LAUSR

“Protestant Supremacy,” the phrase that evoked the majority of commentary in this forum, is a neologism. I began researching Christian Slavery in 2005, but I did not coin “Protestant Supremacy” until 2013. I have an audio recording of the first time I used the phrase. It was during my dissertation defense and I was explaining why I felt it was wrong to use the terms “pro” or “antislavery” to describe the slavery debates of the seventeenth century. “Spiritual equality does not equal antislavery,” I said at the time, when I refusing to draw a straight line from Quaker founder George Fox to later Quaker abolitionists. I needed a new way to frame the conversation. “I could call it ‘Protestant Supremacy,’” I said. “It isn't White Supremacy in the seventeenth-century. … [Instead,] you have a contest between the ideology of Protestant Supremacy and the ideology of Christian Slavery. … That's the conversation that's important.”