I Wish I’d Been There: “Negro slavery’s prophet of deliverance”

by Timothy Paul Erdel

 

I wish I’d been there with George Liele (ca. 1750-1828) during his astonishing ministry in Jamaica (1783-1828). A Virginia-born slave with an itinerant early life, he was converted in Georgia (1773) while attending the church of his master, Henry Sharp. Ordained in 1775 within the same predominantly white Baptist congregation to preach to fellow slaves of African descent, by the time his master freed him in 1778 he had already helped establish three “African Baptist” congregations.

After serving with British loyalists, Liele became an indentured servant to secure passage to Jamaica with his wife and four children, landing in January 1783, a decade before the fabled William Carey arrived in India. There he rapidly repaid his debt and served the remainder of his life as a self-supporting missionary to slaves.

His multi-faceted labors were simply astounding. By 1814 there were perhaps some 8,000 converts, called “Ethiopian Baptists” or “Native Baptists” (names confusingly applied to other groups as well, some heterodox and syncretistic). Church members recited and affirmed Liele’s remarkable twenty-one section Covenant of the Anabaptist Church. He also set up schools for slaves and ex-slaves, and even founded a mission to Africa, yet never limited his outreach to persons of African descent. Though carefully cultivating the good will of masters and eschewing direct calls for abolition, his work still became so threatening to slavery that he was repeatedly harassed and imprisoned, once over three years, earning the title, “Negro slavery’s prophet of deliverance.”

His diverse spiritual heirs include Sam Sharpe (ca. 1808-32), whose plan for general passive resistance turned violent against his will and became the Great Slave Rebellion in 1831 (Sharpe was then hung by the British), and Native Baptist pacifists Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, who met similar fates when their Morant Bay Rebellion was brutally crushed in 1865. All three are now formally recognized as national heroes of Jamaica.

I wish I’d been there to query Liele about his insightful Covenant, which he probably started to compile in 1777 and completed by 1784. The document begins, “We are of the Anabaptist persuasion, because we believe it agreeable to the Scriptures,” and is filled with such trademark Anabaptist practices as believer’s baptism, foot-washing, refusing to shed blood, not swearing at all, forgoing legal suits, plain dress, and church discipline, while still displaying Liele’s own editorial voice and stamp throughout, including statements on anointing the sick, slavery, and sexual purity.

Others have puzzled as to why Liele is so frequently overlooked by Baptists, church historians, and missiologists. But I often wonder why his memory and example have not been vigorously claimed by biblical, peace-and-justice loving, missionary-minded, socially concerned, ethnically sensitive Mennonites and Anabaptists everywhere.

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Timothy Paul Erdel is an archivist and philosopher at Bethel College, Indiana. An MK from Ecuador, he served with his wife (Sally) and three children (Sarah Beth, Rachel, and Matthew) under World Partners at Jamaica Theological Seminary and Caribbean Graduate School of Theology (1987-93).

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Sources Consulted:
Erdel, Timothy Paul. 1995. “Sharpe, Sam(uel).” In Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography: 1730-1860. Edited by Donald M. Lewis. 2 vols. Oxford: Blackwell Reference.

Gayle, Clement. 1982. George Liele: Pioneer Missionary to Jamaica. With a Foreword by R. A. Anglin. Kingston, Jamaica: Jamaica Baptist Union.

Neely, Alan. 1998. “Liele, George.” In Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Edited by Gerald H. Anderson. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

 

Mennonite Historical Bulletin, July 2001