As I Was Sort Of Saying

 NTodd:

Divine Right of White Men1 (Southern Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches):

Baptist and Methodist churches had opposed slaveholding members in the early years of the Republic. These denominations’ rapid expansion in the South, however, meant abandoning this position “in recognition that upwardly mobile members increasingly included slaveholders.” Justification for slavery came with this growth and found its parallels in the biblical subordination of women.

“Southern ministers had written the majority of all published defenses of slavery,” Jemison reminds us. For these ministers, slavery not only had divine sanction, it was a necessary part of Christianity. This was because slavery was defined as akin to a marriage: the “power of slave owners over slaves paralleled the power of husbands over wives and of parents over children.”

I only vaguely know this history, because I was in the Presbyterian church at the time, and it’s how it was explained to me then. “The time”  being the merger of the “northern” Presbyterian church with the “southern” one. (I think the former was the PCUSA, and the latter the PCUS. I think.) The merger led to a rupture, and the creation by some PCUS churches of the “Continuing Presbyterian Church.”  I think the split was over minor points of theology, not racism. I say that because I don’t remember any strong advocacy for bringing black members into the church following the merger, nor any African Americans clamoring to worship with the Frozen Chosen. I also knew some people who left my then church to “continue,” and I don’t think they were that overtly racist. I’m pretty sure they were very conservative in their theology, but hey, that’s church life. You can’t really discuss religion in church, either.

Two points here, then: church follows culture. Even after the merger, it was the rare pastor who ever preached about race in America, or the virtues of Dr. King’s movement. (I know of one who did, in the “other” Presbyterian church in town, (not the one that split off). He was a rare case, indeed.). But also, racism is a defining issue in American culture, and that means in the church, too. 

You can’t begin to understand American Christianity without understanding that.