The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia

by Charles F. Irons

The lopsided ratio of black to white, even after intentional attempts by evangelical dissenters to recruit black members, underscores the rhetorical quality of the early ministry to the slaves. Evangelicals did believe that all men, regardless of ethnic background, deserved to hear of Christ's sacrifice for them. But their outreach to black Virginians was as much a part of the fashioning of an identity in the context of a hierarchical, Anglican society as it was an expression of interracial concern. By spending time with slaves, the lowest on Virginia's social ladder, evangelicals could claim that they, like Christ, identified with the poor and downtrodden of the world, while the apostate Anglicans catered to the rich and the proud.73 Despite the willingness of twentieth-century scholars to accept such claims at face value, eighteenth-century evangelicals meant them less as a declaration of sociological fact than as a spiritual critique of the established church. Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists did evince a concern for the spiritual welfare of the lowest in their society, slaves, but they also courted wealthy and powerful members. None of these groups could have developed as successful movements without the active support of elite Virginians.74