Benjamin Lay was an English-born abolitionist who spent his life fighting slavery and challenging Christians who owned enslaved people. Through public protests and his 1737 book, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, he condemned their hypocrisy...
In the years before the American Civil War, slavery was not only defended by politicians and slaveholders. Some Christian ministers also built theological arguments around it, using the Bible to argue that slaveholding was compatible with Christianity. One of...
When enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, Christianity was gradually introduced into their lives. Missionaries preached to them, slaveholders encouraged religious instruction, and some enslaved people were baptized and became committed Christians. But an important question remains: did...
Robert Wedderburn was a Jamaican-born preacher and radical abolitionist who was jailed for his outspoken attacks on slavery and religious authority. Born around 1762 to an enslaved Black woman and a Scottish plantation owner, he grew up close to...
In 1818, Rev. Jacob Gruber stood before thousands of people at a Methodist camp meeting in Maryland and openly condemned slavery. He called the institution a “national sin” and warned that it was offensive to God and harmful to...
When European powers began their rush to conquer Africa in the nineteenth century, they did not enter a completely unknown continent. Long before European armies arrived to establish colonial administrations, missionaries had already travelled deep into African territories, established...
Moses “Daddy Moses” Wilkinson’s life was an extraordinary journey from slavery in Virginia to religious leadership in Africa. Born enslaved, Wilkinson escaped during the American Revolutionary War, became a Methodist preacher, led a congregation in Nova Scotia, and eventually...
When people think of slavery in America, they often picture plantation owners, politicians, and traders. Few imagine that some of slavery’s most passionate defenders stood behind church pulpits. One of the most influential was Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a celebrated...
At a time when Kentucky was a slave state and many churches either defended slavery or remained silent, John Gregg Fee preached that slavery was a sin against both God and humanity. For that, he was disowned by his...
Rev Frederick Augustus Ross, was a Presbyterian minister whose 1857 book, Slavery As Ordained of God, became one of the most influential religious defenses of slavery in the United States. While abolitionists argued that slavery violated both Christian teaching...
