The Priesthood of the Believers: Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery

Abstract

Quakers became the first group in history to develop a consciousness about slavery and spearheaded the early movement in America and Britain that led to its abolition. Why did they develop this consciousness? What was the spiritual matrix that moved them to denounce a well-accepted and well-established practice that existed in most cultures from time out of mind? The following article helps answer this question. It particularly accents their radical emphasis upon egalitarianism—an emphasis that began in Christianity with the teachings of Jesus and Paul and came to the forefront in Protestantism with Martin Luther’s teaching on the priesthood of the believers. The Quakers followed the doctrine of equality in the Bible, particularly stressing the monogenetic origin of humans in the book of Genesis and the universal redemption of Christ for the fallen race of Adam. They took this egalitarian message much further than others through deconstructing Luther’s priesthood of the believers and rejecting the hierarchical structure of the church in toto, including any professional clergy that would administer the sacraments or preach an authoritative word from the Bible. All Christians were equal before God and received the same immediate instruction from the Holy Spirit, no matter what their race, gender, or position in life. This decided emphasis upon the priesthood of believers made Quakers treat everyone the same and led them to question the inferior status of blacks and a degrading institution like slavery.

1. Introduction

Secular scholars often live under the binary of a strict separation of church and state that causes them to miss or discount the positive contribution of religious ideas to society and declare its most sacred political beliefs as “secular”. They use the term secular to describe their political ideas and discount any real religious inspiration behind them. They think no specific or sectarian religious expression used its dogmatic understanding of the faith to forge these ideas in any appreciable way or taint them with any religious content. They might recognize the special contribution of certain religious sects like the Quakers to the progress of history but tend to attribute any positive influence to special circumstances in their lives or “secular” arguments, rather than a specific development of their sectarian theological ideas.1 This article wishes to challenge this concept of church/state separation and its predilection to marginalize religion as a negative or disruptive force in society. It uses the Quakers as an example to make the point, underscoring their importance in the early movement to abolish slavery and highlighting their radical and unique theological doctrine of egalitarianism as the basic impetus behind the position. The connection between their radical theology and their radical politics finds expression in the work of some scholars, but even these accounts suffer from a lack of in-depth theological analysis of the early sources to display the unique and radical nature of their doctrine. This article hopes to correct the deficiency, starting with an examination of the NT doctrine, watching it develop into a force of democratic change in the modern world through Luther’s priesthood of the believers, and then finding its most radical expression among the Quakers, leading them to advocate the abolition of slavery.

The exact historical details of the development are not so interesting to the study as the underlying theological justification for their position. Many studies focus on the history of Quakers and slavery and afford some offhand comments about their possible motivation but provide no sustained analysis of their theological matrix and spiritual impetus in forging their radical position. The typical pattern is seen in Thomas Drake’s magisterial work Quakers and Slavery in America (1950), the first great modern book that addresses the role of Quakers in anti-slavery agitation (Frost 1978, p. 42). Drake provides a breathtaking historical analysis and suggests that “religious and moral grounds” served as the primary impetus behind their position but never expands on this theological matrix. Instead, he exhorts the reader to look outside his study and research the ideas on their own (Drake 1965, pp. vii (preface), 15).

The present study hopes to correct this deficit, paying special attention to the works of theologians like Robert Barclay and Joseph Gurney, who provide an early statement of the Quaker belief system, and then proceeding to note how their special doctrinal concepts served as an impetus for certain members of the fellowship to move against slavery. The study wants to find and elaborate on the theological reasons behind the stance against slavery but has no particular interest in the more complicated historical process or what pulled the fellowship in other directions within the actual history of the Quakers. The study has no particular interest in discussing the many inconsistencies of the fellowship or their downright hypocrisy along the way; it just wants to isolate their movement against slavery and unveil its theological justification.

2. The New Testament

Jesus of Nazareth was born into a Hebraic culture that emphasized the “holiness” or separation of its people from pollution (Lev. 11:44). Since the time of Abraham and Moses, Jews thought of their lineage as sacred and produced laws of marriage and diet that reduced contact with the contaminating influence of their pagan neighbors. The policy had its benefits in protecting the chosen people from problematic associations and preserving their culture, but it also developed extreme and legalistic expressions, especially after the Babylonian Captivity, as the prophets blamed pagan influence with its idolatrous and immoral practices for corrupting the people of Judea and bringing down the wrath of God upon them for those seventy years. When the people returned to the land, Ezra and Nehemiah were so concerned about holiness that they instructed Jewish men to “send away” their foreign wives, along with the children of these “immoral” relationships (Ezra 9–10, Neh. 11:44). This spirit of separation came to mark the subsequent era and was particularly embodied in the most respected teachers of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees or “separated ones”. These teachers took special pride in their own purity and practiced a legalistic code of segregation, developing a labyrinth of purity laws that made most of their own people unclean, the so-called am ha-aretz.

