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Paper short abstract:

Princeton Seminary was central to the American Colonization Society and founding of Liberia by justifying colonization and repatriation as God's providential plan. This paper will expound on this thinking to unpack white imagination in the construction of Americo-Liberian and indigenous identities.

Paper long abstract:

In 2018, Princeton Theological Seminary became the first theological institution in American history to release a historical audit detailing the institution’s ties to slavery in America. As part of its findings, the report revealed that the seminary in conjunction with Princeton University (then College of New Jersey) played a significant role in the establishment of the American Colonization Society and the founding of Liberia. Through the efforts of faculty, trustee board members, students and alumni, the seminary developed the ideological premise, and created, and funded the structural mechanism for repatriating blacks in America back to Africa.

As part of my ongoing dissertation research and using new primary archival sources, this paper attempts to argue that chief among the Seminary’s ideological contributions was the justification of colonization and repatriation as part of the providential plan of God. This providential thinking would shape the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of common and ranked Americans, white and black, leading to leading to the founding of Africa’s first independent republic. With a focus on Archibald Alexander, James Adair Lyon and Cortlandt Van Rensselaer, this paper will expound on the providential thinking that led to the repatriation of free blacks. It will unpack white imagination in the construction of Americo-Liberian identity vis-à-vis indigenous Liberians in the early 1800s. It will also explore the making of Liberia's religious and political identities in the process.