When Douglass delivered "The Church and Prejudice" to the Plymouth County (Massachusetts) Anti-Slavery Society on November 4th, 1841 he wasn't yet FREDERICK DOUGLASS (yes, all caps are necessary), the towering women's rights activist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, diplomat, and writer who was arguably one of the most important Americans of the 19th century.

Back then, he was just Some Dude, a twenty-three-year-old man who had escaped from slavery a few years earlier. Only about three months earlier, the abolition movement had discovered that he might be a pretty good speaker, too, and this speech was one of his first times on deck.

These days, it's pretty common to take a swing at Christianity (among other religions) for the hypocrisies and shortcomings of its followers. But in the mid-19th century, the church was riding pretty high thanks to the Second Great Awakening. It took a brave man to take on the Church—especially the Northern Church, which was just edging toward the idea of abolition.

We're willing to bet Douglass made some members of his audience squirm with his examples of prejudice up there.

Anything we read by Douglass today is influenced by our knowledge of the giant of American history and literature he became. And any text about slavery is influenced by our knowledge of how slavery ended and by the almost universal agreement that slavery was a bad thing.

In the wake of modern racial strife, inequality of opportunity and education, and the re-emergence of white supremacist movements (that never really went away in the first place), many Christian theologians are re-examining the church's obligations in healing the racial divide. All honest people of faith know their obligation to welcome and support everyone.

Well, maybe not all.

Think of the pastor we describe in our "Why Should I Care" section. He resigned his pulpit because of backlash about his activist stance (source) on confronting racism and white supremacy.

When you read "The Church and Prejudice," take a step back from what you know. Think about what it must have been like to hear it in 1841, two decades before the Civil War.