Juneteenth as a Prophetic Mirror for the American Church

More than any other national observance in America, Juneteenth challenges the connection between historical liberation and modern Christian identity.

While some worry the holiday is a vehicle for secular “woke” philosophy, a closer look reveals a movement saturated in Christian legacy. The road to June 19, 1865, was paved by the prayerful vigils of the enslaved and the convictions of Christian abolitionists like the AME Zion’s Frederick Douglass and his Quaker counterpart, William Lloyd Garrison. Juneteenth emerged from spiritual devotion and civic struggle.

Historically speaking, Christians are uniquely situated, then, to celebrate the holiday as a theological necessity that reconciles the Bible’s mandate for liberation with the contradictions of the American narrative of exceptionalism.

In this article, I examine the historical reception of two types of Christian response to the Bible’s teaching on slavery (John Calvin’s and Frederick Douglass/William Lloyd Garrison’s) and put them in conversation with the more modern history and concerns that Juneteenth recalls.

Dismantling the idols of a selective memory

Juneteenth mirrors the African American Christian “Watch Night” tradition, where Black enslaved Christians ushered in the new year awaiting Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation through a “freedom vigil” of prayer, song, and testimony in church. Just as those believers “waited on the Lord” and the law declared slaves free in 1863, Juneteenth emerged from that same blend of spiritual and civic devotion. The holiday has been “canonized” by everything from spirituals to communal meals; parades to BBQs; citizenship training and voter’s rights seminars to prayer meetings. This trajectory, collectively, stands as proof that the civic struggle for freedom and the Christian ethos are inextricably linked.

It is ironic, then, that there is a growing animus against Juneteenth from some Christians. Purportedly, the celebration of Juneteenth is divisive, only focusing on the liberation of Blacks rather than the whole country. These critics opt to reserve celebrations of “freedom” only to the 4th of July.

Never mind the irony that, on July 4, 1776, our country was celebrating its liberation from the “tyranny” of the Crown while enslaving a portion of its own population. Neither should we forget that, at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, there were approximately 450,000 enslaved persons across the thirteen colonies.¹ Yet, by the time news of liberation had reached Galveston in 1865, the number had grown to approximately four million. This means that we didn’t get better in our fight for freedom. We became worse.

Celebration, particularly the Christian celebration of Juneteenth, has the potential to dismantle the idols of a selective memory.

The blind spots and the contradictions that Juneteenth evokes, then, make it a prime candidate for serving as a “mirror” for the American Christian conscience. Celebration, particularly the Christian celebration of Juneteenth, has the potential to dismantle the idols of a selective memory, replacing a distorted liberation with a transformative, biblically-grounded vision of what it actually means to be “free indeed,” because Juneteenth operates on the core logic of collective liberation: that we are not truly free until we are all free.

2 readings, 2 legacies: Deuteronomy 23

By tracing the divergent ways Christian tradition has wrestled with the Bible’s teachings on human slavery—moving from the systematic caution of John Calvin to the prophetic demands of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison—we see the specific historical anxieties that Juneteenth eventually answered.

Perhaps there is no better line of inquiry that demonstrates this than Calvin’s interpretation vs. the aforementioned abolitionists’ interpretation of Deuteronomy 23:15–16: “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand them over to their master. Let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose. Do not oppress them” (Deut 23:15–16 NIV).

Social stability: John Calvin

Despite a reputedly “progressive” stance that frames slavery as a corruption of the imago dei,² Calvin’s exegesis of Deuteronomy 23 and Philemon betrays a deep-seated commitment to institutional stability over social transformation.

Some have queried whether or not this can be attributed to the lack of exposure to the type of slavery that occurred in the Americas,³ essentially arguing that had Calvin witnessed the egregious summation of the status quo of chattel slavery, he might have responded differently. In my estimation, however, Calvin’s ambivalence can be better ascertained by identifying a profound hermeneutical blind spot where his social ethics and his exegesis collide.

Of Deuteronomy, he observes,

Besides, since runaway slaves are generally wicked and criminal, whatever place may be their asylum, it will be filled with many sources of infection. … For, suppose a thief, or an adulterer, or a murderer, should leave his master, and seek for an asylum in the Holy Land, what else would it have been to receive and protect such guests, but to overthrow law and justice, and to set up a state of foul barbarism? I think, therefore, that more is to be understood than the words express, viz., that, if it should be found that the slaves had not fled in consequence of their own evil doings, but on account of the excessive cruelty of their masters, the people should not drive them away, which would have been tantamount to giving them up to butchery.⁴

While Calvin elsewhere acknowledges the slave as a bearer of the imago dei, here his hermeneutic is compromised by a distinct prejudice against the fugitive—one that dismisses the runaway as “inherently wicked or criminal.” Assuming that most runaway slaves were criminals, he suggested that the text should be understood as encapsulating an implicit condition: People should only shelter those escaping excessive cruelty of their masters, thereby protecting the fugitive-slave from death or unjustified injury, but not necessarily overturning the institution of slavery itself.

Similarly, in Philemon, he observes,

Paul therefore reminds Philemon that he ought not to be so greatly offended at the flight of his slave, for it was the cause of a benefit not to be regretted. So long as Onesimus was at heart a runaway, Philemon, though he had him in his house, did not actually enjoy him as his property; for he was wicked and unfaithful, and could not be of real advantage. He says, therefore, that he was a wanderer for a little time, that, by changing his place, he might be converted and become a new man.⁵

Calvin’s remarks on Onesimus’s flight highlight his presumption that the fugitive had “defrauded” his master, emphasizing the restoration of the master’s legal rights over the slave’s desire for autonomy. He often presumes that slaves run away due to a “vicious nature” and projects upon Paul an offense concerning Onesimus’s status as a “runaway.”

