Benjamin Lay painted by William Williams in 1750
Greetings, my nerds. It’s been a long time. There’s much to say about my absence from blogging and I hope to get back in here, to a community that has given me life in lean times over the last decade.
For now, I want to introduce you to a character from history, that I just met, legendary abolitionist, Benjamin Lay (1682-1759).
Since the start of the year, I’ve been inching my way through Dr. Jill Lepore’s wonderful volume on American history, These Truths. It is a fascinating and dense ride through primary sources only a vaunted historian would have at her finger tips. It is on page 73 that I met Mr. Lay for the first time:
“Benjamin lay stood barely over four feet tall, hunchbacked and bowed, with a too-big head and a barrel chest and legs so spindly it did not appear possible that they could bear his weight.”
Benjamin Lay, despite his diminutive stature, was a sailer, world traveller, humanitarian, vegetarian, and publisher. He witnessed the depravity of slavery first-hand from Turkey, to Barbados, to England, to the Pennsylvanian Colony. As a deeply devoted Quaker, his wife was a Quaker pastor, he could not reconcile his Christian faith, the freedom he was able to pursue in Penn’s Colony, with the enslavement of Africans whom he saw as whole human beings. Legendarily, he staged a demonstration or two, including this anecdote that Lepore includes in her history (page 74):
“In 1738 [Lay] went to a Quaker meeting in New Jersey carrying a Bible whose pages he’d removed; he’d placed inside the book a pig’s bladder filled with pokeberry juice, crimson red. “Oh all you negro masters who are contentedly holding your fellow creatures in a state of slavery,” he cried, entering the meetinghouse, “you who profess to ‘do unto all men as ye would they should do unto you,’ “you shall see justice “in the sight of the almighty, who beholds and respects all nations and colours of men with an equal regard.” Then taking his Bible from his coat and a sword from his belt, he pierced the Bible with his sword. To the stunned parishioners, it appeared to burst with blood, as if by a miracle, spattering their heads and stain their clothes, as Lay thundered, from his tiny frame: “Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures.””
Can you imagine such a thing in a church community today being tolerated? A Bible being stabbed with a sword in the name of freeing others?
Today, we lament the most recent lives lost due to the original sin of our America: racism. It runs through everything, soils everything, as wave after wave of this toxicity is allowed to run through our streets and neighborhoods.
George Floyd.
Breonna Taylor.
Ahmaud Arbery.
At the moment, my white siblings are protesting the protestors. In the wake of rioting and looting (by a FEW), white Americans want to dismiss the message because the medium offends. Let’s be honest though: dealing with sin is inconvenient, and frankly, we always think the hard truths of Jesus and the Bible are for the other person.
Today, I don’t know what to say or pray. I lament. I hear the cries of black mothers and father, friends, colleagues, and social media acquaintances, who are crying out to white pastors like me to say something, to do something.
So, I read about Benjamin Lay this morning, and thought his story is one worth sharing, if you hadn’t heard of him before. A small person, with a huge calling from God, who wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power on behalf of his siblings in chains. In 1758, the Philadelphia Quaker meeting formally denounced slave trading; Quakers who bought and sold men were to be disavowed. When Lay heard the news he said, “I can now die in peace,” closed his eyes and expired. [Lepore, 75-76]
Lay was fighting a revolution that was running parallel to the freedoms the colonies would soon loot ships and hold a Tea Party for. The one that Lay dedicated his life to was not won.
Family, it’s not over yet and I pray that everyone realizes that. The church of Jesus has a huge responsibility in this age to speak truth to empire and not be coopted by it to peddle ‘God Given Rights’ that are found no where in the revealed Word of God to the oppressed people’s of the world. As I witness the church’s response to these latest murders, these verses from Revelation 3 come to mind:
““Write this to the angel of the church in Laodicea: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I’m about to spit you out of my mouth. After all, you say, ‘I’m rich, and I’ve grown wealthy, and I don’t need a thing.’ You don’t realize that you are miserable, pathetic, poor, blind, and naked. ”
As we prepare to share the gospel this weekend with the world, I pray that my clergy and ministerial kin refuse to be lukewarm in their response to these murders. Real lives are at stake. All lives matter? Yes. But, this week, may we be bold enough to declare Black Lives Matter. Jesus Christ gave his life that no others would be cut short by the brutality of believers. I’m grateful for the witness of Benjamin Lay, who wasn’t afraid to be David to culture’s Goliaths.