Reviewed by: Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism by Ben Wright Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz (bio) Slavery, Abolitionism, Religion, Christianity, Conversionism, Racism Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism. By Ben Wright. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Pp. 263. Cloth, $45.00.) In this powerful work, Ben Wright argues that the "bonds of salvation both created and destroyed the American nation" in the decades between the American Revolution and the sectional schisms that splintered Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches (2). Wright challenges readers to think hard about those white ministers and churchgoers who, while harboring opposition to slavery, were so bent on saving the world that they neglected to devote real effort to end slavery or to advocate for the enslaved. After reading his compelling narrative of how Christianity both inspired and confined abolitionism, it is impossible not to think anew about the "seething sectionalism" of the 1840s and 1850s, early American religion, and racism and white supremacist visions of the United States, past and present (3). The work is arranged chronologically, with Wright assiduously making his argument through five chapters. After a first chapter in which Wright introduces the ideological distinctions between the conversion and purification ideals of Christianity in late eighteenth-century America, he describes how in the wake of the Revolution, denominations were a force for nationalism as well as for expansion of salvation and creation of a benevolent empire. His discussion of denominations as both logistical apparatuses rendered necessary after the loss of Anglican infrastructure and as forces of post-Revolution nationalism is illuminating. Wright notes that, despite some antislavery sentiment among ministers (even southern ones), [End Page 308] the early focus on salvation quickly narrowed to focus on the soul, not the "exploited bodies of the enslaved" (23). That is, the dogma of conversion trumped purification. Prior to 1830, nearly all white Americans believed that mass conversion would wield tremendous power: It would bring on a world in which injustice would cease, rendering efforts at ameliorating wrongs unnecessary. Salvation, not reform, became the focus of most white Christians in new Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist denominations. Wright emphasizes the "millennial horizon of salvation" that dominated Christian thought and ultimately led many white Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists to advocate for colonization and to back efforts of the American Colonization Society (ACS) after its founding in 1816 (59). He compellingly argues that scholars have overlooked the dominance of millennial rhetoric throughout ACS publications, and he offers a concise and new history of ACS efforts in this monograph. Despite efforts by missionaries and others to portray ACS schemes as successful and popular (in spite of reality), opposition grew. Opponents of colonization (first Black, then white) challenged the conversionist stance—and some insisted that, in any regard, enslavers could not be morally at the helm of it. Conversionism, Wright thus writes, lost its "unifying power" (114). At the same time, the theological changes of the Second Great Awakening brought renewed focus on purification and calls for immediate abolition of the sin of slavery. Wright positions immediate abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in Baptist purification belief as well as in the context of the Second Great Awakening's stance that believers needed to work out their salvation. This was essentially a reversal of order, with purity now precursor to conversion: a game-changer in thought for many white abolitionists. Ultimately, after attempts by white southerners and others to silence antislavery agitation as the real threat to salvation, schism erupted. All three denominations splintered, and events of the 1850s (particularly the Fugitive Slave Law) only increased religious rancor. Ideas of conversionism did not end with the splintering of the United States. Both Confederacy and Union, Wright concludes, "sought to save the world through their own brand of conversionist ideology: the former through a belief that Christianity was dependent upon slavery and white supremacy, the latter through a belief that the world could be redeemed only if 'govt of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish'" (210). Throughout this work, Wright carefully highlights the work and ideas of individuals, ranging from famous figures such as Garrison and Phillis [End Page 309] Wheatley...