Religious and civil authority colluded to deny freedom to Christianized captives

Evidence

Edmund Gibson, the distinguished Anglican bishop of London, decided to eliminate any lingering doubt in planters as to whether they could hold Christian captives. In two letters to Virginians in 1727, he praised and authenticated the innovative statute of 1667 that denied freedom to baptized captives. Gibson talked about how conversion obligated captives to “the greatest Diligences and Fidelity,” an idea that Mather had been stressing for years. The British crown and the aides of Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Great Britain, echoed the bishop. All of Britain’s religious, political, and economic power now united to free missionaries and planters from having to free the converted, thus reinvigorating proselytizing movements and dooming calls for manumission. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 189

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the chapter’s core argument — policy (converting without freeing) coalescing before justifying ideas — consistent with Kendi’s inversion thesis.