Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century / The Faith of Our Fathers

by G. MacLaren Brydon

The increase in the number of Negro slaves in those states where their labor proved profitable brought with it the constant fear of a Negro insurrection; a fear that continued until the ending of slavery in this country. The presence of the Negroes and of English convicts sold into servitude made it impossible upon any large plantation for the women and children of the master's household ever to be left without the protection of a slave-master who had the power of gun and lash to protect them from harm.

The preaching of the Christian faith to the heathen Indians, which was so strongly present in the purposes of the London Company at the first settlement of Virginia, must have been considered when the custom of admitting Negro slaves began but there is no recorded evidence bearing upon that subject. If there had been a bishop in the colony he could have made the conversion of the Negro to Christianity an important part of a diocesan program; but without a bishop nothing could be done in an organized way. The matter was perforce left to the consciences of the incumbent ministers of the several parishes.

It must be remembered that every first generation of the slaves had come to America as captives taken in war of one tribe against another. Their languages and dialects included perhaps every language in central and southern Africa; and their unfamiliar languages made it almost impossible for the average citizen or his parson to do much in the way of preaching the Christian faith; except perhaps in the observance of the universal law of kindness.

The birth of slave children, however, removed the barrier of language, for the children were taught English as their native tongue. The children therefore could be taught. All teaching of children, whether children of the master and mistress or those born as their slaves, was considered the duty of the whole family. And the teaching of the catechism and the duties of a Christian life to the slave children was as important a part of the family responsibility in a Christian home as the teaching of the children of the family itself. No clergyman of the Church would be willing to baptize a slave child unless there were responsible sponsors present who would assume the obligation to give steady Christian teaching. So it became a rule of the clergy, or most of them, that the master and mistress in the case of each such baptism must assume the obligation to give the child Christian training. The baptized children could then in early youth be permitted to attend the instruction classes which were held by the incumbent minister for them. The slave child and the master's child would share the privilege of admission to the Sacrament of the Holy Communion when each one had shown sufficient knowledge and understanding of right and wrong, and had been sufficiently instructed in "the things which a Christian should know and believe." No one knows how many or what percentage of slave children in Virginia or elsewhere were baptized, or how many became communicants because no record was kept. But there were enough baptisms to create a new problem.

There was no Negro slavery in England, and it was generally understood that when a Negro slave set foot upon the soil of England he became a free man. Somehow that concept of freedom became linked in common thinking with the concept of baptism into the Christian faith; and there arose in practically every slave-holding section of the English colonies a question whether the very act of baptizing a slave child did not set him free from slavery. Because of that question many slave-owners declined to permit the baptism of their slaves until the question was settled, and consequently in every slave-owning colony it became necessary to secure a legislative enactment establishing the legal status of a baptized slave. The question arose in Virginia, and in 1667 the following act was adopted by the General Assembly:

Whereas some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by virtue of their baptisme be made free; It is enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; that diverse masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament.

The question was settled likewise throughout all the slave-holding colonies of England, and human slavery was written into the laws of the various colonies of the British empire, there to remain until the ideals of the nineteenth century eliminated it from the constitution and the laws of every English-speaking nation.

The following incidents, although they occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century, outside the period covered by this booklet, are yet of such interest in the continuing story of Negro slavery as to be worth recording here.

In 1724 the Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, sent a questionary to the incumbent minister of every Anglican parish in the American colonies. Among the questions he asked were two; one inquiring how many "infidels," either Indians or Negroes, there were in each parish; and two, what efforts were being made to convert them to the Christian faith. The answers revealed a serious situation, and the need of more definite and better organized efforts to convert the Negroes.

The first effort made by the Bishop of London was as strong a pastoral letter as he could write upon the need of more earnest effort to bring the Negro slaves into the Christian faith. He also prepared a pamphlet to be used for the instruction of Negroes. His pastoral letter and his pamphlet were sent to every incumbent minister, and copies were given to the heads of families.