The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

This statute encouraged white enslavers to evangelize their human chattel since baptized slaves would not be freed. In the words of the assembly, “Masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable, to be admitted to that sacrament.”

This is a common human response when interacting with other groups, but the description in Columbus’s letter reveals that colonists equated lighter skin with beauty and desirability long before chattel slavery became the norm.

During his first voyage Columbus wrote, “[The indigenous inhabitants] should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.”4 To Columbus and his followers, the people they encountered would make “good servants.” Indigenous people were not considered intellectual or social equals but were valued based on their ability to do the will of Europeans.

Olaudah Equiano published an autobiography in 1789 called The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa to record his life as a slave and eventually a free man. He was born around 1745 as part of the Igbo tribe in modern-day Nigeria, and slave traders kidnapped Equiano and his sister when he was about eleven years old.8 Years later Equiano wrote about the traumatic experience of being packed into a slave ship as a piece of cargo. In one particularly stomach-churning recollection, Equiano described the heat, smell, and human waste that accompanied slaves as they languished below deck. “The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time.” He continued, “This produced copious perspirations, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves of which many died.” Finally, he told of the tubs which held human excrement “into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated.”9

Instead of abandoning Christianity, though, black people went directly to teachings of Jesus and challenged white people to demonstrate integrity.

He wrote it as both an encouragement for English politicians to abolish the slave trade and as a personal confession. “I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was, once, an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders,” he wrote.12 Newton, a celebrated example today, stands out because he eventually repudiated slavery.

Seasoning involved adapting to a different climate and new foods. It also involved teaching the Africans a new language, usually French, Spanish, or English. Africans were trained for their work, which was typically agricultural and involved plowing, hoeing, and weeding from sunup to sundown. This acculturation took a toll.

The factory became the urban farm that produced most British goods. The poet William Blake called factories “dark Satanic mills.” Men, women, and children worked twelve-hour days in stifling heat tending whirring, steam-powered machines that could slice off a finger or crush a skull in the blink of a sleep-deprived eye.

North American slavery supplied the ravenous international appetite for cotton.

“The arrival of African captives had less to do with planters’ demand for enslaved laborers than with the privateers’ desire for a market in which to vend stolen Africans.”18

The Haitian Revolution broke out in 1791, and its success was due, in part, to the population discrepancy between enslaved Africans and European landowners.

Slave women in North America had an average birthrate of 9.2 children, twice as many as those in Caribbean colonies.20

Enslaved men and women thus lived longer making lifetime bondage even more attractive.

They mandated slavery for life with no hope of emancipation. The codes deprived the enslaved of legal rights, required permission for slaves to leave their master’s property, forbade marriage between enslaved people, and prohibited them from carrying arms. The slave codes also defined enslaved Africans not as human beings but as chattel—private property on the same level as livestock.

From their earliest days in North America, colonists employed religio-cultural categories to signify that European meant “Christian” and Native American or African meant “heathen.” Over time, these categories simplified and hardened into racial designations.

To the English colonists, hereditary heathenism could be interrupted by marrying into the “better” spiritual lineage of English Christians.

Instead, the SPG, like many European missionary endeavors in North America, preached a message that said Christianity could save one’s soul but not break one’s chains.

government exists by the consent of the people. If the people determine that the laws of a commonwealth are contrary to their interests, then the consent they have given to political officials “must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.”

Many of them practiced the indigenous religions of tribes in West Africa, and a significant number were Muslim. Africans preferred their own forms of faith to that of their white enslavers.6

Preachers typically avoided complicated doctrinal matters and focused on the simple act of conversion. Black men and women, who were sprinkled among the crowds listening to revivalist preachers, began adopting Christian beliefs.

Aspects of the faith such as the notion of rebirth, baptism by immersion in water, and emotional expressiveness resembled African traditions.9 For example, enslaved people in the South adapted a practice from West African known as the “ring shout.” Worshipers got in a circle and rotated counterclockwise as they sang, danced, and chanted.

They baptized anyone willing to accept Christ as their Savior. Black people even became ordained ministers and missionaries.

“Nothing is more conducive of divine glory and salutary to men than the preaching of the gospel. Unless these glad tidings are proclaimed, the incarnation of Christ is vain.”

They believed that spiritual equality might lead their white slaveowners to see them as full human beings deserving of emancipation.

The act, which largely reiterated laws that had already been passed but not strictly enforced, prevented the enslaved from assembling in groups without white supervision, selling their own goods for profit, or learning to write. The Negro Act also purported to “restrain and prevent barbarity being exercised toward slaves” because “cruelty is . . . highly unbecoming those who profess themselves Christians.”

After that, Whitefield’s party quickened their pace fearfully “expecting to find Negroes in every place.”19 Virtually any gathering of black people—even when black Christians congregated for worship—was likely to elicit suspicion.

declared the institution of slavery to be not only against the law of God but also “inconsistent with a republican government.”26

Thus Baptists in Virginia declared slavery to be a civil issue outside of the scope of the church. Slave ownership became an accepted practice in most Baptist congregations, and whenever someone raised objections, leaders could demur and insist that the topic was an issue for the state, not the church. Black Christians, however, refused to leave the issues of slavery and racism outside the church doors.

