Christian Abolitionism and Christian Defenses of Slavery
Christian Abolitionism and Biblical Arguments Against Slavery
Christianity played a central and deeply contested role in the history of slavery. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christians appealed to the Bible both to defend slavery and to demand its immediate abolition. Religious convictions inspired many of the movement's greatest reformers, while other churches and theologians argued that scripture sanctioned human bondage. The result was one of the most significant theological and moral debates in modern history.
Origins of Christian Abolitionism
Early Christian opposition to slavery emerged among Quakers, evangelical reformers, and individual clergy who argued that slavery violated the Golden Rule, human equality, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Writers such as Samuel Sewall, Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, and John Wesley condemned slavery decades before organized abolition became a mass movement.
By the late eighteenth century, religious societies increasingly petitioned governments, published pamphlets, and organized campaigns against both the Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself.
Quakers and Evangelical Reform
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) became one of the earliest organized religious opponents of slavery. Although some early Quakers owned enslaved people, reformers gradually persuaded their communities that slaveholding was incompatible with Christian faith.
Evangelical Protestants also played an important role, particularly in Britain through William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect, whose campaigns combined religious conviction with political action to abolish the British slave trade and later slavery throughout much of the British Empire.
Black Christian Abolitionists
Black Christians became some of the movement's most powerful voices.
Frederick Douglass distinguished between what he called the "Christianity of Christ" and the Christianity practiced by churches that defended slavery. Sojourner Truth, Maria W. Stewart, Peter Randolph, Leonard Grimes, Absalom Jones, and numerous Black ministers used scripture to argue that God demanded justice, equality, and liberation rather than racial oppression.
Black churches also became centers of education, mutual aid, political organization, and Underground Railroad activity.
Biblical Arguments Against Slavery
Christian abolitionists argued that slavery violated the broader moral principles of scripture rather than simply isolated biblical passages.
Common arguments included:
- Every person bears the image of God.
- The Golden Rule prohibits owning other human beings.
- Christ's teachings emphasize love, mercy, and equality.
- The Exodus story demonstrates God's concern for the oppressed.
- Biblical servitude differed fundamentally from racial chattel slavery.
- Christian ethics should be interpreted through justice rather than isolated verses.
Many abolitionists argued that the spirit of Christianity ultimately undermined every form of human bondage.
Christian Defenses of Slavery
Many churches, ministers, and theologians defended slavery using biblical interpretation.
Proslavery writers cited:
- Old Testament slavery.
- The household codes of the New Testament.
- Instructions for servants to obey masters.
- Historical acceptance of slavery within Christian civilization.
- Claims that Christianity regulated rather than abolished slavery.
Some argued that slavery introduced Africans to Christianity and that Christian masters improved the lives of enslaved people. Others promoted gradual emancipation while opposing immediate abolition.
The Slave Bible and Religious Control
Religion was also used as an instrument of social control.
Missionaries and slaveholders often emphasized obedience while minimizing biblical stories of liberation. The infamous "Slave Bible" removed large portions of scripture—including much of Exodus—that could encourage resistance while preserving passages commanding servants to obey their masters.
Many slaveholders supported limited religious education so long as it reinforced discipline and obedience.
Churches, Denominations, and Division
Slavery divided nearly every major American Protestant denomination.
Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and other churches fractured over whether slaveholding was compatible with Christian membership.
Many abolitionists concluded that churches refusing to discipline slaveholders had become morally complicit in slavery. Others attempted reform from within existing denominations.
These conflicts permanently reshaped American religious life.
Women's Leadership in Christian Abolitionism
Christian abolitionism also expanded opportunities for women to become national reformers.
Angelina Grimké, Sarah Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, and numerous women's antislavery societies argued that Christian faith required opposition to both slavery and the unequal treatment of women.
Many later leaders of the women's rights movement first developed their public leadership through abolitionist organizations.
British and International Abolition
British abolition drew support from Quakers, evangelicals, missionaries, and other religious reformers.
Christian activists organized petitions, parliamentary campaigns, public lectures, and mass publications to pressure the British government into ending the slave trade and eventually slavery throughout much of the British Empire.
International debates also revealed disagreements over missionary strategy, colonialism, gradual emancipation, and the responsibilities of Christian governments.
Historical Scholarship
Modern historians generally conclude that Christianity cannot be reduced to either a force for liberation or a defense of oppression.
The same scriptures produced sharply different interpretations depending upon historical context, economic interests, denominational traditions, and methods of biblical interpretation.
