In 1815, when slavery was still widely accepted in American society and often ignored by the church, George Bourne spoke out against it. He was the first American pastor to be removed from his position for opposing slavery and was one of the earliest white Christians in the country to clearly call slavery a sin based on biblical teachings.
George Bourne’s courage didn’t arise in a vacuum. He descended from a long line of Protestant reformers and religious nonconformists. His mother, Mary Rogers, was a direct descendant of John Rogers, the first Protestant martyr burned during Queen Mary’s Catholic persecution in England. On his father’s side, Bourne traced his ancestry to James Johnston, who was executed for defending the Presbyterian cause during the bloody repression of Scottish Covenanters in the late 1600s. He was born on June 13, 1780, in Westbury, Wiltshire, England, into a family steeped in religious conviction and resistance to tyranny.
Educated at Homerton Seminary in London, Bourne was a firm nonconformist, favoring republican values over monarchy and human freedom over religious oppression. He contributed writings on slavery and politics that caught the attention of English officials. He moved to the United States in 1804 in search of religious liberty, believing that America, unlike England, would offer greater freedom of conscience.
But what he found in the American South was slavery, legal, normalized, and protected by both the state and the church.
By 1809, Bourne had settled in Virginia, first in New Glasgow and later in Harrisonburg, where he helped build the first Presbyterian church in town. He also founded and became secretary of the Religious Tract Society. While in Virginia, he witnessed slavery up close, and it haunted him. Rather than keep quiet like many of his fellow ministers, Bourne believed his ordination came with a divine duty to speak the truth, even when it cost him everything.
He began to denounce slavery as a grievous sin both publicly and privately. He challenged the very souls of slaveholders, warning that no man could own another human being and still call himself a follower of Christ. This enraged local slaveholders, who saw their lifestyle, wealth, and status being condemned from the pulpit. Bourne was harassed, threatened, and eventually targeted by the Presbyterian Church itself.
In 1815, Bourne presented a formal protest to the Presbyterian General Assembly, asking whether slaveholders could truly be considered Christians. The question was inflammatory, not because it lacked scriptural basis, but because it challenged the unspoken pact between the Southern church and the institution of slavery.
The Assembly refused to act. Bourne’s own presbytery in Harrisonburg responded by voting to defrock him, revoking his right to preach. It was what some called “the right boot of fellowship”: the church’s way of kicking out ministers who made powerful people uncomfortable.
Undeterred, Bourne fought back, not with a musket, but with a pen. In 1816, he published The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, a fierce theological indictment of slavery. It was the first American book to explicitly argue that slaveholding was a sin. Bourne rooted his argument in scripture, particularly 1 Timothy 1:10, which condemns “man-stealers”, a term he connected directly to slaveholders.
He appealed his removal again in 1817, but the General Assembly delayed its response. In 1818, they finally ruled, upholding the decision to remove him from the ministry. The largest Presbyterian body in the country would remain neutral on slavery until 1866, more than 50 years later.
Bourne’s book was so sharp, so theologically precise, and so uncompromising that later abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips would adopt his tone and style. Garrison’s own publication, The Liberator, echoed Bourne’s fiery moral language. Bourne had introduced a new model of antislavery thought, immediate abolition without compensation, which rejected the slow, cautious reforms that earlier generations of anti-slavery advocates had supported.
His unwavering message: Slavery was sin. The only Christian response was immediate and complete abolition.
After leaving Virginia and the Presbyterian Church, Bourne took his ministry to Quebec, Canada, in 1824, where he became the first pastor of a Congregational church in the city. He also edited newspapers, gave lectures, and wrote prolifically.
His published works included Picture of Quebec, American Textbook of Popery, Old Friends, and Illustrations of Popery, among others. In one of his more popular works, Picture of Slavery, he aimed to awaken Northern churches to the brutality of the institution, pushing Methodists in the North toward the eventual division of the Methodist Church over slavery.
Even in his old age, Bourne remained active in the anti-slavery cause. He served as editor of the Christian Intelligencer, the publication of the Reformed Dutch Church. On November 20, 1845, he died.
At his funeral, held at the Middle Dutch Church in New York, Rev. Thomas De Witt echoed the words once said of the Scottish reformer John Knox:
“There lies one who never feared the face of man.”
Source:
George Bourne, The Pioneer of American Antislavery.pdf
