Should we cancel history?
If Christopher Columbus, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were alive today, they would be in prison for participating in human trafficking. And rightly so.
The debate over the presence of statues of racist historical figures started in earnest a few years ago. At that time, the movement was focused on Confederate monuments commemorating those who fought to perpetuate the practice of slavery. Now it has extended to other historical figures for their part in terrible atrocities. Christopher Columbus was absolutely despicable; his brutal treatment and enslavement of Native Americans—including selling young girls as sex slaves—shocked and appalled even most of his contemporaries. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both renowned as champions of liberty, held slaves. Jefferson even had six children with one of his slaves via what today, due to the coercive nature of their relationship, we would recognize as rape. That’s why their statues are being beheaded and torn down.
Even Ulysses S. Grant, a Union general who was a key figure in defeating the Confederacy and ultimately ending slavery, also married into a slaveholding family and briefly held a slave of his own. His statue, too, was torn down by protesters.
Many traditionally respected historical figures did things that were morally reprehensible. Often their atrocities have been downplayed or pushed to the background as vices of men common to their time. That doesn’t do justice to the magnitude of the evils they were responsible for, or at least complicit in. They may look like heroes when the narrative of American history is largely told from the perspective of the favored classes. But when viewed from the perspective of the oppressed, they are little different than the rest of their oppressors.
This post isn’t about the tearing down of their statues per se. What I want to talk about is the bigger question behind it. In light of the increasing awareness of the evils of racism, how should we view these historical figures? Should we see them as heroes with flaws typical of men of their time, or as villains who represent a system of white supremacy and colonialism?
A Christian view of history
When looking at history, the Christian can do something that a modern secular historian does not: make value judgments about the deeds of historical figures. The Christian’s value judgments of historical figures are not based on their practical contribution to history, nor on how those deeds happen to be perceived by modern people, nor on our own personal opinions. They are based on whether or not a person carried out God’s will.
This is how the biblical writers evaluated historical figures of their time. In the chronicles of the kings of Israel, the writers sum up the whole lives of most of Israel’s kings in one phrase: either “he did right in the sight of the Lord” or “he did evil in the sight of the Lord.” They don’t shy away from making moralistic judgments on the quality of their lives. At first, it might seem like a simplistic evaluation of someone’s life’s work. But digging deeper presents a more complex picture.
We need look no further than the greatest king of Israel: King David. David was a womanizer and had multiple wives. He coerced a woman into sleeping with him and had her husband murdered. He was too timid to punish his daughter’s rapist. He himself enslaved people. If King David were President of the United States, he would be impeached, removed from office, and put in prison. And yet he is described as a man after God’s own heart. He is viewed as one of the greatest and most godly kings in Israel’s history.
God’s standards of morality haven’t changed. So why is King David celebrated as he is?
Perhaps it’s this: David took major, unprecedented steps to turn the entire nation of Israel toward worshiping God. He took a nation that had rejected God as their king and restored the systematic worship of God throughout the land. He inaugurated a new system of worship of God that set the standard for centuries to come. And, for the most part, it seems that he adhered to God’s standards of morality far better than his predecessors (and most of his successors). For the nation of Israel at that time, that was part of God’s will, and David accomplished it.
As we can see over and over in Scripture, God usually doesn’t accomplish his will all at once by force. Instead, he often accomplishes his will in increments, by steps, graciously accommodating humans’ hard and undeserving hearts. While David didn’t eradicate every tremendous evil, he did bring about considerable progress. And that, I think, is the key. David led the way for Israel in making great strides of moral progress, even though it wasn’t easy for him to do. And based on the Bible’s favorable judgment of David, it certainly does seem that God accommodates his judgments of people to the time in which they lived.
Progress is worthy of honor
Most people don’t lead the way in significant progress. Most people maintain the status quo, trying to be comfortable and not rock the boat too much. Others happen to be in a leadership role when they are blown along by the waves of societal trends; they may appear to bring about change, but it was inevitable and would have happened no matter what. Still others actively resist progress and hinder the accomplishment of God’s will, and it happens anyway despite their best efforts. Some bring about what appears to be progress, but only to satisfy their own ambitions. A few of the worst lead the way in regress, bringing back evils once thought to be suppressed or introducing new ones. Few, though, lead the way in making strides of progress—even at great risk or difficulty—that lay the foundation for fundamental societal change for the better.
So do the people whose statues are being toppled fit that description? Not all of them. I find it hard to justify any interpretation of Columbus’s life’s work as good in God’s sight. He carried out horrendous abuse, destruction, and death. As far as I’m concerned, good riddance to his statue and his holiday.
