Isaac Allen

Isaac Allen wrote a compact nineteenth-century theological tract that entered a major American moral and political debate through close reading of scripture. Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible appeared as number 45 in the American Tract Society series, with bibliographic records dating the Boston edition to about 1860. Allen organizes the work as a sustained argument, first defining the institution under discussion and then examining Hebrew law, early Christian teaching, and competing interpretations of biblical language. Rather than presenting a devotional meditation, he addresses claims used in public controversy and tests them against ethical principles and textual context. Project Gutenberg later prepared an electronic edition from scans held in the University of Michigan’s Making of America collection. Google Books and the Online Books Page preserve further edition history. Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible is therefore best understood as an abolition-era religious pamphlet whose form joins scriptural exegesis to civic argument.