The history of slave and master in the American South is a complicated one, involving brutalities and intimacies equal in their intensity and in their impact on all concerned. One such instance is the life of Francis James Grimke\u0301 (1850\u20131937). Born October 10, 1850 to a slave mother, Nancy Weston, and her owner, Henry Grimke\u0301, he was the son of an aris\u00adtocratic slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina and a relative of the famous abolitionist sisters Angelina and Sarah Moore Grimke\u0301.<\/p>\n
Henry Grimke\u0301 died of yellow fever when Francis was five years old, having stipulated that Nancy Weston and all of her children be placed in the possession of his oldest son and Francis\u2019s half-brother, E. Montague. By custom, Montague was to \u201cretain nominal ownership\u201d and \u201cregard the slaves as members of the family, thereby insuring their virtual freedom.\u201d1\u00a0Montague respected the informal freedom intended by Henry Grimke\u0301 for five years before attempting to re-enslave the three boys to person\u00adally serve his second wife. Francis attempted to avoid being re-enslaved by joining the Confederate Army, where he served for two years as an officer\u2019s valet. Young Francis managed to evade Montague\u2019s plots until Emancipation. After Emancipation, Mrs. Frances Pillsbury, the admin\u00adistrator of Morris Street School and a veteran educator and abolitionist from the north, sent Francis and his brother Archibald to Massachusetts to continue their education.<\/p>\n
In 1871 he began studying law at Lincoln Univesersity, and in 1872 he moved to Washington, D.C. to continue pursuit of a law degree at Howard University. While at Howard University, Grimke\u0301 felt called to the Christian ministry. He left Howard in 1874 to pursue theological education at Princeton Theological Seminary under the leadership of Charles Hodge. At Princeton, Francis received a thoroughly Reformed understanding of the Christian faith grounded in a high view of the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of the Scriptures. In 1936, sixty-two years after his entrance to Princeton, he wrote in his journal:<\/p>\n
\nI accept, and accept without reservation, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as God\u2019s Word, sent to Adam\u2019s sinful race and point\u00ading out the only way by which it can be saved. [W]ithout the Holy Scriptures and what they reveal, there is no hope for humanity. To build on anything else is to build on the sand.2<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Grimke\u0301 graduated from Princeton in 1878 and soon after began his public ministry at the affluent 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. On December 19 of that same year Grimke\u0301 married Charlotte Forten, granddaughter of influential businessman, activist, and abolitionist James Forten, Sr. of Philadelphia. Charlotte inherited her grandfather\u2019s\u2014indeed the Forten family\u2019s\u2014activist character and along with Francis formed a formidable duo for racial justice and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n
The Church’s Role in the World<\/h2>\n
Aside from a brief stint from 1885\u20131889 at Laura Street Church in Jacksonville, Florida, Grimke\u0301 served as pastor of 15th Street Presbyterian Church for his entire six decades of Christian ministry. Dr. Grimke\u0301\u2019s pastoral career spanned the tumultuous periods from Reconstruction through the post-World War I era. The social changes and upheavals accompanying these periods, Grimke\u0301 believed, required the guidance of men and women tutored by the gospel of Jesus Christ and fortified with Christian character. Though he remained first and foremost a pastor, Christian engagement with public pursuits was critical. A sig\u00adnificant portion of his life was dedicated to wider public aims\u2014serving as a trustee at Howard University, helping found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1906, creating educational opportunities, improving race relations, and encouraging suffrage.<\/p>\n
And nowhere was his public life more critical and stinging than in his appraisal of the church and \u201cChristian\u201d hypocrisy in the face of injustice.<\/p>\n
\nHe thought of men and measures as good or bad. Expediency did not figure very much in his make-up. Diplomacy did not count for much with him. What could not be justified as the proper thing for mankind he frankly disapproved. His creed was to do right and thus be in a position to urge upon others the same duty without fear and trembling. He never preached what he did not earnestly try to practice. For the hypocrite he had the greatest contempt. He had no use for the minister who selfishly advanced himself at the expense of the church, or who used the pulpit to advertise himself before the world.3<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
From his own upbringing, Grimke\u0301 knew the contradiction between profession and committed action. He witnessed the lash applied to enslaved Africans and the inhumane cruelty of selling \u201cbrothers\u201d to the highest bidder. That the particular band of \u201cbrothers\u201d known as Christians could be capable of the same treacherous hypocrisy was plain to Grimke\u0301 as he observed the silence and inaction of both white and black churches in the face of racial injustice. Consequently he dedicated himself to expositing the role of the church in the world.<\/p>\n
He understood that two great obstacles assaulted the church: ignorance and demagogism. Ignorance he thought could be combated with education and learning. But demagogism, or \u201cthe combination of unprincipled men within the church to get control, the monopoly of all positions of honor and trust of a general character,\u201d needed the warring reaction of godly men who would protect the church and drive out unprincipled men. Without such a warfare, Francis Grimke\u0301 believed, \u201cthe usefulness of the church [was] at an end,\u201d and though \u201cit may increase in numbers . . . in moral and spiritual power it will become a constantly diminishing factor.\u201d4<\/p>\n
No stronger charge and warning could be issued to today\u2019s pastors and church leaders. In our time we need to hear the voice of Dr. Francis James Grimke\u0301 as he beckons us to both reform the church and the men who lead her and to reform society with the gospel of Jesus Christ and Christian witness.<\/p>\n
Christ-Centered Activism<\/h2>\n
Grimke\u0301 fought hard to maintain a gospel focus in all his ministerial endeavors and to apply that focus to the major social issues of his day. It seems to have always been the case that pastors are asked to represent every social concern their congrega\u00adtions and communities deem important. Grimke\u0301 offers us one model for preserving and emphasizing the primary calling of preaching the gospel with Christ-centered activism in important social concerns.<\/p>\n
In his 1892 sermon \u201cThe Afro-American Pulpit in Relation to Race Elevation,\u201d Grimke\u0301 sets his gaze on the issue of race elevation or prog\u00adress among African-Americans and the responsibility that the African- American church owned in that progress. Grimke\u0301\u2019s thesis was, \u201cIf we [African-Americans] are to stand, if our rise is to be permanent, if we are not to pass away like the morning mist, or wither like the grass, beneath the material and intellectual there must be a moral basis.\u201d For Grimke\u0301, the essential ingredient to progress was character, Christian character. \u201cWhat we need most of all is character,\u201d he declared in the opening lines. In \u201cThe Afro-American Pulpit in Relation to Race Elevation,\u201d he sought to raise up a biblical standard for ministers in their endeavor to build char\u00adacter and to evaluate whether his contemporaries were in fact meeting that standard. Ministers, he argued, were to follow the examples provided by the prophets, the apostles, and most importantly Christ Jesus himself. The standard that Jesus and His messengers raised was faithfulness in proclaiming justification by faith alone in Christ alone on the one hand and the outworking of that faith in Christian virtue as evidence of genu\u00adine faith on the other. Grimke\u0301 maintained that if a minister were to \u201cfulfill his high mission as God\u2019s representative and . . . make himself felt as a moral force in properly directing the budding and expanding life about him,\u201d he must both faithfully proclaim the gospel and also faithfully cul\u00adtivate Christian character in himself and his people.<\/p>\n
\nMinisters, he argued, were to follow the examples provided by the prophets, the apostles, and most importantly Christ Jesus himself.<\/p>\n