” MS Locke, e. 9, fols. 1–38; Laslett, “Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Board of Trade,” 399–400; Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” 141; Ashcraft, Richard, “Political Theory and Political Reform: John Locke's Essay on Virginia,” Western Political Quarterly 22/4 (1969), 742CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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72 Locke, “An Essay on the Poor Law” (1697), in Locke: Political Essays, 186.

73 Locke, “For a General Naturalisation” (1693), in Locke: Political Essays, 322.

74 Correspondence of John Locke, 7: nos. 2380, 2545.

75 Ashcraft, “Political Theory and Political Reform,” 742–743 n. 2.

76 Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” 148.

77 Ashcraft, “Political Theory and Political Reform” analyzes the political dimension of the “Grievances of Virginia,” but stops short of analyzing its economic, religious, and Christian missionary dimensions.

78 Locke and Blair, “Grievances of Virginia,” 166.

79 Ibid.

80 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. “Blair, James (1655/6–1743),” (by James B. Bell), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2564/, accessed 10 May 2010; Rouse, James Blair; Anesko, Michael, “So Discreet a Zeal: Slavery and the Anglican Church in Virginia, 1680–1730,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 93/3 (1985), 256–78Google Scholar.

81 Locke and Blair, “Grievances of Virginia,” 159.

82 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 27. Cf. Marshall, Locke, Toleration, and Early Enlightenment Culture, 557–8.

83 Popkin and Goldie, “Skepticism, Priestcraft, and Toleration,” 99–100. Popkin and Goldie co-authored this article, but Goldie is responsible for the section in which this point appears. See 79 n.

84 Interestingly, Locke condemns policies of mandatory church attendance in A Second Letter Concerning Toleration, in Works of John Locke, 6: 87. The specific object of condemnation is King Louis XIV's requirement that all French Protestants attend Catholic Mass. At the same time, in A Third Letter for Toleration, Locke argues that baptism is one of the few truly essential Christian rites (154–6). This helps to explain why he and Blair so directly address it in the “Grievances of Virginia.”

85 Stanton, Timothy, “Locke and the Politics and Theology of Toleration,” Political Studies 54/1 (2006), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possibility.

87 Godwyn, Negro's and Indian's Advocate, 136–7.

88 Locke, “Sacerdos” (1698), in Locke: Political Essays, 344.

89 Quoted in Rouse, James Blair, 72, emphasis in charter.

90 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 27. One final feature of the “Grievances of Virginia” deserves mention. The document confirms Locke's knowledge of and interest in the work of Thomas Bray, future founder of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK): “The encouraging of Dr. Brays project of Parochial Libraries would in a great measure supply the want of Books.” Locke and Blair, “Grievances of Virginia,” 167. This reference to Bray—written in late August 1697—comes one year after Locke would have begun seeing Board memoranda mentioning Bray, but four months before Bray delivered his sermon Apostolick Charity at St Paul's. This indicates that Locke became acquainted with Bray's colonial Christian missionary work before acquiring Apostolick Charity. It is even possible that Bray himself sent it to Locke. Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” 141.

91 CSP 1696–97, no. 286. An office copy of this paper—“Representation concerning the Northern Collonies in America” (1696)—is in the British National Archives, London: CO 324/6, 59–68. There are slight differences between the Calendar and office copies. I will quote from the office copy since it is presumably closer to the original.

92 These were the Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onadagas, and Senecas. Mohawk served as the “lingua franca for diplomacy and trade.” Jackson, H. Ward, “The Seventeenth Century Mission to the Iroquois,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 29/3 (1960), 240Google Scholar.

93 For background on English and French efforts to win the Iroquois to their respective sides see Trelease, Allen W., Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997; first published 1960), chap. 11Google Scholar, and Richter, Daniel K., The Ordeal of the Long-House: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), chap. 8Google Scholar.

94 “Signed Tankerville, Ph. Meadows, John Pollexfen, John Locke, Abr. Hill.”

95 Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, 2: 353. Cf. Cranston, John Locke, 406; Laslett, “Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Board of Trade,” 399; Woolhouse, John Locke, 366–7.

96 Quoted in Woolhouse, John Locke, 366.

97 Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke, 2: 352–3; Cranston, John Locke, 406; Laslett, “Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Origins of the Board of Trade,” 390–91; Woolhouse, John Locke, 366, 370.