It was against the extreme measures and practices of the Pharisees that the egalitarian spirit of Christianity was born. Just to annoy the Pharisees, Jesus chose the am ha-aretz as his disciples and flaunted their purity laws as the “traditions of men” (Mk 7). He conversed with Samaritans and Canaanites, he dined with tax-gatherers and sinners in their unclean dwellings, and he commissioned his disciples to go and preach the gospel to “all nations” (Mt. 28:19). Paul became his greatest Apostle and preached a message of integration as the very essence of his gospel, that gentiles are “fellow-heirs and partakers” with Israel in the promises of God (Eph. 3:5–6). He declared, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Gal. 3:28), overturning the ancient Jewish prayer that identified divine blessing with the privileges of birth.2 Paul negated any of these privileges and called each one to be “born again” or find new life in Christ, regardless of their station in life. This message of Jesus and Paul continued to serve as the foundation of faith and practice and helped restrain whatever abuses arose in the religion, moderating the human will to power with its admonitions of humility and servanthood and the treatment of all others with dignity.3

3. Luther’s Priesthood of the Believers

The Reformation brought a challenge to some of the abuses that grew in the Middle Ages by returning to the paradigm of Scripture. As the religion proceeded into the Graeco–Roman world, it lost some of its early inspiration and partook of the hierarchical concept of life within the culture, developing a similar structure in the church and mediating the relation of the believers to God through the power of priests.4 In July of 1519, Martin Luther challenged the medieval concept of power during his debate with John Eck at Leipzig and called the pope the “antichrist” for creating a system of hierarchical privilege. His stance emboldened many other reformers to break with the past and refashion the church and state into a more biblically based, egalitarian image. The next year, Luther enshrined his challenge to the papacy in a treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which contained his famous teaching on the “priesthood of believers” and proved most consequential in reforming European society for generations to come. The treatise excoriates the “satanic pride” of the papacy in refusing to bow before the temporal power of kings, the consensus of church councils, and the authority of Scripture.5 It rejects the sacrament of orders or any special character indelibilis of priests that provides them with authority over the laity. It considers all believers priests and kings before God (1 Pet. 2:9) and fitted to administer the sacraments. All Christians share the “same baptism, faith, and Spirit”. All share the same spiritual status, whether they be “people, bishops, priests, … princes, lords, artisans, [or] farmers…. There is no true, basic distinction between laymen and priests, princes and bishops”. Any special office of the papacy and its priests depends upon the “consent and election” of the entire community of believers and does not confer any special status to baptize infants or grant absolution.6 These comments raised the prospect of developing a democratic polity, but Luther was never so bold or driven to radical reform in his career, leaving the possibility of expanding the doctrine in this and other directions to the work of other reformers.

The Reformed represented a more radical wing of the Reformation and proceeded to use the doctrine to develop a democratic polity in both the church and the state. In France, the Reformed forged democratic churches throughout the country in the mid-sixteenth century, accenting the “liberté et egalité” of all believers before Christ, promoting the local rule of a fellowship, and rejecting any outside interference from bishops or even the authorities of the Protestant church in Geneva (Morély 1562, pp. preface, 20–21, 76–78, 107, 174–79, 213, 216–19, 267–72, 279–80).7 After the massacre on Saint Bartholomew’s Day (1572), the Huguenots justified a revolution of the people against the powers that be8 and boldly called for the decentralization of the French state, the independence of self-governing communities, and the democratic election of local magistrates (Doneau 1574, pp. 143–44; Kingdon 1988, p. 76). In England, the Puritans deconstructed the priesthood of the believers much like the Huguenots to form “congregational” churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that emphasized local and democratic rule.9 The Puritans led a couple of revolutions in the two countries, eventually changing the cultures and reforming the civil government in their image (Strehle 2009, chaps. 1 and 2).

