In the Southern United States before the civil war, at least two believers were named as slave owners, each of whom had at least one slave who was baptized. Owners and slaves alike were in full fellowship with Dr. Thomas. There were undoubtedly others, but the first recorded believing slave is a “Brother Braxton,” owned by Lemuel Edwards, a wealthy Virginia planter from Lanesville. It was highly unlikely that Dr. Edwards had just one slave, but only one is recorded as being a brother.
Much later, in 1860, Dr. Thomas noted that “the congregation of the faithful in Jefferson, Mississippi, now numbers twenty; of whom one is a slave belonging to sister Maghee, who can read, and is quite intelligent in the gospel, and is highly esteemed by the whites who know her; and being Christ’s freed woman, she is quite contented in the calling in which she was called; and much happier than the white slaves around her, who love and hug the chains of slavery which bind them to the chariot wheels of their hard taskmaster, the Devil [or human evil personified.]”
Thus there were at least one brother and one sister in Christ who were slaves of their Christian masters. How common this was I do not know with certainty: but as it was illegal in the South at the time to teach slaves to read and write, there cannot have been many capable of reading the Bible for themselves and therefore it would be more difficult, although not impossible, for them to make a good confession. But there must have been, in many Southern ecclesias, “a First Century air,” slaves and masters worshipping together, joined by the bonds of Christ.
(Adapted from Chapter 23 of “John Thomas, his Friends and his Faith”)
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One