Current scholarship increasingly emphasizes the contributions of Black Christians, women, Quakers, and lesser-known religious activists while also examining how churches participated in sustaining racial slavery.
Conclusion
Christian abolitionism demonstrates both the transformative power and the contested nature of religious belief. Christian convictions inspired many of history's greatest campaigns for emancipation, education, and human equality, while other believers used the same scriptures to defend slavery and racial hierarchy. The history of Christian responses to slavery illustrates how religious traditions can become powerful forces for either reform or oppression depending upon how sacred texts are interpreted and applied.
Christian Abolitionism and Biblical Arguments Against Slavery
Maria W. Stewart
| National Park Service | National Park Service | January 12, 2026
Maria W. Stewart was a pioneering Black Christian lecturer who connected abolition, racial equality, education, women’s rights, and moral reform. Her speeches challenged white Christians to confront slavery while urging African Americans to claim their intellectual, political, and spiritual authority.
The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
| National Park Service | National Park Service | January 5, 2026
Founded in 1833, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society declared slavery a direct violation of God’s laws. Its members circulated religious abolitionist literature, organized petition campaigns, supported Black education, and promoted the public lectures of Angelina and Sarah Grimké.
The South Carolina Aristocrat Who Became a Feminist Abolitionist
| Kat Long | Smithsonian Magazine | July 24, 2018
Angelina Grimké rejected the slaveholding society in which she was raised and embraced Quaker abolitionism. Her interpretation of Christianity led her to regard slaveholding as sinful while also supporting women’s right to speak publicly on religious and political questions.
The Quaker Comet Was the Greatest Abolitionist You’ve Never Heard Of
| Marcus Rediker | Smithsonian Magazine | September 2017
Benjamin Lay was an eighteenth-century Quaker who denounced slaveholding as a grave Christian sin. Through dramatic protests, published arguments, and personal sacrifice, he challenged fellow Quakers who profited from slavery and helped establish a radical religious tradition of immediate abolition.
Connecticut Abolitionists
| National Park Service | National Park Service | August 18, 2017
Connecticut abolitionists represented several competing strategies, including political organization, moral persuasion, religious conversion, and resistance to federal authority. The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society particularly emphasized Christian teaching as a means of awakening the nation’s conscience.
Understanding the Gospel of Nat Turner
| Patrick Breen | Smithsonian Magazine | October 7, 2016
Nat Turner understood his resistance to slavery through an intense Christian and prophetic worldview. The article examines how biblical visions, divine judgment, and the religious culture of enslaved communities shaped Turner’s interpretation of rebellion.
Watch The Abolitionists
| PBS | American Experience | January 8, 2013
This documentary traces how abolitionism developed from a movement emphasizing prayer and moral persuasion into a nationwide confrontation over slavery. It highlights the religious convictions, disagreements, sacrifices, and activism of prominent Black and white abolitionists.
Sojourner Truth
| History.com Editors | History | October 29, 2009
Sojourner Truth drew upon her identity as a Christian evangelist to preach abolition, women’s equality, and universal human dignity. Her speeches transformed biblical language that had often been used to enforce submission into a source of resistance and liberation.
The Abolition of the Slave Trade: Christian Conscience and Political Action
| John Coffey | Cambridge Papers | March 2006
This paper examines the Christian beliefs of British abolitionists and the ways religious conviction inspired sustained political action. It discusses evangelical activism, public campaigning, moral responsibility, parliamentary reform, and the relationship between personal faith and institutional change.
The Black Church
| PBS | American Experience | n.d.
Black churches became vital centers of abolitionist preaching, community organization, education, and political resistance. Ministers condemned slavery as a violation of Christianity and warned that a nation tolerating human bondage would face moral judgment.
Quakers: From Slave Traders to Early Abolitionists
| PBS | This Far by Faith | n.d.
Some early Quakers participated in slavery, but dissenting members increasingly invoked the Golden Rule and the spiritual equality of humanity against the institution. Their petitions and internal reforms helped turn Quaker communities into important centers of organized abolitionism.
Five Abolitionists
| PBS | American Experience | n.d.
Profiles of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown demonstrate the diverse religious and moral foundations of abolitionism. Their approaches ranged from Christian persuasion and literature to political agitation and armed resistance.
Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy
| Library of Congress | African American Odyssey | n.d.
This Library of Congress exhibition surveys the growth of American abolitionism, including Christian arguments advanced by Benjamin Lay and other Quakers. It also presents documents showing how Black activists, religious reformers, newspapers, and antislavery organizations challenged slavery.
Abolition
| Library of Congress | The African-American Mosaic | n.d.
