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Recommended: Essays on slave religion

What helped African-Americans to overcome slavery? In the excerpt "The Church and Slavery” by Harriet Jocobs, we learn how slaves were exposed to religion by their masters in order to overthrow slave’s urge for murder. In the story Priest Mr. Pike held Episcopal service at a free colored man’s church. The Bible was misrepresented to slaves in order for them to do as one’s told. It was not only after the change of the clergyman when slaves were told the truth about religion and faith. New clergyman and his wife were very kind to slaves. They helped the neediest and taught some slaves to read. Education would help slaves to compete with white men for their rights. Moreover, knowledge of reading and writing would give slaves an ability to pass their customs in more efficient way. It would help to conserve better knowledge of their race to their descendants. Reading and writing was necessary for the slaves to establish themselves religiously and as a stronger, more educated race.
Slaveholders took control by restricting African-Americans from learning how to read and write. Without this knowledge slaves were easily susceptible to the lies about religion and its purpose from the mouth of a white man. The inability to read and write put slaves under the religious control of their masters. Harriet Jacobs talks about one of the religious teaching texts for slaves “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” (Jacobs 41), which was read by Mr. Pike to his parishioners in a free colored man’s church. White people acted as if they were Gods by falsifying religion and making excuses for their brutality. Colored people were pushed aside from...

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... right and read, it would make it easier for them to prosper the truth about their lives and make a change.
Knowledge is a powerful thing that can help us in many different ways. In the story “Church and Slavery” we found out how knowledge helped slaves to fight for their freedom and to present themselves as more educated and powerful community. Not only reading and writing would help to preserve nations current knowledge and to educate the following generations, but also to create smarter and more respectable community. Were slaves to read and write, they wouldn’t be lied to about their existence and role. By restricting colored man from this knowledge, masters had more power in their hand.

Works Cited

Jacobs, Harriet. “The Church and Slavery.” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. Child L. Maria. Boston: Published for the Author, 1861. 41-47. Print.

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