Historians of American religion generally agree that religious debates over slavery were characterized by a reliance on the plain meaning of the Bible. According to the conventional wisdom, antebellum Americans were uninterested in or even overtly hostile to tradition and church history. However, a close study of pro- and antislavery literature complicates this picture of ahistorical biblicism. For some defenders of slavery, not merely the Bible but also Christian tradition supported their position, and these Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists mined the past for examples of Christian slaveholding. On the other hand, both white and Black antislavery authors used religious history to bolster their cases against the peculiar institution, with African Americans leading the way in developing an antislavery account of the Christian past. The previously unnoticed historical dimensions of religious arguments over slavery prove central to understanding why these debates failed, while also modifying how we conceive of scripture, tradition, and religious authority in nineteenth-century America. Arguments over slavery show that religious Americans—even many who claimed to be biblicists—did not read the Bible alone but always alongside and in relation to other texts, traditions, and interpreters.

中文翻译：

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十七世纪的罪恶：战前奴隶制辩论中的基督教过去

美国宗教历史学家普遍同意，关于奴隶制的宗教辩论的特点是依赖于圣经的简单含义。根据传统观点，战前美国人对传统和教会历史不感兴趣，甚至公然敌视。然而，对支持和反奴隶制文学的仔细研究使非历史圣经主义的这幅图景复杂化了。对于一些奴隶制的捍卫者来说，不仅圣经而且基督教传统也支持他们的立场，这些天主教徒、圣公会、长老会、卫理公会和浸信会从过去挖掘了基督教持有奴隶的例子。另一方面，白人和黑人反奴隶制的作者都利用宗教历史来支持他们对特殊机构的指控，与非裔美国人一起在发展对基督教过去的反奴隶制描述方面处于领先地位。关于奴隶制的宗教争论的先前被忽视的历史维度被证明是理解这些争论为何失败的核心，同时也改变了我们对 19 世纪美国的圣经、传统和宗教权威的看法。关于奴隶制的争论表明，有宗教信仰的美国人——甚至许多自称是圣经学家的人——并不是单独阅读圣经，而是总是与其他文本、传统和解释者并列并与之相关。