Colonial laws explicitly declared that Christian conversion did not free enslaved people

Evidence

While converting enslaved Africans to Protestantism was deemed necessary to civilize them, their race was considered too indelibly inferior to deserve liberty. As far back as 1667, Virginia passed a law stating, “It is enacted that baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom.” South Carolina followed suit in 1690 when it legally prohibited a slave from becoming free on conversion to Christianity. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 224

Categorization

• XREF: This parallels the modern argument that conversion to a ‘civilized’ religion does not confer social equality — a throughline of The Racial Muslim’s thesis about how religious categories mask racial ones. — connects to: Seventeenth-century Virginia law decoupled Christian conversion from slave emancipation
• SEED: The 1667 Virginia statute is a potent historical anchor for an essay on how legal systems permanently fix social status despite cultural assimilation.