With others, the answer is not so clear. In the particular cases of Washington and Jefferson, they didn’t live admirable lives overall, and we cannot underplay or dismiss the extreme evil they did in holding slaves and failing to fight against slavery. But I do think they made some progress in carrying out God’s will. They outlined some biblical, godly principles, such as that of universal human equality. They themselves did not live up to those principles, but those principles have been used many times since as the legal basis for the ending of slavery and other forms of oppression.
The future’s view of history
I know many are at this point unconvinced. This might make sense through the eyes of a white person, because to white people Washington and Jefferson were freedom fighters. But in reality, Washington and Jefferson, like most rulers, treated the favored class well and the unfavored class with cruelty and oppression. We can’t underestimate the oppression that many revered historical figures carried out or at least participated in.
So let’s look at it from a completely different angle. It’s undeniable that most American historical figures perpetuated or willingly participated in systems that cruelly oppressed others. For that reason, maybe their reputations should be re-evaluated. But before we dismiss these people as oppressors worthy of only contempt, we should not assume that we don’t also perpetuate or willingly participate in cruelly oppressive systems.
We, too, contribute to and perpetuate the cruel oppression of others. Like many colleagues of Washington and Jefferson regarding slavery, we are aware of its wrongness and may even feel guilty about it at times, but we can’t really appreciate just how horrid the systems we support are, because we are not those who suffer under them. And so most of us do little or nothing about them. Here are a few examples:
- We buy, without compunction, products made in overseas sweatshops by workers (sometimes children) who make as little as 3 cents an hour, working 12- or 14-hour days in intolerable conditions. If these were Americans in American-run sweatshops, we would be calling for the bosses’ and the corporations’ heads. But because it’s Asians and Latin Americans in their native countries enduring the abuse, we look the other way.
- We support businesses that contribute to the economies of countries that routinely violate human rights. For example, PayPal, while scuttling its plans to build a facility in North Carolina over its infamous “bathroom bill,” operates its headquarters in Singapore, where same-sex sexual relations are punishable by up to two years in prison. Many American companies do business in and cooperate with extremely repressive nations, and we do and say nothing.
- Exact statistics vary widely, but a substantial number of Americans watch pornography on a regular basis. Pornography has been repeatedly linked to sex trafficking–actual modern-day slavery. Many pornographic pictures and videos out there are of sex trafficking victims, and it’s no surprise that sites built to exist in the dark shadowy corners of the Internet do little to prevent it. Yet Americans contribute considerably to the business.
- We contribute heftily to climate change, for which future generations may pay a heavy price.
- Our society has presided over the abortion of more than 60 million babies in the last 47 years.
What will the generation of 2220 think of us for these things? Will they be shocked at how callous we are to the plight of the Bangladeshi worker who makes our clothing? Will they be appalled at how ignorant we are about how the American Internet economy fuels modern-day slavery? I suspect so. Perhaps they’ll be citing these reasons when they pull down statues of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. As much as we may disparage our predecessors for their blindness to evil or their perpetuation of it, we ourselves are blind to and contribute to great evils. Or, at best, we may look at these evils with the kind of coldhearted pragmatism President Ulysses S. Grant did when he said, “If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.” We have other priorities.
Even if you don’t agree with every item on that list, the point is clear: we are complicit in and contribute to incredible human suffering. Is everything we do to be dismissed because of the human suffering in which we are complicit? Is our entire generation to be held as ignorant and worthy of contempt because of it? Maybe. I would not blame generations of the future for vilifying us. And yet I think the progress we do make in accomplishing God’s will is worth commemorating, even celebrating, even if we make minimal advances in these specific areas in our lifetime. So progress of the past is worth celebrating, too.
What we should commemorate
We have the knowledge to make moral judgments about a person’s contributions to history. And the reason we celebrate certain historical figures is not necessarily because we should look up to them as heroes to emulate. It’s because they played an active, intentional, and integral part in making the world more like the place God intended it to be. If a historical figure did some good that in their day required courage and set them apart from the majority of their contemporary world, that’s worth remembering and commemorating.
What does that mean for the statues and how we should view those figures who are traditionally revered? It depends on which person you’re talking about. Did they make progress on some issue–even if it was not on every issue and the benefits were not immediately enjoyed equally by everyone–that laid the foundation for a world more in line with God’s will? If so, then their work should be commemorated, not for the sake of the person, but for the sake of the act itself. Progress—true progress in accordance with God’s will—is worthy of celebrating, even if the person who led the way is not. Yet no major act of progress can be separated from those who were instrumental in carrying it out. We should acknowledge progress where it is, and give due credit to those who implemented it.