This collection explains how Quakers, Black Christians, and members of other religious communities argued that slavery contradicted the teachings of Christ. It places religious opposition within the broader development of antislavery societies, publications, petitions, and political activism.
Black Christian Abolitionist Thought
The “Infidelity” of Abolitionism
| William Lloyd Garrison | Library of Congress | 1860
Garrison responded to accusations that abolitionists were hostile to Christianity by arguing that proslavery churches had corrupted religion. He maintained that prevailing religious teaching gave slavery much of its political strength and cultural legitimacy.
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
| Frederick Douglass | Teaching American History | July 5, 1852
Douglass accused American churches of giving slavery moral legitimacy and failing to defend the oppressed. He contrasted the nation’s professions of Christianity and liberty with the violence, family separation, and denial of humanity experienced by enslaved people.
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
| Frederick Douglass | PBS Africans in America | July 5, 1852
This version of Douglass’s famous address emphasizes the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom while maintaining slavery. Douglass charged religious institutions with turning Christianity into a defense of oppression rather than a force for justice.
An Address to the Anti-Slavery Christians of the United States
| Lewis Tappan and Others | Library of Congress | 1852
This abolitionist address argued that American slavery could not be justified by the forms of servitude mentioned in the Bible. It called upon Christians to withdraw support from slaveholding institutions and treat emancipation as an urgent religious obligation.
Prayer for the Oppressed
| Amos A. Phelps | Library of Congress | 1846
This religious antislavery tract presents prayer for emancipation as a Christian duty requiring sympathy with enslaved people and opposition to oppression. It urges churches, ministers, families, and individuals to participate actively in the struggle against slavery.
The American Churches, the Bulwarks of American Slavery
| James Gillespie Birney | Library of Congress | 1842
Birney accused American denominations and ministers of protecting slavery through silence, compromise, and direct theological support. The work documents resolutions, sermons, and church policies that treated abolitionism as a greater threat than slaveholding.
Frederick Douglass and the Christian Church
| Frederick Douglass | Library of Congress | November 4, 1841
Frederick Douglass distinguished between the Christianity of Christ and the slaveholding religion practiced in the United States. He condemned churches that admitted slaveholders, defended racial hierarchy, or remained silent while enslaved people were abused.
Christian Defenses of Slavery
Robert E. Lee and Slavery
| National Park Service | Arlington House | July 1, 2024
This historical overview addresses myths surrounding Robert E. Lee’s slaveholding and his belief that slavery was a moral and political evil governed by divine providence. Such paternalistic arguments condemned slavery abstractly while opposing immediate emancipation and preserving white authority.
Liberating the Past: Christian History in the Debate over Slavery
| Paul Gutacker | Oxford Academic | December 15, 2022
Black and white abolitionists constructed historical narratives portraying Christianity as a force for emancipation and racial equality. Proslavery writers answered by emphasizing the long coexistence of Christian institutions and systems of human bondage.
American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem
| Michael Luo | The New Yorker | September 2, 2020
This essay examines how white American Christianity repeatedly accommodated slavery and racial hierarchy. It discusses George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Basil Manly, denominational division, the religion of the Lost Cause, and the limitations of individualistic approaches to racial injustice.
The Christian Past in Antebellum Slavery Debates
| Paul Gutacker | Church History | September 2020
Antebellum writers on both sides appealed to Christian history as evidence. Abolitionists argued that Christianity had gradually destroyed ancient slavery, while defenders maintained that centuries of Christian tolerance proved that slaveholding was compatible with the faith.
Heavily Abridged ‘Slave Bible’ Removed Passages That Might Encourage Uprisings
| Brigit Katz | Smithsonian Magazine | January 4, 2019
British missionaries produced an abridged Bible for enslaved Caribbean populations that emphasized obedience while omitting much of the Exodus story and other potentially liberating passages. The volume demonstrates how scripture could be selectively edited to reinforce colonial slavery.
Why Bibles Given to Enslaved People Omitted Most of the Old Testament
| Becky Little | History | December 11, 2018
The so-called Slave Bible removed large portions of scripture that might inspire resistance, including narratives of liberation from bondage. Passages instructing servants to obey masters remained, revealing how religious instruction was deliberately shaped to support plantation discipline.
British Proslavery Arguments and the Bible, 1823–1833
| Michael Taylor | Slavery & Abolition | January 2016
British defenders of Caribbean slavery used biblical interpretation to resist emancipation during the final decade before abolition. They cited Old Testament servitude, apostolic instructions to enslaved Christians, social hierarchy, and claims that Christianity regulated rather than prohibited slavery.
