Bonds of Salvation How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism / Ben Wright.

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2020]

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2021

©[2020]

1 online resource (x, 253 pages)

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"Ben Wright's "Bonds of Salvation" demonstrates how religion structured the possibilities and limitations of American abolitionism. His work begins with the American Revolution and ends with the schisms in the three largest Protestant denominations that sent the nation down a path culminating in secession and civil war. For the last several decades, historians of antislavery tracing the evolution of the movement have emphasized status anxieties, market changes, biracial cooperation, and political maneuvering as primary forces. Wright instead foregrounds the pivotal role of religion in structuring the ideological possibilities of abolitionism. Americans fretted over the spiritual welfare of the new nation, but rather than purifying particular sins like slavery, they sought to save everyone. For even those Christians who hated slavery, the only sound more harrowing than the moans of a shackled slave were the wails of a damned soul. Wright begins by unfolding ideological distinctions between conversion and purification in the aftermath of the Revolution. A small number of white Christians in the late eighteenth century believed that unless the nation purified itself from slavery, it would never fulfill its religious destiny. Most white Christians disagreed, eschewing participation in the abolitionist movement and instead confidently expecting salvation to wash away all of the sins of the era. However, Wright explains, expanding salvation required new methods of coordination, and so Americans created national denominations to increase salvation. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, these denominations launched the "benevolent empire," including the American Colonization Society, the first genuinely national attempt to reckon with the problem of slavery. Colonization drew on denominational networks, promising salvation for Africa and redemption for the United States. Critics arose, however, from both abolitionists and proslavery zealots who attacked the promise of salvation offered by the ACS. In the late 1820s, theological transformations birthed a new abolitionism that coalesced in opposition to the ACS and insisted that purity from slavery must predate national salvation. Proslavery prophets transformed expectations of expanded salvation from a tacitly antislavery ideology into a formidable anti-abolitionist weapon, framing abolitionists as enemies of salvation and national unity. Abolitionist assertions that enslavers could not serve as agents of salvation sapped the most potent force in American nationalism - religion - and the three largest Protestant denominations split, sending the nation further down the path to secession and war. By highlighting religious expectations of salvation, Wright changes our understanding of the early republic in several essential ways. First, we see how religious convictions created the ideological worlds of the early republic. Second, tracking the ideas underpinning abolitionist action replaces the dichotomy of gradualism and immediatism with religious visions that privilege either conversion or purification. Third, we see how millennial dreams of salvation structured early American religious and political culture. Fourth, we come to recognize and understand some antislavery Americans who have thus far remained outside of the focus of antislavery studies. Finally, Wright's work forces us to rethink our broad narratives of American religious history, complicating the existing emphasis on democratization and diffusion of religious authority with the recognition that this was an era of institution building, catalyzed by the need to expand salvation. Overall, Wright contends, visions of salvation both created and almost destroyed the American nation"-- Provided by publisher.

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March 12, 2021

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