To answer Emily Rose's question, Christianity collided with slavery from the
very beginning in Virginia.  Here is a short excerpt from my book about GW
and slavery:

The Jamestown colonists put the blacks to work but shrank from making them
slaves for life, which struck the English as a form of blasphemy.  Many
blacks became "Christian servants" for a set period of servitude and some
were even set free by pious masters for accepting Christianity.  For a brief
time belief in Christ overpowered slavery, but the Virginia assembly began
to tighten this religious loophole in 1667: "Whereas some doubts have risen
whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of
their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by
vertue of their baptisme be made free; It is enacted . . that the conferring
of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or
freedome."  For a few more years Africans who had been baptized before
arrival in Virginia could have the status of indentured servants, but the
assembly finally closed off this loophole entirely in 1682 with a law
proclaiming that, Christian or not, any "negroes, moors, mulattoes or
Indians" imported to Virginia would be "slaves to all intents and purposes,
any law, usage or custome to the contrary notwithstanding."  

Henry Wiencek