Who Is Frederick Douglass A Religious Master

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Fredrick is treated terribly by all of his masters and no one cares about him or any of the other slaves. The southerners act like they are disposable and that they can just go buy another one. All of his owners treat him like trash and beat him until he stand up to one and fights him after that he is left alone. Everyone in Frederick Douglass is a mean person who doesn’t care about anyone but themselves and how much money they can make.

Therefore, he appears quite compelling when he attempts to bring out the connection between religion and slavery. Looking at what Douglass went through as a slave, it is unfortunate that his act of reading the Bible was considered a violation of the law. At one point, Douglass narrated that his master’s wife offered Douglass with help to read and write. However, due to “advice” given by her husband and the connection between the Bible and slavery, Douglass’s master’s wife turned against him and was now cruel and bitter towards him.

Actually, it made him even more cruel and hateful and he made greatest pretensions to piety. He remained as a cruel slaveholder, but he prayed everyday and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting many souls (Douglass, p. 77). However, his unconvincing performance and pretending as a Christian made him even crueler. Also, since he was a slaveholder and a Christian, he couldn’t avoid having a double life. He was a mean and cruel master and a hypocrite for his slaves, but he was a faithful Christian for other white Christians. His cruelty and double life are showing readers how slavery can impact the slaveholders in a negative way.

Douglass’s narrative is a courageous work, as it confronts the slavery institution, and the misuse of Christianity by the slave owners

The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," Douglass has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass' own intellectual struggles against his white slave holders. I will focus my attention on how education allowed Douglass to understand how slavery was wrong, and how the Americans saw the blacks as not equal, and only suitable for slave work. I will also contrast how Douglass' view was very similar to that of the women in antebellum America, and the role that Christianity played in his life as a slave and then

Since before the time of Jesus Christ, religious hypocrisy has run rampant throughout those who held power. Countless lives have been affected by others twisting religious interpretation in order to fit their own needs. Slaveholders used religion and scripture to their advantage when disciplining slaves, sometimes even if they did no wrong. Religious hypocrisy is especially relevant in the life of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass’s life story depicts how religious hypocrisy committed by both slaves and slaveholders diminished the rights of slaves, while at the same time allowing injustice to endure.

Fredrick Douglass is famous for being an excellent orator, and he is acknowledged for putting much effort into the slavery abolition movements. In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” he outlines the negative impacts of religion and the bible on slavery alongside the development of Christianity among the whites. Although Douglass seems to be working against Christianity, he is far from being an atheist. Christianity used to be the dominant religion in America when slavery was at its peak in the United States. The religion was practiced by both whites and blacks. Usually, the slave masters professed the same religion as their subjects (Glancy 49). According to Douglass, Christianity is a pure, peaceable, loving and impartial. However, Christianity exists in two forms, namely: “the Christianity of the

The one instance that Douglass brings up is the best slave owner that he had, other than himself, was William Freeland. Douglass states, “ I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I ever had, till I became my own master.” This statement made by Douglass shows that not everyone who was a slaveholder was an evil and corrupt man and that Mr. Freeland was one of those people. Also in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, we see that Douglass was able to hold a sabbath school and was able to teach other slaves how to read and write which helped his self-esteem and eventually helped him be able to get free and live his own

As a young child, Frederick Douglass was introduced to the acts of violence towards the slaves including the all too common whippings. He says, “I have often been awakened at the down of day by the most heart-rendering shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.” One could only imagine the horrid pictures that slaves would have seen on a daily basis of other slaves nearly being beaten to death by their masters. For the black children growing up on the plantation, the master was seen to be a man of great power and not to be taken lightly. This was exactly

Frederick Douglass was an important leader who helped fight for slaves freedom in the 19th Century. Religion played a major role in Mr. Douglass’s life. In his autobiography, he describes his daily struggles of being a slave and how he escaped to freedom. In his narrative, he explains the way his masters would beat, rape, and murder slaves, but only to use their Christian beliefs to explain why they did it and basically use it as an excuse. Douglass himself was also a Christian and explains in his autobiography that the religious views of the masters were very different from the religious views the slaves had. Frederick Douglass composed his autobiography to explain that the master's view of Christianity was unholy and if there was no change to be made, it could continue and lead to an increase in sacrilegious acts.

Douglass shows that people who claimed to be moral Christians were torturers of humans. He presents the irony of this situation in the book. "His (the master's) house was the preachers' home. They (the preachers) used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them."(40-41) Douglass is presenting his audience with the two faces of the slave holder's version of Christianity; the selfish greed hidden behind piousness. In addition to this Douglass also makes sarcastic descriptions of people and places, describing how un-Christian they were by calling them Christian. "(I)t is almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian county."(32)

In January 1834, Frederick was sent to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had gained a reputation around town for being and expert "slave breaker" , Frederick was sent to work with him for the punishment of setting up the religious meetings. Covey hid in bushes and spied on the slaves as they worked, if he caught one of them resting he would beat him with thick branches. After being on the farm for one week, Frederick was beaten for letting an oxen team run wild. The months that followed weren't much better, he was continually whipped until he began to feel that he was "broken" . So after working for Covey for a year, Frederick was sent to work for a farmer named William Freeland, who was a relatively kind master. Frederick did not care about having a kind master because of the hell he went through and all he wanted was freedom.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass depicts his life as a plantation slave, offering misinformed northern Christians and reformers in-depth accounts of the physical and emotional cruelties of slavery. As Douglass recounts his relationship and interactions with the harsh Mr. Covey, he disputes the basis on which southern slaveowners defended slavery. Douglass dispels their claims of encompassing a Christian duty to civilize blacks who they deemed naturally inferior by proving how they actively worked to keep slaves from assimilating and contributing to society.

Fredrick Douglass and Henry Melville both critique Christianity as it was practiced in 19th-century America. Douglass illuminates the aspect of Christianity in relation to the way Christians also uphold the institution of slavery. He views it has ironic that those who claim the Christian faith also believe that there is nothing wrong in the practice of slavery. Douglass questions how one can be a true Christian and still not see that slavery in morally and religiously wrong. He ultimately critiques the way people practice the faith and still uphold slavery. Douglass goes as far to say that the slave master’s even become crueler when they find religion, because then they feel as if they can do no wrong. As Douglass states in relation to slavery and religion, “Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other – devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”

The inconsistencies and importance of religion are reocurrences in both The Narrative and Life of Frederick Douglass and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Augustine St Clare (a character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and Frederick Douglass (who is at this time is a slave) seem to have similar viewpoints on religious slave owners. Both St Clare and Douglass see religion as being defiled by the twisted words of slave owners. Frederick describes an incident of a slave beating to portray his message. “I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. He’d tie up a lame young woman and whip her...cutting her in places already made raw with his cruel lash.(p33)” All off this Master Thomas justifies by quoting scripture. “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.(p33)” This