James Pennington and the Christian Black Atlantic

Antihumanism has become a deep‐seated predilection at present, rooted in sensitivity to the ways in which false universals perpetuate power and privilege. Paul Gilroy, while resonating with the concerns behind antihumanism, has forcefully defended the humanism that emerged around resistance to Black Atlantic slavery. Powerful as Gilroy's account is, it overlooks the importance of specifically Christian humanism. This essay fills this gap by attending to the unjustly neglected Abolitionist James Pennington, articulating both the distinctive character of his contribution to Christian humanism, with roots in both Reformed resistance theory and Quaker practices of nonviolent civil disobedience, and the ways in which his experiences as a formerly enslaved person equipped him to redeem a Christian imagination infected by slavocracy.