Richard Furman And John G. Fee's Analysis

The book’s first chapter, “The Meaning of Slave Religion”, explores how the conversion of African slaves in the British colonies of North America to Christianity became an

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.

“Not only did slaves believe that they would be chosen by the Lord, there is evidence that many of them felt their owners would be denied salvation” (34). Levine claimed that the slaves uses their beliefs and religion as a “means of escape and opposition” because it gave them a “serious alternative to the societal system created by southern slaveholders” (54.)

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.

Many people believe that Christians played a great role in abolishing slavery. However, Douglass’ ideas about religion and its connection to slavery shine a light on the dark side of Christianity. Douglass’ account of his own life is a very eloquent first hand retelling of the suffering and cruelty that many slaves were going through. His account gives a detail of the ills that were committed against the slaves. The atrocities committed by the various different masters varied in intensity depending on the masters’ individual personality (Glancy 42). This first hand narrative gives us a glimpse in to the connection between religion (Christianity) and slavery.

For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation

Slave owners used Christianity as an excuse for the awful ways they treated their slaves. Christianity played a major role on the increase of brutality and violence that spirited the slave owners. The scriptures in the Bible were twisted in the eyes of slave owners to how they wanted to interpret them. Douglass had a powerful experience with one of his masters, Thomas Auld. Mr. Auld was not a religious person and treated the slaves very poorly. In August 1832, Auld attended a Methodist camp meeting and that marked the day when he became religious, and suddenly even more cruel. “Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.” After becoming religious, Auld uses scripture to justify his cruelty. Douglass thought that with discovering religion and using it, Auld would become more polite as how Douglass viewed Christianity. Unfortunately that was not the case. Auld justifies that being affiliated with religion would not change a person for the better. Being a slave, Douglass found that slave owners found religious sanction for their cruelty. “He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.", was what a slave owner had said to justify why he beat

Defending slavery demonstrate the opinions and knowledge that the Southerners held concerning blacks and slavery. Paul Finkelman talks about slave legitimacy in colonial America. He argues that the first defense of slavery became visible after the end of American Revolution; it attempted to justify continuous forced labor with the Declaration of Independence. This essay aims at critically analyzing ideologies and racial theories that Southerners promoted to defend slavery, which included racial, political, legal, economic, and religious ideologies. Most specifically, this essay will discuss the legitimacy of slavery, in the earlier days, and justify this idea by using the religion and

Christianity was new to most slaves who had been abducted from their native country and taken to the Americas. Some were hesitant to abandon their old traditions for the Christ their white captors taught of, but after several generations of slavery, most black slaves had succumbed to relentless preaching. However, the Christianity that took hold within the slave community was often interpreted differently, conveying different messages to pockets of slave population. The use of Christianity in slavery was a double edged sword, creating not only a tool for control, but a weapon of discontent in slave communities. Examining the works of Richard Allen and the stories of Nat Turner, create a narrative of how Christianity was applied differently to slaves.

William Patton, an abolitionist and reverend, had a two-fold argument against the idea of Christianity supporting slavery which he laid out in his 1846 book “Slavery, the Bible, Infidelity”. His first argument, was that God could never support because, in simple terms, “God is just, and that slaveholding is unjust” (Patton, 6). Supporting this idea, Patton quotes Thomas Jefferson in saying in response of proslavery rhetoric, that “If your interpretation of the Bible be correct,it cannot be the word of God—for it gives him a character the very reverse of that which reason and conscience affirm.”(Patton, 6) Patton’s second argument, is that by holding proslavery views, these subsets of the church create infidelity (people of other faith) among both slaves and freedmen. To prove this, Patton quotes former slave-owner Reverend J.D. Paxton, who said that “It is often said… that there is a growing indisposition among slaves to worship with their masters and attend on the preaching of whites. Now that this prejudice in slaves, against worshipping with the whites, may be traced mainly to the system of slavery is to me most certain”(Patton, 10). Patton then quotes a letter written to the popular abolitionist newspaper, The Emancipator, where the writer was discussing religion with an infidel, and he writes that “The first argument he brought against the Scriptures was the assertion that they sanctioned slavery; and to prove it, quoted Gov. Hammond, and prominent Doctors of Divinity,

The notion that the enslavement of African Americans can be justified is inherently false. While societal practices in America favored towards slavery, ultimately, inner moral codes argued that, no matter how one tried to prove it, slavery was inherently dehumanizing and immoral. Three circumstances that prove that slavery was unjustifiable are the opposing views present in the Bible, Desiree’s Baby, and the conflicting views in “Don’t You Remember Me Massa” and The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

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.”

Father Divine, a black man born in the late 1800’s, was born in Rockville, Maryland with parents who endured the

Ephesians 6:5-9 and Titus 2:9-10 are verses in the bible that do not condemn slavery, but rather seem to suggest that slavery will exist forever. This paper will address how we in the modern world can read and apply to our lives two Biblical texts addressing slavery of human beings without condemnation of the Biblical text. When you read the biblical scripture, you must focus not on the literal words, but on the message of what Jesus taught about a person’s character and heart, and the will of God.