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

by Charles F. Irons

White Virginians who wanted to preserve their access to bonded labor and who perceived a growing cultural distance between themselves and these new arrivals described Africans as "savages" or "heathens" and used this definition to justify their perpetual enslavement.6 Whites at the same time increased their financial commitment to African labor and intensified this sense of cultural difference by purchasing new slaves at a furious rate over the next several decades, roughly i,ooo persons per year between 170o and 1740. This figure often surpassed the annual totals for voluntary European immigrants, and by 176o, more than 40 percent of Virginia's population was African-based.7 In the context of such a tremendous influx of non-Anglican peoples, white authorities gave less weight to individual conversions and emphasized instead the unchurched status of the group. Since most African arrivals were not Christian, Anglicans felt justified in enslaving them. Anglo-Virginians found in their King James Bible a description of Hebraic slavery that seemed to correspond perfectly to the labor patterns that emerged in the commonwealth during the late seventeenth century. English indentured servants, most of whom were baptized while infants into the Anglican Church, were the equivalent of the biblical ered ivri (Hebrew slaves), while men and women of African descent fit the description of ered canaani (non-Hebrew slaves).