The American Church was the Bulwark of American Slavery.
The slave system in this country always received the support of the church. In the early history of the country it was occasionally condemned by some of the bravest ministers, but as the nation grew powerful, so also did this sum of all villainies. Not only the ministers of the slave states, but ministers of the free states lent their support to this despotism. The Rev. N. Bangs, D.D., of New York, said:
It appears evident that however much the apostles might have deprecated slavery as it then existed throughout the Roman empire, he did not feel it his duty as an embassador of Christ, to disturb those relations which subsisted between master and servants, by denouncing slavery as such a mortal sin that they could not be the servants of Christ in such a relation.
Rev. E. D. Simms, professor in Randolph-Macon college, a Methodist institution, affirmed that, “Those extracts from Holy writ unequivocally assert the right of property in slaves.”
The Rev. Wilbur Fisk, D.D., late president of the (Methodist) Wesleyan university, in Connecticut: “The relation of master and slave may and does in many cases, exist under such circumstances as free the master from the just charge of immorality.”
Rev. Moses Stuart, of Andover, insisted that, “the precepts of the New Testament respecting the demeanor of slaves and their masters, beyond all question, recognized the existence of slavery.”
The Rev. Dr. Taylor, of Yale college, said: “I have no doubt that if Jesus Christ was now on earth, he would, under certain circumstances, become a slaveholder.”
The “Independent” makes an admission. Speaking of the degradation of the Southern negroes, it says: “For this Protestant Christianity solely is to blame. It allowed slavery. It was slow to see its enormity. In the South it supported slavery with all its power. It let the negroes live in ignorance of the word of God. It raised no voice against unchristian laws forbidding slaves to be taught to read, and forbidding marriage.”
We could give hundreds of just such quotations from ministers who upheld slavery as a divine institution. And these were the blind leaders of the blind until leaders and people were precipitated into the life and death struggle of the nation. If the preachers had been honest and brave we would never have had to pass through the terrible ordeal of the great rebellion.
The northern churches were almost all in sympathy with the “divine institution.” Their ministers did not dare to condemn the system lest they should be deposed for their abolitionism. The writer was pastor of a Methodist church in Brooklyn in 1859, and was dismissed from his pastorate on account of his anti-slavery preaching. After President Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation the synods and general conferences arrayed themselves against the system, but not before.