Christian Slavery - Bad News About Christianity

wholesale (moral) pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family
relation is the same that scatters whole families, - sundering husbands and wives,
parents and children, sisters and brothers, leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth
desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against
adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel,
and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God
and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime
in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the
religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slavetrade
go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each
other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious
psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The
dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the
pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold
to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the
garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each otherdevils
dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise."
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for
the most horrid crimes - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of
the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest,
grossest, and most infernal deeds of slave holders find the strongest protection.
Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I
should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that
could befall me... I... hate the corrupt, slave holding, women-whipping, cradleplundering,
partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."
And he said this - indicating that slave owners who become Christians actually became worse
masters:
... and when you tell me that there are some Christian slave-holders in the States,
I tell you, as well might you talk of sober-drunkards. Just as if the lash in the hands
of a Christian is not as injurious to my back as it would be in the hands of a wicked
man. As far as my experience goes, I would rather suffer under the hands of the
latter, and, I tell you, as I have mentioned in my narrative, that next to being a
slave, there is no greater calamity than being the slave of a Christian slave holder.
I say this from my own experience .... Some persons have taken offence at my
saying that Slaveholders become worse after their conversion.
As Douglass pointed out in the same speech, in his time all Southern Baptists were in favour of
slavery, because any who espoused abolition were thrown out of the Church.
I beg now to introduce to your notice a little of the doings of one or two of the
Churches of America, and I shall begin with the Baptist Church. This Church is
congregational in its organization and government, but its congregations are
united by what is called a Triennial Convention, the object of which is to spread
the Gospel among the heathen. At the last but one of these conventions, in the
City of Baltimore, the Rev. Dr. Johnston, of South Carolina, presided, and he on
this occasion asserted the doctrine that when any institution becomes established
by law, a Christian man may innocently engage to uphold it. The President of the
Baptist convention is a slaveholder himself. He is a man-stealer. The Secretary of
the convention is another man-stealer, and most of the other office-bearers were
manstealers — were thieves. During the progress of the business, there was one
man in one of the committees, who was found to be an Abolitionist — Elon
Galusha. This man is now, I trust, in Heaven. He dared to say that a slave was a
man, and that slavery ought to be abolished. For this, the members of his church
cut him off — though he was a man of talent and of unblemished character, and,
as a minister of the gospel, unparalleled. Another great Baptist minister, the Rev.
Lucius Bowles, congratulated his brethren that there was "a pleasing degree of
unity among the Baptists through the land, for the southern brethren were all
slave-holders. 35 .
Here is another passage from the same speech concerning married slaves
I have now to speak of them in the State of Virginia, where men regularly enter
into the raising or breeding of slaves, as a business, just as cattle are raised for
the Smithfield market; and where the marriage institution is set aside. In some
cases it becomes the interest of the slave holder to separate two slaves (male and
female) already married. When the question was proposed to the Baptist Society
there, whether parties thus separated might marry again, the answer was, that this
separation being tantamount to the civil death of either of the parties, to forbid the
second marriage in either case, would be to expose to Church censure those who
did so for disobedience. Here we find a deliberate setting aside of the Marriage
Institution, and the deliberate sanction of a wholesale system of adultery and
concubinage; and, yet the persons who authorise and enforce such wickedness
calling themselves Christians!