Early Virginia law ruled that slave conversion did not grant freedom

Evidence

Laws in late seventeenth century Virginia stipulated that conversion to Christianity did not entail freedom; George M. Frederickson, Racism: A Short History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, 45. A 1667 decree denied freedom based on conversion with the rationale that “baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 924

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• CANDY: A neat, compact historical fact — the 1667 decree’s rationale that baptism doesn’t change bondage — easy to drop into conversation.

Related

• Seventeenth-century Virginia law decoupled Christian conversion from slave emancipation (similarity 0.89)
• Colonial laws explicitly declared that Christian conversion did not free enslaved people (similarity 0.85)
• Colonial laws decreed baptism did not free enslaved converts (similarity 0.83)