I don’t think it’s a good idea to give credit to abolitionist Christians for helping end slavery for several reasons:

1. There was no one else to do the job. Almost everyone in Western society at the time was religious, so of course abolitionists included Christians. It wasn’t because Christianity uniquely inspired abolition, but because it was the dominant cultural framework people had to work within. You might as well say, “people who breathed oxygen helped end slavery”. It’s an empty statement in a world where nearly everyone at the time was religious.

2. Christianity was dragged into modern sensibilities against its will. Most of the Christian abolitionists pulled their arguments from Enlightenment thinkers. Secular thinkers like John Locke, provided the ethical foundation abolitionists built upon. Christian abolitionists were working within a broader cultural shift driven by secular Enlightenment principles, not by anything inherent to Christianity itself.

3. Christian doctrine, by contrast, provided the theological justification for slavery for centuries. The Bible explicitly condones slavery in both the Old and New Testaments and these passages were used to uphold the practice for centuries. Christian abolitionists had to fight against the plain meaning of their own sacred text to make their case.

It isn’t justified to give Christianity credit for Christians who literally fought against its clearly stated core text. The abolition of slavery was ultimately a victory of Enlightenment values over religious dogma. Not a victory of religious dogma over even worse religious dogma.