The priesthood of the believers brought many other changes to the culture, outside the new egalitarian polity of the church and the state. Max Weber considered the doctrine essential to providing the spiritual matrix for the development of capitalism among Protestant groups like the Puritans, who transformed the everyday world of business and the professions of the laity into a genuine spiritual calling before God (Weber 1958, pp. 48–49; See Strehle 2009, chap. 5 for details).10 Perhaps the one group that proved most zealous for working out its ramifications was the Quakers—a group that grew out of the Puritan Revolution and represented a more extreme expression or consistent application of certain aspects of the movement. In particular, the Quakers took the priesthood of the believers and led their English culture to denounce the non-egalitarian treatment of certain groups like blacks and females. Their rejection of slavery was the first of their great social causes and serves as the special interest of this article in demonstrating how the priesthood of the believers helped transform the modern world.

4. The Quakers and the Anti-Slavery Movement

The Quakers were a major instrument early on in garnering popular support for abolition and transforming both British and American society on the issue of slavery. Today, few public sculptures and textbooks commemorate their rightful place as the first significant and most important grassroots movement to oppose the institution, but their impact upon the rest of culture and the more celebrated leadership of the cause is unmistakable (Nash 2014, pp. 210–20).11 The Society of Friends expressed uneasiness about slavery from its very beginning in the life and ministry of George Fox, the British founder. He preached the equality of all humankind and the benevolent treatment of our fellow human beings, proposing specifically to educate slaves and set limits on their period of service, although he fell short of condemning the practice, leaving room for some Quakers to participate in the slave trade for the first hundred years of their existence (Soderlund 1985, p. 3).12 William Penn bought and owned slaves with the blessing of the Quaker-dominated government of Pennsylvania, and the Quakers of the state did not take decisive steps to end the practice among its members until the 1750s (Davis 1988, pp. 304–5). William Edmundson, the traveling companion of Fox, was the first well-known Quaker to denounce slavery, but it was not until the Quaker meeting at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1688 that antislavery protest began to disrupt the fellowship and come to the forefront as a real issue. Essays protesting slavery appeared over the next few decades from the pen of John Hepburn, Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, Elihu Coleman, George Keith, and other Quakers (Soderlund 1985, pp. 19–20, 25).13 Through the work of young reformers like John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting finally was forced to ban the practice of slavery among its members. In the 1750s, the PYM sponsored the publication of Woolman’s essay “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes” and formally condemned slavery and slaveholders in 1758 (Ruchames 1969, pp. 38, 111, 124).14 The Quakers soon brought the issue to the culture at large and took the lead in forming the first antislavery organizations in the North and the South (Soderlund 1985, p. 185; Davis 1975, pp. 202, 216–17, 221; Frost 1978, pp. 46–47). Their influence only dissipated when Willian Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society arose and radicalized the movement to push for immediate emancipation. The traditional Quakers displayed little enthusiasm for the more radical and bellicose abolitionists, trying to preserve their spiritual roots and fearing the violence that might come from immediate abolition (McKivigan 1984, pp. 44, 120–21, 127).15

Besides a few isolated individuals, no serious opposition to the institution of slavery existed in the vast history of the world in any culture or religion before the Quakers moved in this direction in the mid-eighteenth century (Drake 1965, p. 4; Davis 1988, p. 489; 1975, p. 42).16 This distinct development carries with it a question regarding the reason why Quakers suddenly grew a conscience about an institution that was a part of culture for most people from time out of mind. What was the spiritual matrix that provided an impetus for this new and radical way of thinking? Even if other factors contributed to the result, there must exist some ideological framework that made this development possible. No direct proof can connect a cause or reason with its effect,17 but certain reasons prove more suggestive than others in providing an explanation.

A partial reason must lie in their rejection of violence. Like most peace churches, they took the Sermon on the Mount verbatim et literatim in its admonition to love one’s enemy and turn the other cheek (Gurney 1979, pp. 343, 347, 351; Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 466ff., 469). The literal obedience turned Quakers into pacifists who rejected all wars, both offensive and defensive, without exception or deviation (Drake 1965, pp. 176, 190–91, 195–96; Soderlund 1985, p. 6; Dandelion 2008, pp. 14, 22). The pacifism was unpopular with most colonists during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the other conflicts of the time and led to their demise as a direct political power in the state of Pennsylvania, but it also made them more zealous opponents of slavery (Ibid., pp. 55, 90, 177).18 It provided them a way to undermine the basic pretext of slavery as a right of those who conduct a just war. If war had no justification, then the spoils of war lost their rightful place, and the slave traders no longer had any pretext for inciting African tribes to violence and feigning a sense of justice through enslaving those who fell victim to the evils of war (Benezet 1768, pp. 8–10, 25–27, 44).19