Biblical Critics and the Battle Over Slavery
| Robert Bruce Mullin | Journal of Presbyterian History | 1983
This article examines the conflict between traditional biblical interpretation and abolitionist ethics. Proslavery theologians argued that scriptural references to slavery settled the question, while critics developed alternative methods of interpreting the Bible’s moral authority and historical context.
Methodist Episcopal Church, South
| PBS | This Far by Faith | n.d.
The division of American Methodism illustrates how disputes over slaveholding fractured national denominations. Southern church leaders cited biblical passages in support of slavery and rejected the abolitionist claim that slaveholding was inherently sinful.
Denominational Conflict and Historical Interpretation
Harriet Beecher Stowe Wrote a Work of Fiction That Seemed So Real It Changed a Nation
| Geraldine Brooks | Smithsonian Magazine | Summer 2026
Harriet Beecher Stowe drew upon Christian ethics, firsthand testimony, and documented experiences of enslaved people in writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Her novel transformed religious sympathy into a powerful cultural indictment of slavery, although its racial representations remain debated.
Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism
| Katharine Gerbner | American Historical Review | September 2023
This review examines Ben Wright’s study of how Protestant missions and conversion shaped American abolitionism. Christianity inspired antislavery activism but also limited it when believers prioritized evangelization, gradual reform, denominational unity, or missionary access over immediate emancipation.
Slavery and the Sin of Secular America
| Joseph S. Moore | Oxford Academic | 2016
Covenanter Christians developed an unusually early and uncompromising opposition to slavery. Their theology attempted to reconcile biblical literalism with natural liberty, arguing that American racial slavery violated divine law despite the existence of servitude in biblical societies.
Quakers and Abolition
| Amy S. Greenberg | Journal of American History | March 2015
This review evaluates scholarship complicating the popular identification of Quakers as the sole religious founders of abolitionism. It emphasizes divisions within Quaker communities and the frequently underrecognized work of Black activists, women, and evangelical Christians.
God in America: Interview with Cynthia Lynn Lyerly
| Cynthia Lynn Lyerly | PBS | 2010
Historian Cynthia Lyerly explains how evangelical revivalism helped many abolitionists identify slavery as a monumental national sin. The interview also explores the opposing biblical conclusions reached by Southern Christians and the resulting division of churches.
The War Against Proslavery Religion
| John R. McKivigan | Cornell University Press | 1984
This study describes abolitionism as a campaign against churches that tolerated or defended slaveholding. Evangelical abolitionists defined slavery as a sin requiring immediate repentance and sought to force denominations, ministers, and congregations to take a clear position.
Black Christian Abolitionists and Religious Resistance
Peter Randolph
| National Park Service | National Park Service | January 12, 2026
Reverend Peter Randolph, who had experienced enslavement in Virginia, used Christian ministry and autobiographical writing to expose slavery’s violence. His preaching challenged white churches that claimed biblical authority while denying freedom, education, and family security to Black Americans.
Leonard Grimes
| National Park Service | National Park Service | January 12, 2026
Reverend Leonard Grimes led Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church and assisted people escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad. His congregation illustrates how Black churches combined worship, abolitionist preaching, mutual aid, political organization, and direct resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law.
A Thanksgiving Sermon in St. Thomas, or the African Episcopal Church
| National Park Service | National Park Service | March 19, 2025
Absalom Jones delivered this sermon after the federal prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade took effect in 1808. Jones celebrated the measure through biblical language while reminding listeners that the abolition of the trade did not end slavery or guarantee justice for African Americans.
Underground Railroad—Lowell
| National Park Service | Lowell National Historical Park | February 15, 2025
Churches and religious societies in Lowell and nearby Andover participated in antislavery organizing and Underground Railroad activity. The formation of the Free Christian Church by abolitionists demonstrates how opposition to slavery sometimes required separation from congregations unwilling to condemn slaveholding.
Frederick Douglass
| National Park Service | Frederick Douglass National Historic Site | March 2, 2024
Frederick Douglass became one of the nineteenth century’s most influential abolitionist writers and speakers. He repeatedly distinguished the teachings of Jesus from the slaveholding Christianity that protected racial violence, excluded Black believers, and demanded obedience from enslaved people.
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”: Annotated
| JSTOR Daily | JSTOR Daily | July 4, 2023
This annotated edition provides historical context for Frederick Douglass’s attack on American religious hypocrisy. Douglass argued that slavery corrupted churches, ministers, missionaries, and the nation’s moral reputation while turning public professions of Christianity into instruments of deception.
