Francis J. Grimké (1850-1937), born enslaved, went on to study at Princeton Theological Seminary and spent most of his 50 years of ministry pastoring Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. He is notable for many reasons, including his traditional theological commitments and the instrumental role he played in the early civil rights movement, as well as a host of institutions including Howard University, the NAACP, the Hampton Institute, the American Negro Academy, and the PCUSA.
This paper explores the contours of Grimké’s nuanced approach to historic Christian creeds. In his private meditations, his journals reflect a twofold approach to the topic. On the one hand, he expressed concern about a “Christianity of creeds,” which he juxtaposed to a Christianity of “purity, simplicity, and power.” (Works, 3:17). Similarly, he criticized champions of “what they call orthodoxy” who are “loud in their denunciation of heresy” (Works, 3:487). On the other hand, in those same journals, and frequently in the same paragraph, he also ridiculed the idea of a “creedless religion” (Works, 3:245) or a “creedless church” (Works, 3:281, 487). Interestingly, he often recorded both sorts of creedal reflections in connection with references to the religion of the “Father,” the “Son,” and the “Holy Spirit.”
Furthermore, this paper argues that these private comments help to provide context for his more public statements in famous addresses like his “Christianity and Race Prejudice” and his sermons written for his own congregation such as the “Anniversary Address” delivered in 1916 to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the founding of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. These addresses and sermons regularly utilized Trinitarian language and motifs to communicate an approach to creedal orthodoxy that closely connected doctrine and ethics.
As such, Francis Grimké’s ministry is not only interesting in its own right, but also suggestive in relation to recent historiographical discussions regarding the utility of terms like “social gospel,” “fundamentalism,” and “evangelicalism. On the one hand, Gary Dorrien’s taxonomy in The New Abolition helpfully identifies at least four different subgroups in the coalition that he terms “black social Christianity.” At the same time, Francis Grimké’s approach to Christian creeds raises questions about the coherence of the “black social gospel” he attributes to this coalition. On the other hand, in two other recent monographs, Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews (Doctrine and Race) and Daniel Bare (Black Fundamentalism) seek to expand the categories (respectively) of “evangelicalism” and “fundamentalism” to include Black Christians. In many ways these also are helpful interventions. Yet these categories do not help to explain figures like Francis Grimké, who intentionally distanced himself from the “modernism” of “social gospel” preaching but also never self-identified as an “evangelical” or a “fundamentalist.” For these reasons, and attending to recent work by Matthew Avery Sutton, this article also suggests that concrete relationships to Chistian creeds and participation in Christian institutions may offer more historiographical utility than the various “isms” frequently relied upon in the literature.