
Christian History Home > Issue 82 > The Lord's Agitators

The Lord's Agitators
Holiness leaders were a fractious bunch, but there was vision behind their division.
Sarah E. Johnson, Ginger Kolbaba, Jennifer Woodruff Tait, and Stan Ingersol | posted 4/01/2004 12:00AM
Orange Scott (1800-1847): Witness against slavery
Orange Scott's heart bled for the slaves. But when he tried to convince his Methodist denomination that abolition was the only answer, they did not thank him for it.
Born in 1800 into a very poor Vermont family, Scott received only 13 months of formal education before becoming a Methodist preacher. When in 1833 he became convinced of the evils of slavery, he sent copies of William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, the Liberator, to 100 Methodist preachers in New England. This made abolitionists of most of them and made Scott famous—or infamous—in the denomination.
At this time, many who opposed slavery refused to call for its immediate end—and many Methodists worried that taking an abolitionist stance would hinder the Gospel in the South. Scott, however, preached conversion, holiness, and the end of slavery as one message.
In 1836, Scott stood up at the Methodist Episcopal Church's General Conference to share his passion for abolition. For his trouble, ...
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