The antislavery consensus of the Evangelical Enlightenment had been replaced by divided churches and a scriptural debate over slavery which led contemporaries and historians to conclude that Christianity could render no decisive verdict. The major Protestant churches had retreated from earlier antislavery pronouncements, impelling a handful of radical abolitionists to form "come-outer" splinter congregations. Initially conceived as a defense of Christianity, an assurance to slaveholders that they need not abandon their religion, religiously grounded proslavery arguments had, by the 1850s, thoroughly undermined the moral consensus against slavery. With the slave revolts of Denmark Vesey and then of Nat Turner and the rise of abolitionist activism in the 1830s, Southerners began to mount a defense of slavery that came to include a scriptural defense. Initially, therefore, instead of developing a proslavery ideology, Southerners defended their peculiar institution by opposing a strong federal government and an established religion, which were "the essential elements of any effective challenge to slavery," as inimical to republican principles. As Robert Forbes has persuasively argued, the Evangelical Enlightenment produced a consensus against slavery, albeit without a program for ending it. We now realize that few in the early Republic believed that the Bible sanctioned slavery and that the Protestant churches generally adopted antislavery principles. The simple conclusion that each side could quote scripture for its own ends has been supplanted by a more nuanced understanding. Arguments over whether Biblical texts should be understood to support or condemn slavery have been thoroughly canvassed. The debates between clergymen over slavery and the struggles within denominational bodies that led to the division of the major Protestant churches into northern and southern branches have been examined extensively. Too often the religious component of anti-slavery and abolition is investigated by focusing on ecclesiastical expressions of religion. HILL, DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY & AMERICAN STUDIES, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY Uncle Tom's Cabin as Religious Text Uncle Tom's Cabin as a Religious Text BY PATRICIA R.
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