Limitations of Church Anti-Slavery

August 10, 1860

This article begins with a commendation of the American Missionary Association, as a “thoroughly Anti-Slavery body, which “bears a vigorous and active testimony against our country’s great sin..”   It criticizes the group because “its alliance with the church exerts upon it such a restraining influence, that it cannot bear to recognize the fact either that the American Church is the great bulwark of slavery, or that the Southern Church is actively and heartily engaged in the support of that sin.”   The article quotes a sentence from the Association paper which says that there is “evidence that the mass of Southern churches are drifting toward the unconditional support of slavery as it is.”  The articles goes on to comment that rather than “drifting towards” the support of slavery, the Southern churches have been “anchored and fortified in the actual and efficient support of it.” The remainder of the article proceeds to expand this point.

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