It is believed that Congregationalists generally are progressing in the right direction.[16]
Methodist Episcopal Church (North and South.)
John Wesley pronounced slavery to be the “sum of all villanies.” The discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church is quite positive in its condemnation of slavery. Some of the early Methodist preachers gave no quarters to this sin. But as the church increased in numbers and popularity, slaveholders, who at first came in by mere sufferance, assumed a bolder position, and finally ruled the whole church “with a rod of iron.”
The General Conference which convened in Cincinnati in 1836, after a warm discussion, adopted the following resolution:
“Resolved, By the delegates of the Annual Conferences, in General Conference assembled, that we are decidedly opposed to modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between the master and slave as it exists in the slaveholding States of this Union.” Yeas 120, nays 14.
This resolution was an offering to appease the bloody Moloch of slavery, which had been aroused somewhat by Orange Scott. At a Gen. Conf. in 1840, held in Baltimore, a resolution was passed depriving colored persons of the right of testifying against white persons. The resolution reads as follows:
“Resolved, That it is inexpedient and unjustifiable for any preacher to permit colored persons to give testimony against white persons, in any State where they are denied that privilege by law.”[17]
The division of this Church (or secession, as some call it, of the Church South) has as yet resulted, so far as we can see, in no advantage to the slave. The southern portion or branch is not more pro-slavery than before; and the northern division occupies precisely the ground maintained when the resolutions of 1836 and 1840 were adopted, and when there were embraced within her communion the owners of 200,000 slaves. Slaveholding is not a bar to membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church North. Ten or eleven conferences are now slaveholding, and between 30 and 40,000 slaves are owned at the present time by members of this church.
The Baltimore Conference, which belongs to the church North, passed in 1836 the following resolution: