Religious Hypocrisy In Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass struggled with the treatment of religious slave owners and how they treated their slaves as animals and property, beating them, selling them and even killing them if they became unmanageable compared to the treatment of non-religious slave owners who treated their slaves as human beings, who had feelings, and wanted freedom. It seemed to him after having been treated as a human being that he understood why religious Christianity of the land was just a title for ignorant hypocrites who were fearful of losing control.

To even justify his cruel actions against his slaves, he quoted “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.” (Douglass, 48) According to Douglass, the slave masters that made profession of religion were the worst. Douglass discussed the differences he realized between the Christianity of Christ versus the Christianity of this land. The slave owners’ Christianity of this land believed they had “God-given” rights to have and mistreat the slaves. “That religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection,” (Douglas, 67) In the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Mark Twain wasn’t aware of the severity of slavery. He said, “…I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it. No one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind – and then the texts were read aloud to us to make the matter sure…” (Twain,

In Baltimore, almost everyone had slaves, and all of these slaveholders were extremely religious. They used their religion to justify slavery, but one particular slave knew that what they were doing was not what God wanted for him. He knew that there was something wrong with how they were dehumanizing all these poor, innocent people. This slave’s name was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was held as a slave for a long time, but he was eventually able to become strong and courageous and escaped the home he was being held in. But not all slaves were strong enough to overcome the struggles of slavery. But Douglass was able to use these hypocritical people’s own words and beliefs against them.

When Frederick Douglass published his book, many read it and had their own ideas from the themes he referred to. One thing that was related to the theme of his book was how he said religious slaveholders were the cruelest to slaves. Religious slaveholders used the bible to prove that slavery was right. They quoted from the bible, Colossians 3:22, slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. They said that the bible tells slaves to be obedient to their masters, in which case, means that there are going to be slaves. They also looked back into the Old Testament and found times where the old prophets had slaves. At one point, a prophet returns a runaway slave back to another prophet who was his master. The Southerners saw that since the bible did not condemn slavery but mentioned it in many places, that they were right to have slaves. That is the reason they were so cruel to slaves; they thought that they had religion on their side backing them to do what they pleased to their slaves, since the bible tells them to follow all of their master’s commands. Mr. Covey, who was a slave breaker that possessed Frederick Douglass for a while, was a religious man. Frederick Douglass said that Mr. Covey forced a woman to break the commandment that a person should not commit adultery, but since the woman was a slave, the commandment meant nothing

Between 1790 all through 1860 America was a new country trying to learn how to run itself. The success of the American Revolution brought hope of a country with a just government; a nation where every citizen has a say in how things are run. I believe America had begun to envision that, with normal citizens like William Manning proposing thoughts on how American government should be, with concern about how it systems would . Such corrupt systems in the future did in fact defile the motions of liberty. The right to free speech allowed thinkers such as Orestes Brownson and Fredrick Douglas to criticize the way America was taking itself. With the power going to the wealthy and the hypocrisy of the leaders in this so claimed free nation.

Equiano remarked, “O, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you-Learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?” (Equiano 1281). He couldn’t believe the hypocrisy of the people who claimed to be Christians, yet acted like barbarians. Douglass came to the same conclusion about the “slaveholding religion of this land”, as he also stated, “I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me” (Douglass 2230). They were both surrounded by people who called themselves Christians and put on airs to make themselves seem Godly, even by showing up in church each Sunday. However, these same people treated fellow human beings as though they were property, and subjected them to inhumane conditions while torturing and, many times, killing

Douglass helped put together a little Sabbath school. In this he would help slaves, learn to read and understand what The Bible was trying to depict. During one of these Sabbath meetings a few nearby slave owners “Rushed in upon us with sticks and stones and broke up our virtuous little Sabbath school”(Douglass,48). Religion is fluid, it’s different for everyone. People should be able to believe what they want without infringing on others beliefs.

Frederick Douglass is an intelligent young man born into slavery around 1818, in Tuckahoe, Maryland, on a plantation. At a young age, he is introduced to the barbaric treatment of slaves after witnessing a fellow family member being tied up and whipped. Unfortunately, Douglass is trapped in a culture where abusing certain individuals is acceptable, and sometimes encouraged. He is a devoted Christian, becomes disgusted by the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholders and how they use religion to justify their actions. Douglass’s scorn for the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholders is shown through his diction, tone, and juxtaposition.

Douglass condemns the blatant hypocrisy of Southern Christianity most forcefully in his account of Mr. Rigby Hopkins. During the scene, Douglass describes all the horrible actions Mr. Hopkins has taken while being an extremely faithful Christian, making him very hypocritical, and one of the worst slaveholders in the country. “There was not a man anywhere round who made higher professions of religion” (73) than Mr. Hopkins. No one was more active in prayer,

Frederick Douglass proves himself an important author within American literature due to his insight on American slaveholding. Born a slave during the early eighteen hundreds, Frederick gains a firsthand look into the lives and perils of a slave in the south. In his life story, Douglass reveals to his audience an argument that contradicts the claims of many Christians at the time. In order to fight the claim that Christian conversion in the south creates kind slaveholders, he shows to his audience his own experience on the matter. In chapter nine, Douglass’ dispassionate tone in regards to his situation and the uses of allusion throughout the chapter support his claim that conversion to Christianity only gives justification to cruel southern

Frederick Douglass (1845/1995), a famous abolitionist, wrote the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass telling readers of the mistreatment slaves endured from their white owners, both Christian and non-Christian. Douglass tells readers how Christians used the Bible to support their actions, which led them to be just as cruel, or in some cases more cruel than non-Christians. Through his personal experiences, Frederick Douglass tells the horrors of slavery and shows that Christians who used the Bible to support their actions were just as cruel as non-Christians. Through Douglass’s experiences, he is able to express to the readers the cruelty of slave masters.

When Douglass compares between the true Christianity of Christ he believes and the wrong Christianity of the south slaveholders’ practice, he recognizes the wide difference between them in which, the true believer follows “pure, peaceable, impartial Christianity…” and, in the contrary, he finds the slaveholders’ Christianity- “corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity.”(430) Douglass describes “religious slaveholders” are the worst, meanest, basest, most cruel, and cowardly. He considers them as so because he believes that Christianity of “this land” (in his time) is quite different from the Christianity of Jesus Christ with the widest possible difference in which, the “slaveholder’s religion” cannot be comparable with the “proper”(430) religion.

Even though the religion of the slaves mention in Douglass’s narrative are full of faith and are relying on God, the masters or slaveholders wanted to take matters in their own hands. The slave owners believed that they were the superior beings and were not equal to the slaves. Douglass even mentions that he had a fight with a master of his and that the “Christian city of Baltimore” probably would not have done anything “if I had been killed” (989). When Douglass states this he is showing how superior the slave holders and white people thought they were to the slaves. The slaveholders however, did not even counter in religion. The slave owners just thought that their race was superior and that was final. However, they should have read scriptures

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

Frederick Douglass was beaten, whipped and forced to do the work of people who saw him as a tool instead of a person. Like horses need to be broken before they can be ridden, black men need to be "broken" to be good slaves(80). Slave owners pushed false religious ideas and hoped to keep Douglass and others in ignorance. Hypocrisy burned at Douglass. People nearly killed slaves and then they proclaimed the "meek and lowly Jesus" (120). Slave owners believed that if slaves were ignorant of their condition, they would never rebel. Douglass knew that