The pamphlet of James G. Birney, entitled "The
American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,"[A] offers the
amplest proof that the Methodist Episcopal, the Baptist, the
Presbyterian, and the Anglican Episcopal Churches are committed, both in
the persons of their eminent ministers, and by resolutions passed in a
church capacity, to the monstrous assertion that slavery, so far from
being a moral evil, which it is the duty of the church to seek to
remove, is a Christian institution resting on a scriptural basis; this
assertion is repeated in the numerous quotations of the pamphlet, in a
variety and force of expression that show the utterers were resolved not
to leave their meaning in the smallest doubt. Indeed, it might be
supposed, from the perusal of this pamphlet, that the suppression of
abolitionism, if not the maintenance of slavery, was one of the first
duties of the Christian churches in America.
[Footnote A: Published by Ward & Co., Paternoster-row, London.]
The following extracts are offered in illustration:--
THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.--"Resolved, That it is the sense
of the Georgia Annual Conference, that slavery, as it exists in
the United States, _is not a moral evil_.
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