98 See CSP 1696–97, no. 157 (i) for Locke and the Board's referral of a report on Iroquois affairs to the Lords Justice of England; ibid., no. 1274 for Locke and the Board's authorization to the New York government to distribute powder and bullets to the Five Nations; CSP 1699, no. 726 for Locke and the Board's inquiry regarding the employment of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel vis-à-vis the Five Nations; and CSP 1700, no. 577 for a record of Locke and the Board's shipment of presents and arms to the Five Nations.

99 Locke, “New Yorke Representation” (1696), MS Locke c. 30, folio 40, Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

100 “Representation concerning the Northern Collonies,” 67; CSP 1699, no. 726.

101 Correspondence of John Locke, 6: no. 2396; CSP 1696–1697, no. 250.

102 Cranston, John Locke, 420–21.

103 Kellaway, New England Company, 260–65.

104 Correspondence of John Locke, 6: no. 2614.

105 Ibid., 6: no. 2503.

106 “Representation concerning the Northern Collonies,” 66–7.

107 CSP 1696–97, no. 157 (ii).

108 Ibid.

109 “Representation concerning the Northern Collonies,” 67.

110 CSP 1699, no. 726. “Signed, Ph. Meadows, Jno. Pollexfen, Jno. Locke, Abr. Hill.”

111 CSP 1700, no. 600.

112 Correspondence of John Locke, 7: nos. 2843, 2846.

113 Dunn, John, Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 18Google Scholar.

114 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 27.

115 For a general contextualization of the debate between Locke and Proast see Goldie, , “John Locke, Jonas Proast, and Religious Toleration, 1688–1692,” in Walsh, John, Haydon, Colin, and Taylor, Stephen, eds., The Church of England, c.1689–c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 143–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 54.

117 Proast, Jonas, The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration, Briefly Consider'd and Answer'd (Oxford: George West and Henry Clements, 1690), 2Google Scholar.

118 Locke, Second Letter, 62. Cf. Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 43.

119 Proast, , A Third Letter Concerning Toleration: In Defense of the Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration, Briefly Consider'd and Answer'd (Oxford: George West and Henry Clements, 1691), 4Google Scholar.

120 Locke, Third Letter, 234, 233.

121 Ibid., 233–5.

122 Proast, Third Letter, 2–3.

123 Locke, Third Letter, 235.

124 Ibid., 390.

125 Ibid., 234. Cf. Locke, “Toleration A,” 231: “Methinks the clergy should, like ambassadors, endeavour to entreat, convince, and persuade men to the truth rather than thus solicit the magistrate to force them into their fold.”

126 Locke, Third Letter, 234.

127 Ibid., 436.

128 Locke, , The Reasonableness of Christianity with A Discourse on Miracles and a Part of A Third Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ramsey, I. T. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), 58Google Scholar.

129 FCC, 179.

130 A humanity also conceded in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975; first published 1689), IV.vii.16, where Locke cites “the Child [that] can demonstrate to you, that a Negro is not a Man, because White-colour was one of the constant simple Ideas of the complex Idea he calls Man” as an example of erroneous generalization.

131 Anesko, “So Discreet a Zeal,” 264.

132 Godwyn, Negro's and Indian's Advocate, 7.

133 Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

134 Locke's only allusions to African native religion are expressions of shock over its supposed absence: in the Essays on the Law of Nature and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he observes that “the Inhabitants of Soldania Bay [in Southern Africa] acknowledge or worship no god at all.” Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature (1663–4), in Locke: Political Essays, 113–14. Cf. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I.iv.8. This raises the possibility that Locke thought that compelling slaves to attend church was morally permissible because Africans were atheistic. Locke excepted atheists from toleration. Locke, “Essay on Toleration,” 137; idem, Letter Concerning Toleration, 51. Yet for this explanation to obtain, Locke would have had to generalize from the inhabitants to Soldania Bay to all of Africa. Locke usually resisted this kind of overgeneralization.

135 Farr, “Locke, ‘Some Americans’, and the Discourse on ‘Carolina’,” 26.

136 Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, 61.

137 Farr, “Locke, ‘Some Americans’, and the Discourse on ‘Carolina’,” 68, 72–4; Armitage, “John Locke, Theorist of Empire?”, ms, 2, 5, 11.

138 Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I.iv.12; cf. Carey, Daniel, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Farr, “Locke, ‘Some Americans’, and the Discourse on ‘Carolina’,” 46–50.

139 Locke, Third Letter, 436.

140 Armitage, “John Locke, Theorist of Empire?,” ms., 2.

141 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 26.

142 Cf. Walker, “Limits of Locke's Toleration,” 137–8.