Christianity in the Midst of Slavery

Religious persecution within the slave community sometimes happened and occurred in different forms. The first form to address is blatant and outright opposition of slaves engaging in anything pertaining to Christianity. Mary Reynolds on Page 6 says,

“ We was so scared of Solomon and his whip though and he n’t like frolicin’. He didn’t like for the Niggers to pray nuther. We never heard of n church but the Niggers would have prayin’s and singings in they cabins. We ud sit on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low but if Solomon could hear he would come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He ‘ud say you cant pray all night and work tomorrow, I’ll come in there and tear the hide off yo’ backs.”
Mary Reynolds would also give an account of her family leaving a religious worship even, in which she says on pages 7-8, “When we was coming back from prayin’ following near to the road I stopped in my track once to listen. I had sharper ears than my maw and paw and I thought I heard the Nigger dogs and somebody on horseback. I said, Maw its them Nigger hounds, they will eat us up. You could hear them old dogs and sluts a bayin’…” This account summarizes to what extent some slave owners and overseers were willing to go to in order to hinder slaves from engaging in Christian activity. It is important to note that not all slave owners were viciously in opposition to slave’s receiving religious instruction. Another means in which would be classified as persecution would be the acts of purposefully teaching the slaves perverted doctrines of Christianity that were specifically created to further the interests of the slave owners hold upon his slaves, rather than care about their actual souls. Some slave masters wou...

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...nd said the serpent was loosed and that Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the serpent…. And by signs of heaven that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work—and until the first sign appeared, I should conceal it from the men—And on the appearance of the sign, (the eclipse of the sun last February) I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”
So Nat Turner, in a far more extreme sense, used religion as a means to satisfy his own revenge story against slave owners and the local whites. Nat Turner is a good example of what a wrong understanding of Christian religion could possible lead too.

Works Cited

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Print