For one, Mather was committed to an ideal of spiritual equality among the races. Many Christians of the day believed blacks were the descendants of Ham and had inherited his curse of perpetual bondage, and some even thought blacks might not have souls. Mather took a more universalistic view. In his 1706 pamphlet The Negro Christianized, he called the idea that blacks lacked souls a “Bruitish insinuation” and asserted that God’s saints, at least theoretically, could be found amongst all peoples. For Mather, no human could truly know who was and was not among the elect–this was a central tenet of his faith–and blacks therefore had to be given the same chance to show themselves to be true Christians as were whites. “Suppose these wretched Negroes to be the offspring of Ham (which yet is not so very certain),” he wrote, “yet let us make a tryal, whether the Christ who dwelt in the tents of Shem have not some of His Chosen among them.”
These were not mere idle words for the minister. He enthusiastically put them into practice, devoting his time and money to the cause of black spiritual welfare in Boston. He invited black parishioners to his home for Christian discussion. He helped blacks found a Religious Society for Negroes. He created a free school to teach Africans and their descendants to read the Bible. And he lobbied his fellow believers to teach their slaves the Holy Word, distributing copies of The Negro Christianized to convince masters to apply themselves to black religious instruction. “Let not this opportunity be lost,” he admonished, “if you have any concern for souls, your own or others.” Mather’s Calvinist orthodoxy made his commitment to converting blacks a serious matter.
But for all his concern for black conversion, Mather, like most other Christians of the time, also believed that racial equality before God did not demand equality on Earth–and, in particular, that it was wholly compatible with the institution of slavery. He asserted that blacks should be granted the opportunity for baptism with the same vigor with which he insisted that the conversion of slaves did not render them free as a matter of law. (This fear prevented some colonists from giving their slaves religious instruction, and Mather sought to reassure them.) And when members of his church gave Mather an African slave, he joyfully called the gift “a mighty smile of Heaven upon my family.” The slave, Onesimus, would remain with Mather’s family for years. For Mather, slavery and Christianity were in full accord.