Participation in the Divine: A Wesleyan Theological Motif in Frederick Douglass

Abstract

Participation in the divine is a central motif in Wesleyan theology. This essay examines how that participationist framework functions in Frederick Douglass’s account of personal religious conversion in his second major autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). While Douglass is extensively studied as an abolitionist, orator, and political thinker, his personal religiosity and theological relationship to Methodism remains underexplored in Methodist scholarship. Reading Douglass’s conversion narrative through a Wesleyan lens, this essay argues that Douglass’s experience reflects a theology of participation marked by inward awakening, moral consciousness, and active engagement in God’s liberating work in history. Even as his philosophy and religious views evolved over time, this element of Wesleyan thought shaped his unfolding emancipatory thinking and social activism.