As the richest slaveholders were Episcopalians, the clergy of that denomination could hardly carry out a policy which might prove prejudicial to the interests of their parishioners.
Moreover, in their propaganda there was then nothing which required the training of Negroes to instruct themselves.

As the qualifications of Episcopal ministers were rather high even for the education of the whites of that time, the blacks could not hope to be active churchmen.
This Church, therefore, soon limited its work among the Negroes of the South to the mere verbal instruction of those who belonged to the local parishes.

Furthermore, because this Church was not exceedingly militant, and certainly not missionary, it failed to grow rapidly.

In most parts it suffered from the rise of the more popular Methodists and Baptists into the folds of which slaves followed their masters during the eighteenth century.
The adjustment of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the South to the new work among the darker people, however, was after the first quarter of the nineteenth century practically easy.

Each of these denominations had once strenuously opposed slavery, the Methodists holding out longer than the Baptists.