Northern Baptists forced the slavery conflict when they barred slaveholding missionaries in 1844

Evidence

After decades of regional tensions at the Triennial Conventions, where Baptists gathered to coordinate their church and missions work in the early eighteen hundreds, Baptists in the South brought the issue of the compatibility of slaveholding and Christianity to a head. The lead architect of these efforts was Reverend Basil Manly Sr., president of the University of Alabama, and the former pastor of the prominent First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina. On November 25, 1844, Manly and a group of Alabama Baptists sent a letter to the managing board of the Triennial Convention, declaring, “Our duty at this crisis requires us to demand from the proper authorities… the distinct, explicit avowal that slaveholders are eligible, and entitled, equally with nonslaveholders [sic], to all the privileges and immunities of their several unions.” They received a swift and blunt reply from the board: “If any one [sic] should offer himself as a missionary, having slaves, and should insist on retaining them as his property, we could not appoint him.” Leaving no doubt where they stood, they concluded, “One thing is certain: we can never be a party to any arrangement that would imply approbation of slavery.” — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 18

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Slavery, not theology, caused the 1845 Baptist schism. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 18; White Baptist exclusion over slavery drove black Baptists to form their own national convention — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 44

Broader Connections

• Slavery, not theology, caused the 1845 Baptist schism. #corroborates (0.90) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 18