[My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass]@TWC D-Link bookMy Bondage and My Freedom CHAPTER XXII 26/35
They were educated, and possessed what seemed to me, at the time, very superior talents.
Some of them have been cut down by death, and{273} others have removed to different parts of the world, and some remain there now, and justify, in their present activities, my early impressions of them. Among my first concerns on reaching New Bedford, was to become united with the church, for I had never given up, in reality, my religious faith.
I had become lukewarm and in a backslidden state, but I was still convinced that it was my duty to join the Methodist church.
I was not then aware of the powerful influence of that religious body in favor of the enslavement of my race, nor did I see how the northern churches could be responsible for the conduct of southern churches; neither did I fully understand how it could be my duty to remain separate from the church, because bad men were connected with it.
The slaveholding church, with its Coveys, Weedens, Aulds, and Hopkins, I could see through at once, but I could not see how Elm Street church, in New Bedford, could be regarded as sanctioning the Christianity of these characters in the church at St.Michael's.
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