Dann J. Broyld’s Essay
| Dann J. Broyld | Harriet Tubman National Historical Park | November 18, 2021
This essay explains how enslaved African Americans selectively adapted Christianity rather than simply accepting the religion taught by white slaveholders. Black believers rejected doctrines of perpetual submission and interpreted biblical narratives through African traditions, liberation, survival, and resistance.
“Sustaining the Truth of the Bible”: Black Evangelical Abolitionists and the Christian Scriptures
| J. R. Iliff | Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society | 2021
Black evangelical abolitionists maintained that biblical authority did not require support for slavery. Their writings demonstrate how conservative theological commitments could produce antislavery interpretations centered on human equality, divine justice, the Golden Rule, and the Bible’s broader redemptive message.
A Great Inheritance: The Abolition Movement and the First Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls
| National Park Service | National Park Service | November 19, 2020
Quaker women including Lucretia Mott developed their public activism through abolitionism before helping organize the Seneca Falls Convention. Their religious commitment to spiritual equality encouraged challenges to both slavery and the restrictions imposed upon women within churches and public life.
Isaac Nelson, the Evangelical Alliance, and the Transatlantic Debate Over American Slavery
| Daniel Ritchie | Journal of Ecclesiastical History | 2014
Irish Presbyterian minister Isaac Nelson challenged attempts by the Evangelical Alliance to avoid condemning American slaveholders. The controversy reveals how denominational diplomacy and appeals to Christian unity frequently weakened international efforts to isolate proslavery churches.
Early Christian and Quaker Antislavery
National Register Amendment—Independence National Historical Park
| National Park Service | Independence National Historical Park | n.d.
Philadelphia Quakers such as Anthony Benezet and John Woolman became influential early opponents of slavery. Their preaching, publications, petitions, and personal witness helped transform scattered religious objections into an organized transatlantic antislavery movement.
Biblical Interpretation and the Slavery Debate
How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery
| Matthew Wills | JSTOR Daily | June 27, 2018
Antebellum defenders argued that because biblical patriarchs owned servants and New Testament writers did not command immediate emancipation, slavery possessed divine approval. Some Southern Christians retained this position after emancipation rather than reconsidering the racial and economic interests shaping their interpretation.
The Spread of Antislavery Sentiment Through Proslavery Evangelicalism
| Young Hwi Yoon | Journal of the Early Republic | 2012
This article examines evangelicals who accepted slavery while promoting missionary work and improved treatment of enslaved people. Their efforts unintentionally encouraged literacy, religious independence, and moral reasoning that enslaved and free Black Christians could transform into arguments for freedom.
Quakers, “Comeouters,” and the Meaning of Abolitionism in the Antebellum Free States
| Ryan Jordan | Journal of the Early Republic | 2004
Radical abolitionists known as Comeouters withdrew from churches that admitted slaveholders or refused to condemn slavery. They believed continued fellowship made Christians morally responsible for proslavery religion, while critics argued that separation weakened opportunities to reform established denominations.
The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
| David M. Goldenberg | Princeton University Press | 2003
This study traces the transformation of the Genesis story concerning Noah and Ham into a racial defense of African enslavement. The biblical passage does not identify Ham’s descendants as Black, yet later interpreters made the supposed curse a powerful justification for racial hierarchy.
Charles Hodge and the Enigma of Emancipationism in Antebellum America
| Peter J. Wallace | Journal of Presbyterian History | 1997
Princeton theologian Charles Hodge criticized slavery’s abuses but rejected the claim that the Bible required immediate abolition. His position illustrates how moderate Christians could acknowledge slavery’s injustice while using biblical caution, gradualism, and church unity to resist decisive action.
Primary Christian Antislavery Texts
Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible
| John Richter Jones | Library of Congress | 1861
This proslavery tract argues that the Bible recognizes the authority of masters and never categorically prohibits slaveholding. It illustrates how defenders treated scriptural references to servitude as universal rules while dismissing abolitionist appeals to liberty, equality, and the Golden Rule.
Review of Rev. Henry J. Van Dyke’s Discourse on “The Character and Influence of Abolitionism”
| James A. Thome | Library of Congress | 1860
This response attacks Henry Van Dyke’s portrayal of Southern slavery as a humane Christian household relationship. It argues that stories of benevolent masters could not erase the system’s legal denial of liberty, family rights, education, wages, and protection from abuse.