To be sure, Calvin is not alone in his treatment of Onesimus. Most in church history have interpreted Onesimus as a rebel rather than a refugee in need of liberty.⁶ The hermeneutic paradox demonstrated by Calvin and his predecessors is rooted not just in an attempt to read the text faithfully, but in whose lived experience the interpreter prioritized. Calvin, insulated by his sociological privilege and his role as a reformer working within a relatively narrow context of homogeneity, could afford an interpretive “goal” of using Scripture to maintain social order.⁷

Ironically, this concern for “order” caused Calvin to look past the plain meaning of the text, particularly in the case of Deuteronomy 23:15–16.

Prophetic disruption: Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison

In stark contrast, Frederick Douglass and his Quaker counterpart, William Lloyd Garrison, pointed to this same verse to declare the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act both sinful and unconstitutional. Where Calvin’s bias serves as a buffer to his logical conclusions of his theology, essentially reinforcing the status quo, the abolitionists saw a mandate from God, eventually using Deuteronomy 23 to provide the moral and legal framework for the Underground Railroad—the very movement that birthed the liberation Juneteenth eventually fulfilled.

This has tremendous resonances with current debates of whether Christians should celebrate Juneteenth or not. This “resonance” is the tension between “Preservation of Order” and “Prophetic Liberation.” It wasn’t just the Texas enslavers who willfully held back information about slave liberation that were agents of preservation of a sinful order. Calvin’s Christian interpretation accomplished the same goal, even if it was unintentional.

Just as Calvin looked at a runaway slave and saw a potential “source of infection” or a “thief” who threatened the stability of the state, many modern Christian critics of Juneteenth view the holiday through a lens of social anxiety. The current animus often stems from a fear that acknowledging Juneteenth validates a disruption of the American narrative and a loss of the status quo. To be sure, it does do that, but that is what the prophetic aspect of the Christian witness is supposed to do. It is supposed to disrupt our gaze. This prophetic mirror should not bring consternation within the Christian community. It should bring consolation.

Juneteenth is a part of America’s identity. More importantly, it is a part of the Christian American identity.

Juneteenth is a part of America’s identity. More importantly, it is a part of the Christian American identity. If this is the case, then Juneteenth should motivate us to a commitment of theological inquiry into the ongoing Christian witness of the movement.

A hermeneutic of solidarity

While Christian inquiry has already begun, I would like to posit one further line of inquiry by considering the larger literary context of Deuteronomy 23 and asking the question: What would motivate Moses to instruct the Israelites, “You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you” (Deut 23:15)? I suggest that the answer is partially found in a hermeneutical vantage point of Israel’s status as second generation of refugees from Egypt.

This hermeneutic is partially seen in a brief comparison of the Sabbath law in Exodus 20:9–11 and Deuteronomy 5:12–15. In the former passage, the logic of the Sabbath is grounded in the creation: because God rested, Israel should rest. Interestingly, in Deuteronomy 5:12–15, the logic of the Sabbath is no longer grounded in the creational rest of Yahweh, but the redemptive acts of Yahweh and Israel’s embodied experience as slaves. Moses says they should not work nor force “your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you,” to work—they are to rest as well as you (Deut 5:14). Why? Moses states, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” (Deut 5:15).

By grounding the law in the visceral memory of their own bondage, Moses transforms Israel’s history into a mandatory ethic of solidarity. This shared identity as former captives creates a moral imperative where the protection of the fugitive in Deuteronomy 23:15–16 is not merely a social courtesy, but a safeguard against the re-emergence of the Egyptian tyranny within their own borders, refusing Israel the opportunity to become little Pharaohs.

Because contemporary critiques of Juneteenth often prioritize hegemonic patriotism over shared identity with African American Christians, the holiday remains a prophetic mirror. Yet it offers the Christian critics the same opportunity Moses gave Israel: to confront its proclivity for tyranny while having the testimony of the redeemed. To ignore this dual reality is to behold one’s image in a mirror, walk away, and immediately forget what kind of person one was (Jas 1:22–25).

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Tyran Laws recommended resources for further reflection

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1. American Battlefield Trust, “10 Facts: Black Patriots in the American Revolution,” American Battlefield Trust, June 14, 2024, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-black-patriots-american-revolution.
2. Eric Kayayan, “Calvin on Slavery: Providence and Social Ethics in the 16th Century,” Koers 78, no. 2 (2013): 1–13.
3. Kayayan, “Calvin on Slavery.”
4. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, vol. 3, trans. Charles William Bingham (Logos Bible Software, 2010), 54–55.
5. Emphasis mine. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, trans. William Pringle (Logos Bible Software, 2010), 356.
6. For a good historical survey of this see, e.g., D. Francois Tolmie, “How Onesimus Was Heard—Eventually. Some Insights from the History of Interpretation of Paul’s Letter To Philemon,” Acta Theologica 39 (2019): 101–17.
7. Tyran T. Laws, “Submission as Subversion: Re-evaluating Hegemony in Biblical Literature and in African American Thought,” Society of Gospel Haymanot Journal, vol. 5 (unpublished manuscript).