Another partial explanation for their position might lie within their sense of moral perfection. In an early summary of their ideas, Robert Barclay20 repudiated the Orthodox Protestant concept of an imputation of righteousness that divided justification from sanctification. He spoke much like a Catholic, believing that a person is “made righteous” (iustus facio) during the process of salvation and “real virtue” resides in the soul of the believer, making works a necessary component of justification and renouncing any Protestant notion of cheap grace (Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 172, 178, 183–84, 186, 196–97).21 In fact, he takes the moral onus so seriously that he rejects the inevitable presence of sin in fallen humanity and inculcates the real possibility of perfection for those who find justification through Christ, not unlike Fox before him (Ibid., pp. 14, 208–9, 217; Dandelion 2008, p. 5).22 This emphasis upon works goes beyond the Puritans and their famous work ethic and makes a life of hard work and true Christian piety a necessary component of salvation, not just a means of finding assurance or evidence of election. Slavery stands particularly condemned because it defies the work ethic. Its motivation comes from those who seek a life of ease, luxury, and ostentation that was particularly offensive to Quakers and Puritans alike. Slaveowners want to obtain riches and squander them on the desires of the flesh, rather than find justification through a simple life of piety, of working hard and investing in the community—the focus of the work ethic (Benezet 1768, p. 4).23 The early Quakers went to the lengths of the Levellers during the Puritan Revolution in denouncing hierarchical society and demanding social justice for the poor (Marshall 2019, pp. 148–49). In rejecting an opulent, aristocratic lifestyle and condemning slaveowners, the Quakers were simply accenting the work ethic and extending its application.. Both Quakers and Puritans preached the same type of piety, but the Quakers were more consistent or extreme in their comportment.24

5. The Quaker Accent on Equality

The promotion of the work ethic and the rejection of war contributed in important ways to the Quaker position, but the most decisive element was their emphasis upon the equality of all human beings (Marshall 2019, p. 148; Soderlund 1985, p. 171. Cf. Ibid., p. 4).25 This emphasis upon egalitarianism went beyond their Puritan roots and became a central focus, if not an obsession in their overall thinking. Quakers proclaimed a “universal and affectionate brotherhood in the whole human species”. (Benezet 1969, p. 125) “Negroes” and “taunies” (Native Americans) are a “real part of Mankind”, descended from the same set of parents as the rest of us, endowed with the same “rational Powers” and moral agency, afflicted with the same diseases and death, loved by the same God, and subject to the same work of redemption that Christ offers to all of humankind (Fox 1701, pp. 14–17)26 The color of a person’s skin does not matter to God. It does not represent a substantial difference between the races, because the inward soul is the same in all of us (Woolman 1971, pp. 61–62, 225; 1754, pp. 117–18; Ruchames 1969, pp. 38–39). What brings about differences relates more to opportunities or outward circumstances than any biological differences between the various races. Blacks have the same mental capacity as whites and can learn just as much, given the same opportunities and privileges (Ibid., pp. 202, 224; Woolman 1754, pp. 112–13, 117; Benezet 1768, p. 78).27 “Negroes are generally a sensible, humane and social People, and that their Capacity is as good, and as capable of Improvement as that of the Whites”. They are more than capable of succeeding in western culture, just as they did in building an idyllic and civilized culture in Africa before the European slave trade descended upon them and raped the land and its people (Benezet 1768, pp. 7, 12ff., 72ff).28

Quakers thought the work of Christ and the message of the gospel spoke of the dignity of all human beings. They rejected any Reformed talk of a particular intendment in the will of God and work of Christ for the salvation of an elected few (Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 12–13, 99–100, 104–7; Gurney 1979, p. 4). They even rejected limiting the mercy of God to special revelation and extended its efficacy to those who never heard of the name of Christ in nature.29 Joseph Gurney spoke of an “enlightening and quickening influence of the Holy Spirit” that broadcasts God’s mercy to all people, even apart from a specific historical knowledge of Christ (Gurney 1979, pp. 8, 27, 35, 41, 63).30 Barclay spoke of a “day of visitation”, when Christ “comes upon all at certain times and seasons”, offering them the way of salvation (Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 97, 118, 124, 132, 138). All members of the human species were the subject of God’s mercy and integration into the body of Christ.

