The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889

by Various

ECCLESIASTICAL COMPROMISES ABOUT SLAVERY.

This glance at the compromises in the political history of the nation prepares us to look at those in the Church. Here, too, compromises on the subject of slavery were made as in the State, and generally from the same motives and always with the same disappointing results.

The Churches before and during the revolutionary period were emphatic in their utterances against slavery. Their accredited leaders and official convocations used such terms as these: Methodist, "The sum of all villanies;" Presbyterian, "Man stealers: stealers of men are those who bring off slaves or freemen and keep, sell or buy them;" Baptist, "Slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature;" Congregational, "Slavery is in every instance wrong, unrighteous, oppressive, a great and crying sin, there being nothing equal to it on the face of the earth."

But there were slaveholders in the churches, and as population increased they became more numerous and naturally chafed under such denunciations. But their impatience reached its climax under the modern anti-slavery doctrine that immediate emancipation is the only remedy for the sin of slavery. The South was alarmed and soon became imperious and exacting; the North was timid and yielding. Then began the special era of ecclesiastical compromises. Let me specify:

1. The utterances as to the guilt of slavery were modified, reaching at length the point where some of the most eminent doctors of divinity and the most learned professors in theological seminaries tried to vindicate from the Bible the toleration of slavery.

2. Disclaimers were made as to the right to interfere with slavery. As, for example, a large ecclesiastical assembly by vote disclaimed "any right, wish or intention to interfere with the civil and political relation between master and slave, as it exists in the slaveholding States of this Union." A distinguished bishop is reported to have said: "I have never yet advised the liberation of a slave, and I think I never shall;" and an eminent doctor of divinity declared: "If by one prayer I could liberate every slave in the land I would not dare to offer it."

3. Fine distinctions were drawn in behalf of slaveholders. It was warmly urged in their defense that while slavery was a sin, the individual slaveholder might not in every case be a sinner—a charity that was made to cover a multitude of sinners. One large religious assembly declared that it could not "exclude slaveholders from the table of the Lord;" it would rather "sympathize with and succor them in their embarrassments." An elaborate report was adopted at another large convocation, in which it was suggested that the convert should be admitted into the church while still a slaveholder, an oppressive ruler and a proud Brahmin, in the hope that under proper teaching, "the master may be prepared to break the bonds of the slave, the oppressive ruler to dispense justice to the subject, and the proud Brahmin fraternally to embrace the man of low caste."

The great motive for these concessions was the desire for church enlargement. Slavery was a sin, but the slaveholder might not always be guilty, and if church unity and church extension were to be secured in the South, some concessions must be made. Then, too, there was undoubtedly the hope that concessions and fraternal intercourse in public assemblies and in Christian work would win the confidence of the slaveholders, and perhaps prepare the way for the gradual removal of slavery; and above all there was the cogent plea that compromise or division was the only present choice. The "half-loaf" argument was wielded most effectually, and here, especially, the "practical men" came to the front, while on the heads of the devoted Abolitionists were showered without stint the epithets "fanatics" and "visionaries."

So much zeal for the slaveholders, and so much sacrifice of self-respect, not to say of conscience, surely deserved a better fate; but all was in vain. The slaveholders scorned the compromises, and ruthlessly rent asunder the great national churches and missionary societies. The Congregationalists, never numerous in the South, clung with great tenacity to their few churches, but at length surrendered them.