Monthly Spotlight: Black Congregants and OSMH

Based on original research conducted by Revolutionary Spaces staff, this month we are spotlighting the relationship between race, slavery, and Christianity at the Old South Meeting House. During the colonial period, Old South was one of the most popular churches for free and enslaved Black congregants in Boston, a place where they exercised a degree of control and experienced a form of equality in their spiritual lives that they were largely denied outside of the church. At the same time, many of Old South’s white congregants were slave owners who practiced a moderate form of Biblically-sanctioned Christian slavery championed by some of its most influential and leading members.

We invite you to engage with this complex history and to learn about some of the figures whose thoughts on this topic have survived, including Judge Samuel Sewell and poet Phillis Wheatley. Afterwards we invite you to write a letter to one of these figures responding to their perspectives on the relationship between Christianity and slavery.