{"id":646,"date":"2026-04-01T21:03:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=646"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:03:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:03:27","slug":"god-is-no-respecter-of-persons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"God Is No Respecter of Persons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pennington visited Nantucket Island in the summer of 1842 and heard the famed abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott speak. His subsequent letter to the Nantucket Inquirer was reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison\u2019s journal, The Liberator, in August.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

God Is No Respecter of Persons (1842)<\/h2>\n

by James W.C. Pennington<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came together not as blacks or whites, but as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nFrom the Nantucket Inquirer.<\/p>\n

\u2018God is no Respecter of Persons.\u2019<\/p>\n

Having heard that a meeting\u2014more particularly for colored people, but to which all were invited\u2014was to be held at the Friends\u2019 meeting-house on Main Street, last Sunday evening, at which Mrs. Mott would speak, I took occasion to be present; and truly can I say, that seldom have I been more gratified than during the hour and a half which the meeting occupied. The very aspect of the assemblage was cheering\u2014eminently so. More than a hundred neatly-clad people of color were present, and throughout the whole meeting they were orderly, quiet, and apparently deeply attentive. There, for the first time, I saw a practical recognition, on anything like a large scale, of that which the christian church regards as a truth, viz: that \u2018God is no respecter of persons.\u2019 True, I am informed that in Catholic countries, whatever diversities of condition may obtain in society, none are known within the precincts of the church: there black and white, high and low, all bow themselves before the common Father of their souls, for \u2018God is no respecter of persons.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0But Protestantism, in shaking off the corruptions of papacy, and returning to the pristine purity and simplicity of christianity, has set up a negro pew, and stamped unclean on the brow of those for whom Jesus Christ was not ashamed to die. Would he who associated with Lazarus and Mary Magdelene have shunned the society of the kind-hearted negro?<\/p>\n

In the meeting to which I allude, last Sunday evening, we came together not as blacks and whites, but as human beings. There was not, \u2018Sit thou here in a good place,\u2019 nor \u2018Stand thou there at my footstool.\u2019 It was pleasant to\u00a0me to know\u00a0that the proprietors of\u00a0a\u00a0christian\u00a0church\u00a0were not ashamed to\u00a0recognise\u00a0as equal brethren, the children of their common Father\u2014to give practical\u00a0evidence of their belief that \u2018God is no respecter of persons.\u2019<\/p>\n

And then Mrs. Mott\u2019s remarks\u2014so earnest, so touching, so imbued with the\u00a0deep, all-embracing, Christian love, with which her soul\u00a0seems to be\u00a0filled to overflowing! Admonition, warning, encouragement, advice\u2014uttered in language eloquent yet simple, glowing yet chaste\u2014and uttered too in the sincerity if real affection; every word of it must have sunk deep\u00a0into the spirit of everyone present\u2014and I doubt not that the meeting was to all, whites as well as blacks, a season of copious refreshing from God.\u00a0I know that I went away from it, for the time at least, a better man.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of the services, notice was given that\u00a0Mrs. Mott\u00a0desired\u00a0a parting meeting with the inhabitants of her native town on Tuesday evening\u00a0next, at the\u00a0Main-street\u00a0meeting house.\u00a0Reader, would you have your heart warmed by genuine Christian eloquence\u2014fail not to be there.<\/p>\n

PENNINGTON.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pennington visited Nantucket Island in the summer of 1842 and heard the famed abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott speak. His subsequent letter to the Nantucket Inquirer was reprinted in William Lloyd Garrison\u2019s journal, The Liberator, in August.\u00a0   God Is No Respecter of Persons (1842) by James W.C. Pennington \u201cWe came together not as blacks … Continue reading God Is No Respecter of Persons<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[87,56,48,58],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-james-w-c-pennington","tag-black-lives","tag-democracy","tag-religious-belief","tag-social-commentary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hartfordlit.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}