Christian Slavery - Bad News About Christianity

Two vocal Methodists abolitionists, Laroy Sunderland and Orange Scott, had faced such
opposition from their coreligionists, that they left the Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church and
helped organize the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1843.
1792 British cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank representing a true event, in which Captain John Kimber had a 15 year old
captive suspended, whipped, and tortured, causing her death, for her 'virgin modesty.' Kimber was tried for this and
for the murder of another captive, but was 'honorably acquitted.'
While Thomas Paine opposed slavery in America, his fellow freethinkers opposed it in his native
country. Granville Sharp, a British humanitarian lawyer, sought to bring cases before the courts,
arguing that throwing slaves overboard to drown was murder. (The prevailing Christian view was
that a ship's captain was free to jettison them, just like any other property 23 .) Within a few years,
by 1787, a campaign to abolish the Atlantic slave trade was started by a group of Quakers 24 . It
was supported by non-believers. As the movement grew, various nonconformist groups and
some evangelical Christians joined it, but all traditional Churches and mainstream Christian sects
consistently opposed it.