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

by Charles F. Irons

Her YWCA leader encouraged Lumpkin to consider the parable of the Good Samaritan when deciding whether or not to allow an African American woman to address their group. The force of the parable overwhelmed Lumpkin's segregationist upbringing and launched her on a career in which she championed equal justice for all.' I have often wondered why more white southerners in the colonial and antebellum periods did not have such conversion experiences. If the command to love one's neighbor made Lumpkin realize in 1915 that segregation was wrong, why did so few white southerners realize that race-based slavery was wrong? By all accounts, white southerners in the nineteenth century were among the most devoted Christians in the Western world, but their faith seems only to have strengthened their determination to hold another people in bondage. This book represents my attempt to understand this staggering moral failure-to understand why the parable of the Good Samaritan fell on deaf ears for so many generations.