The Church, the Ministry, and Slavery
| George B. Cheever | Library of Congress | 1857
George B. Cheever condemned churches that maintained fellowship with slaveholders while denying that they were proslavery. He argued that ecclesiastical neutrality, silence, and refusal to discipline enslavers made Christian institutions active supporters of the system.
A North-Side View of Slavery: A Sermon on the Crime Against Freedom in Kansas and Washington
| Henry Ward Beecher | Library of Congress | 1856
Henry Ward Beecher portrayed the expansion of slavery into Kansas as a national moral crisis. He combined Christian teachings about human dignity with opposition to federal policies that protected slaveholders and suppressed the political rights of antislavery settlers.
American Slavery
| American Anti-Slavery Society | Library of Congress | 1850s
This abolitionist publication criticized ministers who privately admitted that slavery was wrong but refused to oppose it publicly. It argues that religious neutrality protected slaveholders by allowing churches to preserve fellowship, influence, and financial support without demanding emancipation.
Slavery and the Boston Riot
| Angelina E. Grimké | Library of Congress | 1835
Angelina Grimké described the violent disruption of a Boston antislavery meeting as evidence that slavery threatened freedom even in the North. Her letter connected Christian abolitionism with free speech and condemned mob action against women engaged in moral reform.
Churches, Denominations, and Institutional Complicity
Reckoning with Slavery’s Legacy in St. Louis
| National Park Service | National Park Service | November 2, 2023
Protestant and Catholic institutions in St. Louis participated in and benefited from slavery. Many white Christians regarded slaveholding as biblically permissible, showing how churches, religious schools, clergy, and charitable institutions could normalize exploitation within ordinary community life.
Chapter 1: Race, Slavery, and Freedom—Utah: Slaves and Saints
| National Park Service | National Park Service | March 28, 2022
Early Latter-day Saint attitudes toward slavery included opposition to the institution, hostility toward immediate abolition, and acceptance of Black subordination. Brigham Young eventually drew upon religious doctrine to justify territorial slavery and restrictions on African Americans.
Black Christian Abolitionists and Religious Activism
Alexander Crummell and the Anti-Slavery Dilemma of the Episcopal Church
| Thomas Strange | The Journal of Ecclesiastical History | July 2019
Alexander Crummell challenged the Episcopal Church’s unwillingness to condemn slavery while confronting racism within its congregations and institutions. His career illustrates the difficult position of Black clergy who sought to make established denominations live up to their professed Christian principles.
Abolitionist and Reformer Lucretia Mott
| Smithsonian National Museum of American History | Smithsonian Institution | March 5, 2018
Quaker minister Lucretia Mott traveled widely to condemn slavery and advocate equality. Her belief in the divine light within every person led her to challenge racial oppression, segregated institutions, limitations on women’s public speech, and churches that tolerated slaveholding.
Timeline: Methodism in Black and White
| United Methodist Communications | The United Methodist Church | n.d.
This timeline traces Methodism’s early antislavery rules, the participation of Black preachers, the creation of independent African American denominations, and the denomination’s 1844 division over slavery. It also shows how antislavery principles repeatedly yielded to segregation and institutional compromise.
John Brown, 1800–1859
| Brendan Wolfe | Encyclopedia Virginia | n.d.
John Brown’s radical abolitionism was deeply rooted in Calvinist Christianity and his conviction that slavery was the nation’s greatest sin. He believed that moral duty could require direct and even violent intervention when churches and governments refused to liberate enslaved people.
Black Baptists in Virginia, 1865–1902
| Andrew Gardner | Encyclopedia Virginia | n.d.
After emancipation, Black Baptists described freedom as a divine deliverance comparable to both Exodus and the resurrection of Christ. Independent Black congregations became centers of worship, education, leadership, political participation, and resistance to continuing white domination.
African American Churches in Virginia, 1865–1900
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Virginia Humanities | n.d.
Black churches emerging from slavery provided religious independence, literacy instruction, mutual assistance, leadership training, and opportunities for political organization. Their separation from white-controlled denominations represented both a theological rejection of racial subordination and a practical assertion of freedom.
Early Christian Opposition to Slavery
Letter to William Wilberforce
| John Wesley | Wesley Scholar | February 24, 1791
In his final known letter, Methodist founder John Wesley encouraged William Wilberforce to continue the struggle against the slave trade. Wesley described slavery as an enormous evil sustained by greed and urged Wilberforce to persevere through faith despite powerful opposition.
Thoughts upon Slavery
| John Wesley | Documenting the American South | 1774
John Wesley condemned the slave trade and rejected claims that African enslavement was justified by war, commerce, racial inferiority, or scripture. He described slavery as theft and violence incompatible with justice, mercy, natural rights, and Christian love.
