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(I wrote a research paper on this topic. Here's the 20 second summation.)
Originally, revivalist pastors from the North and South shook down slaveholders for thousands of dollars to get their blessings.
By the 1820s, the slaveholders caught on that they needed to convince the pastors to join their cause, by offering them daughters to marry, money and parcels of land, with their own slaves. They specifically targeted pastors from the North to join their families, which helped to reduce the protests from Northern states, as these pastors would report back home. In the antebellum South, most church clergy then owned slaves.
There was a push to sell slavery to the white community, to convince the community not to reject it.
When several slave uprisings occurred, around the 30s, the slaveholders and pastors realized that they could convert the slaves to Christianity too, thereby increasing their congregation and their profits from tithings. The main goal was to help to prevent further uprisings by selling eternal salvation to those who were not introduced to Christianity. They held two services:
A white service that justified slavery by perverting passages in the bible.
A slave service, where they told slaves to be good to their masters and work hard--their rewards will come in the afterlife.
It only took one generation (20 years) to completely switch the South from rejecting slaveholders to embracing them.
The history of Southern Slavery evolves around the buying of the church to dupe citizens into supporting their industry.
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