The precariousness of their existence led Christian slaves to cry out to God with a passion and exuberance that has become characteristic of many black church traditions.

Controlling and monitoring slaves was easier if they were in the same building.

Having been given permission by his white owner to attend church meetings, Allen converted to Methodism in 1777. He purchased his freedom in 1786 and began preaching in various Methodist churches.28

Allen tried to gain support to purchase a new church building to accommodate the growing number of black worshipers, but white leaders of St. George’s insisted on segregated seating and relegated their darker-skinned brethren to certain sections of the sanctuary.

“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall . . . be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” This is known as the “Fugitive Slave Clause.” Although the word slave is absent, this section clearly means that any enslaved person crossing state lines from a slave state to a free state had to be returned to his or her owner. From the beginning, the Constitution ensured that nowhere in America would be safe for an escaped slave.

Even when they were pregnant, it was expected that they should work in the fields, often up until the very moment of birth. After delivery, women were allotted scant time for recovery and were soon forced back to work. Black women also bore the primary responsibility to care for their own families. Even as they had their own children to look after, many enslaved women were also responsible for raising the children of their enslavers.

the end, Jacobs decided to partner with a free white man in the hopes that if they had children together, he would set them free. These were the types of impossible choices that characterized the life of black women under slavery.

Black resistance to enslavement took multiple forms. Some slaves deliberately broke tools to delay their work. Others would set fires or pretend to be sick. Denmark Vesey, for instance, faked epileptic seizures so effectively that the white man who bought him returned Vesey to the slave trader who sold him. Enslaved blacks feigned mental slowness to make their enslavers think they were less capable than they really were. They sometimes stole food or other items as compensation for their years of unpaid labor. Even learning to read was a form of resistance.

Finley, like many other white Christians, believed that free black people could never effectively assimilate into American society. “Could they be sent to Africa, a three-fold benefit would arise,” he suggested. “We should be cleared of them; we should send to Africa a population partially civilized and christianized for its benefits; our blacks themselves would be put in better condition.”16 Inherent in this plan for colonization was the assumption that blacks, as American citizens, would never meet the demands of democracy.

Many misguided Christians viewed the work of the American Colonization Society as an act of benevolence, a way of “helping” free black people find a better life.

He advocated for emancipation, but he did not see the value of the “social” integration of the races. Though he excluded white slaveowners from membership in his congregations, he also relegated black worshipers to particular sections of the sanctuary. Black people could become members in his churches, but they could not vote or hold office.17

Unwilling to confront the evil of this institution, some churches lost their prophetic voices, and those who did speak up were drowned out by the louder chorus of complicity. Competing understandings of freedom, equality, and belonging in both the country and the congregation would soon explode into Civil War.

During a series of political debates against Stephen Douglas in Illinois in 1858, Lincoln carefully explained, “I am not nor have I ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.”7 The president, later hailed as the “Great Emancipator,” made it clear that abolitionists who opposed the institution of slavery could also be antiblack and even racist. At one point Lincoln invited five black leaders to the White House to discuss a colonization plan that would send freed black people to Liberia, Haiti, or Panama.8 As we have seen, colonization was an easy way for white people to skirt the issue of white supremacy. Rather than combatting racism, why not simply send people of other races far, far away?

South Carolina and the other states that withdrew from the United States considered slavery a matter of personal property ownership, and citing Article IV, they saw slavery as an institution explicitly protected by the Constitution.

Yet again, the chattel principle came into play as Mississippi’s leaders used financial arguments to support slavery. In addition, they posited that the biology of black people uniquely suited them for slave labor because “none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.”10

Slavery was not just a civil issue; it was a religious one. Christians in the South believed the Bible approved of slavery since the Bible never clearly condemned slavery and even provided instructions for its regulation.

In one stroke of dubious demography, slavery became the right and proper place of Africans specifically and exclusively.

And how could white people definitively trace their lineage to that of Shem or Japheth? One abolitionist challenged proslavery advocates by asking, “Where is the sentence [of Scripture] in which God ever appointed you, the Anglo-Saxon race [over another people], you, the mixture of all races under heaven, you, who can not tell whether the blood of S[h]em, Ham, or Japheth mingles in your veins”?

Thornwell’s vision of spirituality required the church, as an institution, to remain silent on the most critical social, political, and ethical question of the day.

The Civil War paints a vivid picture of what inevitably happens when the American church is complicit in racism and willing to deny the teachings of Jesus to support an immoral, evil institution.

They ran for political office, opened businesses, started schools, and grasped at the American dream for the first time. This period witnessed one of the most vigorous seasons of opportunity for black people in the nation’s history.

They also constructed a new social order, what we refer to as Jim Crow—a system of formal laws and informal customs designed to reinforce the inferiority of black people in America.