Some Historical Account of Guinea
| Anthony Benezet | Documenting the American South | 1771
Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet documented African societies and the cruelties of the Atlantic slave trade to refute claims of African inferiority. He appealed to Christian conscience, natural equality, eyewitness testimony, and the Golden Rule.
Extract from an Address in the Virginia Gazette of March 19, 1767
| Arthur Lee | Encyclopedia Virginia | March 19, 1767
Arthur Lee argued that slavery violated justice, natural liberty, and religion while corrupting both enslaved people and enslavers. He called upon Virginia lawmakers to recognize freedom as the birthright of Africans as well as Europeans.
Considerations on Keeping Negroes
| John Woolman | Evans Early American Imprint Collection | 1754
John Woolman argued that slaveholding arose from luxury, selfishness, and the desire to profit from other people’s labor. He urged Quakers to examine whether slavery could be reconciled with humility, mercy, justice, and obedience to Christ.
All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage
| Benjamin Lay | Internet Archive | 1737
Benjamin Lay accused Christian slaveholders of hypocrisy, violence, theft, and apostasy. His uncompromising Quaker protest called upon religious communities to end their financial and personal participation in slavery rather than offering gradual reforms.
The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial
| Samuel Sewall | University of Nebraska–Lincoln | 1700
Samuel Sewall’s pamphlet was among the earliest antislavery publications produced in colonial America. It argued that all people descended from Adam, rejected the use of the curse of Canaan against Africans, and warned that slaveholding violated Christian morality.
Robert Carter III’s Deed of Gift
| Andrew Levy | Encyclopedia Virginia | n.d.
Robert Carter III arranged the gradual emancipation of more than 450 enslaved people in one of the largest private manumissions in American history. His evolving evangelical and Swedenborgian beliefs contributed to his conclusion that slaveholding demonstrated profound moral depravity.
British Evangelical Abolitionism
The Legacy of Abolition of Slavery
| Wendell Bird | Cambridge University Press | 2021
This chapter examines the religious language surrounding Anglo-American abolition and its influence on later understandings of freedom. Christian activists used sermons, petitions, voluntary societies, public meetings, and printed testimony to transform private moral conviction into political pressure.
Christian Missionaries on Record
| Sandra E. Greene | Cambridge University Press | 2016
Missionary records offer important but complicated evidence about African slavery and the slave trade. Although European evangelicals contributed to abolition, missionaries sometimes misunderstood African institutions, supported colonial intervention, or filtered African experiences through their own theological assumptions.
Religious Radicalization and Early Antislavery
| Peter Stamatov | Cambridge University Press | 2013
Early modern Catholic missionaries and religious dissenters produced some of the first sustained European criticisms of enslavement and the slave trade. Their reports connected abuses in Africa and the Americas with wider debates about conscience, missionary responsibility, and universal humanity.
Rational Dissent, Enlightenment, and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade
| Anthony Page | The Historical Journal | September 2011
Rational Dissenters combined Christian theology with Enlightenment ideas concerning liberty, benevolence, and human equality. Their involvement demonstrates that British abolitionism emerged from several religious and intellectual traditions rather than evangelicalism alone.
Christianity and the Campaign Against Slavery and the Slave Trade
| David Turley | Cambridge University Press | 2006
This chapter examines the role of Quakers, evangelicals, missionaries, and other Christians in the British and American campaigns against slavery. It also considers disagreements over gradual emancipation, political tactics, imperial policy, and the meaning of Christian responsibility.
Christian Instruction as Social Control
Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina
| George Whitefield | Encyclopedia Virginia | 1740
George Whitefield criticized slaveholders for neglecting the religious instruction and physical welfare of enslaved people while stopping short of rejecting slavery itself. He later supported the legalization of slavery in Georgia and personally benefited from enslaved labor.
Slavery during the Civil War
| Jaime Amanda Martinez | Encyclopedia Virginia | n.d.
Some Confederate ministers argued that improved treatment and greater religious autonomy would make slavery conform more closely to God’s will. Such reforms were intended to preserve the institution rather than recognize enslaved people’s right to immediate freedom.
Literacy and Education of the Enslaved in Virginia
| Encyclopedia Virginia | Virginia Humanities | n.d.
Some slaveholders encouraged limited literacy so enslaved people could learn Christian doctrine, while seeking to prevent education from encouraging independence. Religious instruction could reinforce obedience, but biblical literacy also gave enslaved Christians access to narratives of liberation and equality.