The principal impulse toward this egalitarianism was found in their emphasis upon the Spirit as the true guide of the believer. The accent upon equality followed a basic tendency of other charismatic groups, like the Gnostics of old, who emphasized the ongoing revelation of Christ in every believer, challenged the hierarchical authority of the apostles, bishops, and presbyters, discounted corporeal appearances for the spiritual realm (Docetism), and made women equal to men within the fellowship as vessels of a prophetic voice (Pagels 1981, pp. 24–25, 41, 48, 50–51, 71–72, 132, 138).31 The move toward egalitarianism starts in each of these charismatic groups with the accent on the Spirit as the guide of every believer. Fox and the Quakers followed the same pattern after accenting the spirituality of the believers and their direct relationship with God. Each believer is said to receive “immediate and direct [and] perceptible” guidance from the Spirit as the “first and principal leader”. (Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 10–11, 22, 37, 46, 62–63; Gurney 1979, pp. 14–17, 76; Dandelion 2008, p. 5) The revelation consists not so much in outward manifestations like visions, appearances, or dreams but an inward persuasion that God impresses on the soul (Ibid., pp. 10, 36–37).32 This spiritual guidance is superior to the written word of God and involves matters outside the specific text of Scripture. The Bible might serve as an authoritative standard to test the prophetic voice, but errors have crept into the text through the centuries and the Spirit remains the ultimate guide (Ibid., 10, 47, 70, 77–7; Gurney 1979, pp. 11–12).33 The Quakers were led by the Spirit and became famous for Spirit-led services, which contained no prescribed form or liturgy, no premeditated worship or word from God, no authoritative preacher, just everyone waiting in silence for the Lord to speak (Ibid., pp. 16, 297–98, 325–26).

The demotion of the Bible meant the elevation of an inward voice of truth. The Quakers were not so beholden to every jot and tittle of the Bible and were free to search the conscience to find the will of God outside the text. In the case of slavery, the fundamental principles of Christianity, like the Golden Rule or basic moral attributes of “Sympathy, Tenderness, and affectionate love”, seem to hold more sway over the conscience of their antislavery leadership than the simple fact that the Bible does not explicitly condemn slavery—a problem that greatly troubled most theologians of the day in opposing it (Benezet 1768, pp. 30, 38, 63–64; Woolman 1971, p. 203).34 John Woolman mostly spoke of his conscience developing out of early childhood experience and molding his view on the subject, rather than explicit references to the Bible or some tower experience like Luther, who was searching the Scripture daily to develop his distinctive reformational ideas (Woolman 1971, pp. 32–33; Drake 1965, pp. 52–53).35

The spiritual authority of the individual conscience went beyond Luther and other Protestants in accenting the priesthood of the believers. Quakers went on to dismiss all professional clergy as false prophets for shutting out the “spiritual ministry” of the divine power within all believers, not just Catholic priests. The church is told to wait and listen to one who receives a word from God, not hire some carnal hierarchy or set number of designated ministers who speak from academic credentials, rather than a fresh anointing of the Spirit. Catholic and Protestant ministers usurp the authority of the Spirit, who moves among the people and selects a vessel for ministry at each existential moment in its free and charismatic way (Barclay [1673] 2002, pp. 8–9, 236–37, 270, 273–74; Dandelion 2008, pp. 5, 86; Hamm 2014, pp. 45, 53).36 Quakers even dismissed the sacraments as restricting the movement of the Spirit. The sacraments depended upon the authority of a priest and bound the reception of divine grace to a set ritual, rather than turn the attention of the believer to the spontaneous work of God, who remains the Lord of all revelation and the dispenser of grace (Ibid., pp. 17, 373ff., 383; Gurney 1979, pp. 142–43, 170–71). The Quaker accent upon the priesthood of the believers went beyond any other Protestant fellowship in viewing the whole church as standing before God and ready to receive a direct message from the throne of grace and preach it to others, whether male or female, black or white, slave or free.

