The American Church’s Approval of Slavery

While we would like to imagine that historically speaking, the church in America spoke out against slavery, what actually transpired occured more along the lines of geography, rather than theology:

With a few notable exceptions, each denomination made its own accommodation in due time, and the schism of the northern and southern branches merely strengthened a fait accompli.

Thus, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church declared in 1861 that the slave system had generally proven “kindly and benevolent” and had provided “real effective discipline” to a people who could not be elevated in any other way. Slavery, it concluded, was the black man’s “normal condition.”