Slavery and the Spirituality of the Church

Near the beginning of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism , George McKenna observes how the slavery issue put pressure on Southern evangelicals to adopt a more privatized piety: “Southern evangelical Protestantism had always been more personal and individualistic than that of the North. Salvation was something that was worked out in the individual’s soul. A reform in the individual’s moral behavior might be required, but there was little interest in the social implications of Christian reform. As the slavery controversy deepened, southern Protestantism retreated still further into quietism, and in terms of theological change and development it froze into near-stasis. A southern journalist later observed that slavery ‘pickled’ southern life, including its religious life.”