Bylden on the Second Commandment

Jesus the Good Shepherd
First United Methodist Church
Greenville, Sinoe County, Liberia

  In his youth Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912) was filled with the ardor of evangelism and hope. He arrived in Liberia at age 19 and began in earnest his preparation for ministry in the Presbyterian church. He saw in the Christian gospel the cure for the ills of a benighted and ignored continent. He hoped for the salvation of "Negroland" and anticipated a "sudden" rise of the culture of Africa.
  Only twelve years after arriving in Liberia Blyden had advanced to the position of Professor of Languages at Liberia College (now the University of Liberia). It was his hope to elevate the status of the Negro and "draw toward us the attention of the civilized world" (Inaugural Address, 1862).
  During his tenures at Liberia College (1862-1871; 1880-1884; 1890) Blyden became, increasingly, interested in the presence of established Muslim communities throughout Liberia and West Africa. He became a self-taught Arabic scholar and introduced that language to the curriculum in 1867.
  During the final decades of his life Blyden appears to have had some misgivings about the origins and influences of Christian missions in Africa, especially West Africa. He turned his full energy and life experiences toward an exploration of the relationship between Christianity, Islam, and the encouragement of the Negro race. In a stunning essay, "Mohammedanism and the Negro Race" (1875), Blyden mounted an argument for the superior effects of Islam upon the strength and vitality of the Negro:

            “Another reason for the superior manliness and amour proper of Negro Mohammedans may be found in the fact that, unlike their Christian brethren  they have not been trained under the depressing influence of Aryan art . . . . The Second Commandment with Mussulmans [Muslims] as with Jews, is construed literally into the prohibition of all representations of living creatures of all kinds . . . .

            “No one can deny the great aesthetic and moral advantages which have accrued to the Caucasian race from Christian art, through all its stages of development, from the Good Shepherd of the Catacombs to the Transfiguration of Raphael, from rough mosaics to the inexpressible delicacy and beauty of Giotto and Fra Angelico. But to the Negro all these exquisite representations exhibited only the physical characteristics of a foreign race; and while they tended to quicken the tastes and refine the sensibilities of that race, they had only a depressing influence upon the Negro, who felt that he had neither part nor lot so far as the physical character was concerned, in those splendid representations. . . . The Christian Negro, abnormal in his development, pictures God and all beings remarkable for their moral and intellectual qualities with the physical characteristics of the Europeans, and deems it an honor if he can approximate—by a mixture of his blood, however irregularly achieved—in outward appearance at least to the ideal thus forced upon him by the physical accompaniments of all excellence. In this way he loses that 'sense of dignity of human nature' observable in his Mohammedan brother.”

  On Sunday morning last I stood in the coolness of the First United Methodist Church in Greenville, Sinoe County, Liberia and marveled at the stained glass image of a dark Jesus, the Good Shepherd. I could not help but think of Blyden, his passion for the Christian gospel and the way his life opened for him a more broad way of thinking about providence.
  It is certain that Blyden did not abandon his Christian identity in his sunset years. It is not certain whether or not Blyden found a "wideness in God's mercy," to cite a Christian hymn, that includes Muslims.
  I'm looking for Blyden while here in Liberia. I was not surprised to find a reminder of him in a Methodist church in southeast Liberia.