Brethren No More: How Churches Shaped Conflict between Abolitionists and the Proslavery Countermovement

• In Event: 3171 - Non-State Opposition to and Suppression of Social Movements

Abstract

Non-state targets of social movements have different vulnerabilities and capacities than states, yet we know comparatively little about how their actions influence movement-countermovement conflict. The present study helps fill this gap by showing that the slavery-related church schisms of the 19th century were a result of sustained conflict between church-centered abolitionists and a proslavery countermovement and that this conflict occurred when church efforts to suppress abolitionist mobilization failed. I compare struggles over slavery within the five largest national Protestant denominations of the antebellum era and find that the denominations that experienced slavery-related schisms in the pre-civil war years had open political structures and tactical repertoires that aimed to reduce church accountability for slavery policy. In contrast, denominations that avoided sectional schism in the pre-civil war years were closed to movement influence, used suppressive tactics, and deployed frames that privileged denominational unity over moral purity or cast slavery as political rather than moral. This research shows that non-state targets, though lacking the coercive power of the state, can and do suppress social movements, but that the capacity to repress varies according to features of target organizational structure and is mediated by targets’ tactical repertoires.

Author

• Kristin George, University of California-Berkeley