Church & State 250: Protestant Supremacy and Christian Slavery

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: [email protected] enslaved Africans become Christians, and if they did, should baptism lead to freedom? Katharine Gerbner, Associate Professor of History and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to explain how religion shaped slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Gerbner’s book, Christian Slavery, examines a tension many Americans rarely consider: early Protestant slaveholders often treated Christianity as a marker of freedom, while missionaries wanted to convert enslaved people without disrupting slavery. That conflict helped produce what Gerbner calls “Protestant supremacy,” a religious framework that came before the legal solidification of whiteness and helped justify slavery through religious difference. The conversation moves through Quakers in Barbados, baptism, Catholic and Protestant slave systems, enslaved Christians, and theologies used to defend bondage. It is a hard but necessary look at how Christian language could be used both to seek freedom and to preserve power.Guest BioKatharine Gerbner is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. Her work examines how religion shapes, and is shaped by, race, freedom, politics, and technology. She is the author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, which argues that religion was central to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world, and Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica. Her scholarship connects directly to this episode’s focus on Christian slavery, Protestant supremacy, baptism, enslaved Christians, and the religious arguments used to justify or challenge slavery.Book MentionedChristian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World by Katharine GerbnerBookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780812224368Relevant Links & ResourcesKatharine Gerbner Faculty ProfileURL: https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/kgerbner Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/Support the showKeep the conversation going.Want to learn more about Faithful Politics, suggest a future guest, or connect with us directly?Visit our website:faithfulpoliticspodcast.comBrowse our bookstore, featuring books from many of our guests:faithfulpoliticspodcast.com/bookstoreSupport the show and help us keep these conversations going:patreon.com/cw/FaithfulPoliticsSubscribe for behind-the-scenes content, reflections, and updates:faithfulpolitics.substack.comContact the hosts:Josh Burtram, Faithful Host: [email protected] Wright, Political Host: [email protected] Faithful Politics:Instagram: faithful_politicsFacebook: FaithfulPoliticsPodcast