ABSTRACT
In recent years, debates have raged around the legacy of eighteenth-century evangelical leaders. Those who have previously been lauded as heroes of the faith, such as New England minister Jonathan Edwards and itinerant evangelist George Whitefield, are now subject to intensified scrutiny. The 1780 publication A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists was designed to be the definitive hymnbook for the fledgling Methodist movement. Surveying the ways “to wash the Ethiop white” was used in the early modern world is necessary for interpreting Wesley’s hymn. According to Tamara Lewis, “when used as a symbol of sanctification, the ‘Washing an Ethiop/Blackamoor white’ trope is depicted in many cases as the gradual transformation from African ethnicity to whiteness. But while Marsden steps away from the traditional use of this phrase, by separating spiritual and physical categories of black and white, the more typical usage did not disappear.
