The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

In 1808 the general conference of the Methodists provided that the annual conferences should form their own regulations relative to buying and selling slaves, thus making it possible for the body of preachers to act efficiently in one direction against slavery, even should the general conference choose wholly to refrain. This rule was abrogated in 1820, however, and the only important changes made thereafter with reference to the Negroes were some rules adopted in 1824, one of which provided that all preachers should prudently "enforce upon their members," the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the word of God, and to allow them time to attend upon the public worship of God on our regular days of divine service. Another rule provided that Negro preachers and official members should have all the privileges which are usual to others in the district and quarterly conferences, where the usages of the country did not forbid it, and that the presiding elder might hold for them a separate district conference, when the number of Negro local preachers would justify it. The annual conferences might employ Negro preachers to travel and preach, where their services were judged necessary, provided that no one should be so employed without having been recommended according to the form of discipline.

The Presbyterians had tried to evade the Negro question but it was again brought up in view of the cruelty practiced in the traffic of slaves during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The General Assembly was forced to take some action again in 1815. It then referred to its previous resolutions on the subject and expressed regret that slavery of Africans existed, hoping too that such measures might be taken as would secure religious education at least to the rising generation of slaves as a preparation for their emancipation at some time in the future. As to the transfer of slaves necessary in the economy of the slave States the General Assembly regarded this as unavoidable; but it denounced the buying and selling of slaves by way of traffic and all undue cruelty among them as inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel, recommending it to the presbyteries and sessions in their care to make use of all measures to prevent such shameful conduct. In 1818 there came before this General Assembly a resolution to the effect that a person who should sell as a slave a member of the church, who should be at the time in good standing in the church and unwilling to be sold, acted inconsistently with the spirit of Christianity and ought to be debarred from the communion of the church.

After considerable discussion, the subject was submitted to a committee to prepare a report for the adoption of the General Assembly, embracing the object of the above resolution and also expressing the opinion of the Assembly as to slavery. This report, unanimously adopted, carried, among other things, a declaration that the voluntary enslaving of one portion of the human race by another is a gross violation of the most precious rights of human nature, utterly inconsistent with the law of God which requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoins that all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even unto them.[8]

[8] The Assembly bore it grievously that slavery exhibits the persons of color as dependent on the will of others, "whether they shall know and worship the true God, whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice and humanity." ... "The evils to which the slave is always exposed often take place in fact, and in their very worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take place, as we rejoice to say in many instances, through the influence of the principles of humanity and religion on the mind of masters, they do not—still the slave is deprived of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which humanity and avarice may suggest.

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the practice into which Christian people have most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a portion of their brethren of mankind—for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth'—it is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery, both with the dictates of humanity and religion, has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors, to correct the errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery through Christendom, and if possible throughout the world."

In another part of this report, however, the Assembly seemed to undo what it had done; for it exhorted others to forbear harsh censures, and uncharitable reflections on their brethren, who unhappily live among slaves whom they cannot immediately set free, but who, at the same time, are really using all their influence, and all their endeavors, to bring them into a state of freedom, as soon as a door for it can be safely opened. It also encouraged the members of the Society to patronize the American Colonization Society with a view to sending the Negroes to Africa and thus deliver themselves and their country from the calamity of slavery. The General Assembly recommended the encouragement of religious instruction of the slaves in the principles of the Christian religion, granting them liberty to attend on the preaching of the gospel, when they have opportunity, by favoring the instruction of them in the Sabbath schools wherever those schools should be formed and by giving them all other proper advantages for acquiring the knowledge of their duty both to God and man. The General Assembly further recommended that it was incumbent on all Christians to communicate religious instruction to those who are under their authority, so that the doing of this "in the case before us so far from operating as some have apprehended that it might, as an incitement to insurrection, would, on the contrary, operate as a most powerful means for the prevention of those evils."

In this straddling position these churches tried to discountenance as far as possible all cruelty of whatever kind in the treatment of slaves, especially the cruelty of separating husband and wife, parents and children, and that which consisted in selling slaves to those who would either themselves deprive these unhappy people of the blessings of the gospel or who would transfer them to places where the gospel was not proclaimed, or where it was forbidden to slaves to attend upon its instruction. During the thirties most of these churches were taking the position of evading the question, but the abolition members therein kept the problem before them. Postponement of the discussion thereafter became the order of the day. One decade later many took the position assumed by the Presbyterian Church in 1845 when, as a result of various memorials on slavery, the Assembly, deploring the division of the church on slavery, passed a resolution that the church could not legislate where Christ has not legislated, that as Christ and the Apostles admitted slaveholders as members of the church, they could not be expected to do otherwise. Some disclaimed, however, any desire to deny that slavery is an evil, or to countenance the idea that masters may regard their slaves as real property and not as human beings. They merely intended to say that since Christ and his Apostles did not make the holding of slaves a bar to communion, the church organizations as the court of Christ had no authority to do so. The apostles of Christ sought to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, not by denouncing and excommunicating their masters but by teaching both masters and slaves the glorious doctrines of the gospel and enjoining upon each a discharge of their relative duties. These sects rejoiced rather that the ministers and churches of the slaveholding States were awakening to a deeper sense of their obligations to extend to the slave population generally the means of grace, for many slaveholders not professedly religious favored this object. They deplored the agitation which tended to separate the northern from the southern portion of the church, "a result which every good citizen must deplore as tending to the disunion of our beloved country and which every enlightened Christian will oppose as bringing about a ruinous and unnecessary schism between brethren who maintain a common faith."

REV. M. C. CLAYTON
A Baptist preacher of power in Baltimore before the Civil War.