The Quakers continued the doctrine into their everyday life by expressing contempt for all types of authority. They refused pompous acts like bowing or doffing the hat, wearing extravagant or ostentatious dress, and bestowing flattering titles, which often lack sincerity and have no real ultimate meaning, except in referring to God alone (Ibid., pp. 188, 429–32, 444; Gurney 1979, pp. 407ff.; Dandelion 2008, pp. 12–13). They became particularly sanctimonious about “complementary fictions”, which address a woman as “Madaam” (My Lady) or a man as “Sir” (Seigneur) and employ a royal “we” or plural “you” to flatter a person, rather than bringing everyone down to the same egalitarian level with a singular “thou”. (Ibid., pp. 442–44; Gurney 1979, pp. 388–93). All this created a caricature of the Protestant/Puritan doctrine of egalitarianism, but it also presented a radical extension of the doctrine that found application to other important areas of life. In this manner, Quakers displayed an obsession with treating everyone as equals and found it more and more difficult to ignore an obvious ramification and leave their black brothers and sisters out of it.

This accent on equality challenged the basic cultural understanding of the day about blacks and slavery. Racism was an endemic aspect of the black slave trade. The prejudice related to the trade was ancient and universal. Many cultures used the color black to represent evil and proceeded to impute the metaphorical meaning of the color to the dark-skinned people of Africa (Devisse 1979, pp. 2/1. 61).37 Most of those living in the Near East and Mediterranean world seemed to think of dark skin as ugly and light skin as beautiful, especially when considering the aesthetics of femininity (Thompson 1989, p. 161; Goldenberg 2003, pp. 86, 111).38 The biblical tradition made no such value judgment based on skin color or race, but significant segments of early Jewish and Christian literature joined the surrounding culture and proceeded to relate black skin to all that was hideous (Philo 2002, p. 174).39 Tannaitic tradition developed a midrash out of the biblical story of Noah and his three sons, claiming that Ham was cursed with black skin for engaging in illicit sexual behavior on the ark. The midrash imputed the curse to Kush as a descendent of Ham and progenitor of the African people (Ginsberg 2003, pp. 1.41n178, 151, 188)40. Modern times have witnessed many intellectuals attacking the monogenism of the book of Genesis and espousing various forms of racial theory that questioned the fundamental unity of the human species and denigrated Africans as an inferior race of people. Tales of explorers served as the pretext for this new concept of the human species (Foutz 1999, pp. 1–3).41 Voltaire and the philosophes referred to the first voyages around the continent of Africa and tales of its inhabitants as “hardly a degree above some brutes” and lacking in the basic intellectual ways and means to create an advanced culture (Voltaire 1877–1885, pp. 11.5, 7; 12.237, 380; 21.462; D’Souza 1995, pp. 61–62). Pre- and post-Darwinian science looked at the travelogues and pointed to tribes in Africa as the clearest proof of an intellectual hierarchy among the human species, with blacks at the bottom and “Caucasians” at the top of the caste system. The scientists tended to reject the book of Genesis and its monogenetic origin of the species as providing a plausible explanation and spent much time speculating over the precise reason for the differences until Charles Darwin provided the mechanism that appeared to satisfy most biologists—the concept of natural selection or the survival of the fittest (Agassiz 1969, pp. 457–59).42 Almost all the Darwinians challenged the notion of egalitarianism and held to varying degrees of racial theory and euthanasia programs until Hitler’s diabolical application of the science lost political credibility after WWII and muted the viewpoint as no longer constituting an edifying area of research and thought (Kirchhoff 1910, pp. 73, 74, 86, 87).43 Even many of those leading the opposition to slavery—people like Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe—thought of blacks as inferior to whites in their rational capacity and supported a policy of colonization once the institution of slavery ended, believing it difficult to mix or integrate the two races together in one community (Garrison 1969, pp. 308–14).44 Most Southerners tended to agree but found it equally difficult to end the institution or find sufficient funds to resettle the slaves back to Africa, without destroying the economy and the southern way of living (Dew 1963, pp. 21–23, 27, 29–33).45 The tragedy of the Civil War developed out of this problem—a tragedy that the Quaker doctrine of equality sought to avoid by integrating all races of humankind together into one family and ending the racial basis of slavery and segregation.

