Bonds of Salvation

Bonds of Salvation illuminates a sharp conceptual divide in America’s nineteenth-century Protestant denominations between those who viewed the United States as God’s instrument for converting the world and those who viewed it as God’s instrument for purifying the social order. Ben Wright shows how this difference influenced colonization schemes, the Baptist and Methodist north-south schisms of 1844 and 1845, reactions to the Compromise of 1850, and eventually secession itself. In the recent surge of outstanding scholarship on religion and the divisions leading to the Civil War, this book makes an outstanding contribution. ~Mark A. Noll, author of The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

A clear and vivid account of the transformation of the American Christians’ responses to slavery from the late eighteenth century to the antebellum era. Wright ushers onto the historical stage a memorable cast of players—black and white, northerners and southerners—who bring to life the intersections between religious thought and institutional change as the nation grappled with the problem of slavery. His book is a must-read for all historians of religion and reform in the early republic. ~Christine Leigh Heyrman, author of American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam

Wright describes how the majority of white Christians who knew slavery to be sinful and wrong limited their activism against this evil. In failing to join black Christians and white radicals in the struggle against slavery, the majority of white Christian denominations left enslaved people in reprehensible situations that would be ended only with the violence of the Civil War. Both history and cautionary tale, Bonds of Salvation demonstrates how difficult it is to move from awareness of wrongs to deliberate action, and encourages us to consider the places in our own lives where our ideals outstrip our movement toward justice. ~Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863

“Ben Wright aims to recover an ideologi­cal context that shaped not only abolitionists and their opponents but also every American in between. . . . Bonds of Salvation is an imaginative, nuanced, and deeply researched reconstruction of the religious and moral assumptions that guided many Americans between the Revolution and the Civil War. Historians of American religion, abolitionism, and slavery will have to reckon with Wright’s argument for years to come.” ~Journal of American History

“Wright’s distinction between purification versus conversion offers a helpful reframing of the relationship between Christianity and slavery in the early republic and antebellum period. While Wright’s characterization of American Christianity remains fundamentally Protestant, his multi-denominational perspective shows how these church institutions inspired, limited, and opposed abolition. Moreover, his argument that many white Christians prioritized denominational stability over their own antislavery beliefs is a poignant and important insight that remains resonant today.” ~American Historical Review