Slavery and the US Church

I've been hearing some of our conservative friends painting the white church as "the primary driver to eliminate slavery..." as if the white church were the hero in that history. This, from one who can't/won't acknowledge that slavery is always a great evil or that white men in power who, by policy and social dominance, were engaged in a great evil in their institutionalization of the racism and slavery of the day, or that the white church was not involved in a great evil in their either passive or active support for slavery and the racism that produced it.

"The primary driver to eliminate slavery."

That's quite a claim. I wonder if he could support such a charge?

Of course, I acknowledge (as Frederick Douglass noted in my last post) that there were SOME in the white church who followed the lead of black leadership to come out (sooner or later, in different cases) as not only opposed to the racism and slavery of the day, but to actively fight against it. The Quakers, as a group, were an early group who decided as a group to take an active stand against slavery. And there were others, later on and to varying degrees. (Ironically and as an aside, there would be many Christians who don't consider the Quakers to be Christians - and, of course, there are some Quakers today who'd say the same thing, I think.)

I'm not saying that some Christian churches were not involved in the fight for human rights in regards to racism and slavery.

But, we'd have to turn an extremely blind eye to actual history to refuse to acknowledge the awful efforts made by white churches in our history to defend slavery and racism as "god's will" and/or to defend slavery by remaining quiet in the face of a great evil. This post is just to point to some of the historical record regarding white church history and racism/slavery.

In the 1820s, former slave owner (and Kentuckian) James Birney became increasingly disturbed by slavery and became an abolitionist. In the 1840s, he wrote a pamphlet in England talking about slavery in the US and dealt a great deal with the degree of support for slavery and violent opposition to abolitionism within American churches. Some of his article (which, in some places, is quoting the actual religious slavery-defenders)...


THE extent to which most of the Churches in America are involved in the guilt of supporting the slave system is known to but few in this country.^* So far from being even suspected by the great mass of the religious community here, it would not be believed but on the most indisputable evidence. Evidence of this character it is proposed now to present—applying to the Methodist Episcopal, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant Episcopal Churches. It is done with a single view to make the British Christian public acquainted with the real state of the case—in order that it may in the most intelligent and effective manner exert the influence it possesses with the American churches to persuade them to purify themselves from a sin that has greatly debased them, and that threatens in the end wholly to destroy them...

In the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, the colored people, during service, sit in a particular part of the house, now generally known as the negro pew. They are not permitted to sit in any other, nor to hire or purchase pews as other people, nor would they be permitted to sit, even if invited, in the pews of white persons. This applies to all colored persons...

"As a man, a Christian, and a citizen, we believe that slavery is right; that the condition of the slave-holding States, is the best existing organization of civil society."

"He [Amos Dresser] should have been hung up as high as Haman, to rot upon the gibbet, until the wind whistled through his bones. The cry of the whole South should be death, INSTANT DEATH, to the abolitionist, wherever he is caught..."

"That slavery through the South and West is not felt as an evil, moral or political, but it is recognised in reference to the actual, and not to any Utopian condition of our slaves, as a blessing both to master and slave..."

A public meeting was appointed to be held a few days afterward, to complete, in the same spirit in which they were commenced, preparations for excluding Anti-Slavery publications from circulation, and for ferreting out persons uspected of favoring the doctrines of the abolitionists, that hey might be subjected to Lynch law. At this assembly the Charleston Courier informs us;

  "The Clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene."

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/christn/chesjgbat.html

I may post more of this later. But clearly, F Douglass and this Birney abolitionist recognized the prevalence and deadly vehemence of support for slavery and opposition to abolitionists. I suspect that this was the (vast) majority position in churches in the US but I'll continue to look into it.