While the political aspect of the traditionalist quest for prescriptive Christianity has been central to the story from the start, this chapter examines, first, the complicated way that religious and political norms are intertwined in American history and dependent on whether the Christian community is in a position of power or not. Second, the chapter examines two aspects of Christian identity that are especially important in understanding contemporary American politics: (1) a global Christian identity that understands Christians as those persecuted by godless secular society, and (2) an antignostic identity that understands Christians as those who wage war against “gnosticism,” a term applicable to whatever conservative Christians are currently combatting in the political sphere.

Antislavery agitation spread through reformers with American contacts, but Britain’s movement to abolish the slave trade became the largest social movement of the era. Publishing damning exposés of the traffic, lobbying Members of Parliament, and forming vibrant locals across the British isles, the movement sponsored massive petition-signings that (unlike preceding reform movements) mobilized across social class, while women were also mobilized for boycotting against slave-produced products. The movement only failed to produce immediate results due to a countermovement centered in the slave ports that raised counterpetitions and lobbied for British economic self-interest, particularly once war against Revolutionary France began in 1793.

Quakers, originally from The Netherlands and Germany, were the first to formulate criticism of slavery in the Caribbean and North America in the Germant0own Declaration of 1688. Only in the late 18th century Quakers also had political influence in the UK, e.g. through the discourse of Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, describing the horrors of the Middle Passage. At the same time in France, some Enlightenment philosophers also critical of slavery, though often ambiguously. Most explicit was the discourse of Condorcet.