Associates of Dr. Bray
| Colonial Williamsburg Foundation | Slavery and Remembrance | n.d.
The Associates of Dr. Bray established schools to teach enslaved and free Black children Anglican doctrine and limited literacy. The program promoted conversion without challenging slaveholding, reflecting the belief that Christianity could make enslaved people more obedient without requiring their emancipation.
Proslavery Theology and Gradualism
Our Abolitionist Roots: Anti-Slavery and Abolition in the Presbyterian Churches of Central New York
| Presbyterian Historical Society | Pearl Digital Collections | 2025
This study examines Presbyterian congregations and ministers who joined antislavery societies, sheltered freedom seekers, circulated petitions, or separated from proslavery church bodies. It also documents disagreements over colonization, immediate abolition, political action, and ecclesiastical discipline.
Division and Reunion in the Presbyterian Church in the United States
| Robert Milton Winter | Journal of Presbyterian History | Fall 2000
This article traces divisions between Northern and Southern Presbyterians and their eventual institutional reunion. It examines how appeals to biblical authority were used first to avoid condemning slavery and later to defend racial segregation.
Old School Fears and the Schism of 1837
| James H. Moorhead | Journal of Presbyterian History | Spring 2000
The Presbyterian division of 1837 involved disputes over theology, church government, reform societies, and slavery. Conservative leaders feared that abolitionist activism threatened denominational order, while reformers argued that churches could not remain neutral toward grave social sins.
A Defence of Virginia and Through Her, of the South
| Robert Lewis Dabney | Documenting the American South | 1867
Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney defended Confederate slavery through biblical, historical, economic, and racial arguments. He maintained that scripture regulated rather than prohibited slavery and portrayed the plantation household as a legitimate Christian social order.
The Christian Doctrine of Slavery
| James Henry Hammond | Documenting the American South | 1858
James Henry Hammond presented social hierarchy as divinely ordained and claimed that every civilization required a dependent laboring class. His religious and political argument depicted Southern slavery as more humane and stable than Northern wage labor.
Slavery Ordained of God
| Frederick A. Ross | Documenting the American South | 1857
Presbyterian minister Frederick Ross argued that God authorized slavery and that abolitionists substituted personal moral sentiment for biblical authority. He also predicted that Christianized slavery would expand rather than disappear.
Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee, December 27, 1856
| Robert E. Lee | Encyclopedia Virginia | December 27, 1856
Robert E. Lee described slavery as a moral and political evil while claiming that it inflicted a greater burden upon white enslavers than enslaved Africans. He placed emancipation in divine providence and rejected immediate abolition in favor of slow Christian influence.
A Scriptural View of the Full Inspiration of the Sacred Records on the Subject of Slavery
| Thornton Stringfellow | Documenting the American South | 1856
Baptist minister Thornton Stringfellow argued that both Testaments recognized slavery and that Christians therefore could not declare all slaveholding sinful. His work became one of the antebellum South’s most widely circulated biblical defenses of the institution.
The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States
| Charles Colcock Jones | Documenting the American South | 1842
Presbyterian minister Charles Colcock Jones promoted the evangelization of enslaved people without challenging their legal status. His program emphasized obedience, plantation discipline, segregated worship, and the responsibility of masters to provide controlled Christian instruction.
Historical and Theological Interpretation
Christian Slavery in Theology and Practice
| Jennifer A. Glancy | Cambridge University Press | 2023
Early Christians lived within societies where slavery was widespread and generally accepted. Christian teachings sometimes encouraged humane treatment and spiritual fellowship, but churches did not consistently demand abolition and Christian individuals and institutions continued to own enslaved people.
Violence and Atheism in the Age of Abolition
| Matthew Bowman | Church History | September 2020
Abolitionist debates linked bodily suffering, conversion, religious authority, and political violence in complicated ways. Critics frequently accused radical abolitionists of undermining Christianity, while abolitionists argued that slaveholding churches had already betrayed the religion they claimed to defend.
Rejecting Slavery
| Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Melissa Nobles | Cambridge University Press | 2016
This chapter surveys religious opposition to slavery from early Jewish and Christian voices through modern abolitionism. It considers how believers moved beyond isolated criticism of cruelty toward rejection of slaveholding as an institution.
Justifying Slavery
| Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Melissa Nobles | Cambridge University Press | 2016
This chapter identifies several religious arguments used to declare slavery morally permissible. These included appeals to biblical precedent, punishment, paternalism, social order, missionary opportunity, and the supposedly benevolent authority of Christian masters.