6. Other Protestant Churches

The large evangelical churches of the South—the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians—followed the spirit of egalitarianism and stood fundamentally against the business and practice of slavery at the end of the eighteenth century, but the ministers who dared to speak out received little support from the laity and experienced threats and harassment from certain elements in the community (Cash 1941, pp. 59–99).46 The denominations found it necessary to retreat from the ideal world of piety in order to protect their position and influence in the region; many of the antislavery activists in the North were not happy with the compromise and the denominations began to split along sectional lines a couple decades before the Civil War (Tise 1987, pp. 356, 363; Zuck 1965, pp. 356, 363).47

None of the mainline churches were so bellicose about slavery as to follow the example of the Quakers and force an abolitionist position on the church or the state. They refused to excommunicate slaveholders from the body of Christ since the Bible seemed to condone or even sanction the practice: OT patriarchs like Abraham employed a system of servitude much like the present, the Mosaic law assumed its existence and provided rules to govern the practice, and Paul recognized the legitimacy of the institution in passages like 1 Cor. 7:20–28 and the book of Philemon, admonishing slaves to obey their earthly masters and not rebel (Eph. 6:5) (Hodge [1857] 1987b, pp. 473ff., 489).48 Maybe the cardinal principles of the NT, like loving your neighbor and doing unto others, went against the practice and might lead to the demise of the institution49 but the churches thought of their mission as separate from political concerns. They felt the church had always divided its mission from the role of the government and submitted to the hierarchical order of society, accepting the subordination of the church to the state, parents to children, wives to husbands, and slaves to masters, without providing any direct advice or plan on how to create an ideal world (Strehle 2020, pp. 2.122–30). According to James Thornwell, the church should remain independent of the government. The church is not responsible for organizing society into different ranks, classes, and privileges. It does not bear the responsibility to cleanse the world from sin, reconstruct society into a different “distribution of its classes”, or “change the forms of its political constitutions” (Thornwell 1871c, pp. 4.382–83; 1871b, p. 4.476).50 It has no specific jurisdiction over matters that remain outside the authority of the Scripture. It has no right or authority to condemn slavery as sin (Woodward 1981, p. 587; Thornwell 1871a, p. 455; Fox-Genovese and Genovese 2005, p. 618). Maybe an individual Christian might offer an opinion and work in organizations outside the church to change the policies of the civil government, but the body of Christ should not become entangled with this or other matters (Thornwell 1871b, pp. 472–74, 478; 1860, pp. 4–6).51 With these and other comments, Thornwell endorsed a view of church/state separation that markedly separated the institutions and characterized the basic position of most churches at the time. Even northern churches rejected the demands of the abolitionists in refusing to excommunicate slaveowners or condemn them as sinful, rejecting the merger of church and state, and preferring to remain within their basic mission and the confines of Scripture (Bascom 1845, pp. 66–67).52 Charles Hodge, the most famous theologian of the day, agreed and said, “As citizens we have the right to demand just and equal laws; but as a church, we have other and higher duties” (Hodge 1844, p. 580). This position does not represent a “wall” that divides religious and secular ideas into different realms of influence but conceives of the church as a separate institution from the state with its own mission, leaving its members with the freedom to translate and apply the message in their own way to the world at large as citizens.

7. Conclusions

The Quakers were one of the few sectarian groups to disagree with this fundamental tendency of the churches and promote a social mission for the church as the body of Christ. They tended to make a direct translation from their personal religious convictions into social action, without any sense of Realpolitik and without any Machiavellian sense of the brutal nature of the political world.53 Because of this viewpoint, they served at the forefront of society as a church in excommunicating slaveowners, forming antislavery organizations, and bringing their radical doctrine of egalitarianism out of their personal theological convictions to change the structures of society into its image. They rejected the autocratic lifestyle of the slaveowner and felt all Christians must renounce a life of ease and luxury to labor and build society with the work of their hands. They rejected the racism of the day and believed all human beings descend from the same set of fallen parents and hear the same offer of salvation, whether emanating from nature or the special revelation of the gospel that Christ died for all humankind. They so emphasized the equality and priesthood of the believers that they dispensed with the sacraments and the clergy altogether, needing no authoritative figure to consecrate the elements or preach a word from God. Their services were led by the unmediated presence of the Spirit, affording a message to certain individuals freely and without discriminating between the members. Even the Bible did not prevent the guidance of the Spirit from convicting the conscience and expanding the doctrine of equality beyond every jot and tittle of its confines to embrace egalitarianism as the fundamental principle in the church and state.54 The doctrine was formulated within this specific religious matrix and hardly represents the development of a secular point of view.