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From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

Church membership among Blacks was astonishing high in the old South. Nehemiah Adams of Boston stated that in some regions, the number of Black communicants was as high as four times greater than that of the White communicants. In Virginia in 1856, the total number of Black communicants in the Baptist churches was forty-five thousand; in Savannah, Georgia, a full one-third of the Black population were church members; in South Carolina, Negroes comprised a full one-third of the total number of church communicants in the State (Southside View of Slavery, pages 53-54). Adams noted, "Religion has gained wonderful ascendency among this people.... I never perceived in their prayers any thing that reminded me of their condition as slaves. They made no allusions to sorrows but those which are spiritual, and they chiefly dwelt upon their temptations. But the love of Christ and heaven were the all-inspiring themes of their prayers and hymns" (ibid., page 55). If nothing else, the introduction of hundreds of thousands of Negro slaves to the eternally liberating Gospel of Christ was certainly one of the merits of the institution of slavery in the antebellum South.