Support of Slavery by the Christian Church
The belief in some higher presence, other than our own, has existed since man can recollect. Religion was established from this belief, and it can survive and flourish because of this belief. Christianity, one of several forms of religion that exist today, began sometime during the middle of the first century. Christians believe in a higher presence that they call "God."
As slavery grew in the American Colonies, the purposes for its increased interest for free labor developed regionally. The Northern Colonies, shifting crops and investing in various commercial trades, forced African slaves to work along side indentures servants and provide domestic services. Reliance upon agricultural growth and the want for increased wealth, Southern plantation owners deemed slave labor more prosperous, thereby cementing the “peculiar institution” into the fabric of Southern aristocratical society. Much as Colonists attempted to convert the American Indians to Christianity, the same such tactic was employed upon the African slaves. The treatment of slaves in the North and the South, differed in some instances, however, the relationship between the North and South provided a relationship between the regions which depended greatly among each other. During the era of the Great Awakening, evangelist, George Whitefield mustered great desegregated congregations in an effort to spread Christianity throughout the Colonies.
It shows how religion serves two main purposes during this time. It is used to justify slavery and later, to use it against it. Slave owners would take passages from the bible and interpret it as this was God’s design to own slaves and conform them to Christianity. This was the Christian thing to do according to God’s will. The bible was a powerful tool for slaves and it was often prohibited for Africans to access it. This is proven by when Equiano wasn’t able to purchase a bible during his travel in the West Indies. Slaves would be able to find encouragement from the scriptures and any possibility of rebellion or enlightenment was a fear for slave owners. The abolition movement was established by the Quakers to end the slave trade. Their campaign was built on the belief that God crated everyone equal in his eyes. The Quakers would preach reform in West Indies, American and Britain colonies. The significance the Quakers have is represented by the countless encounters and involvement Equiano shares with
During the1830s abolitionism was anything but main stream, most abolitionists were either black or they were pious whites . Some of the first abolitionists (in both the United States and the Britian) were Quakers. They believed that God loved every human “regardless of colour, sex or station in life.” Due to this belief Quakers seemed likely to conclude that “Slavery,” as denounced by Benjamin Lay, “was the greatest sin against God’s will,” and that it should be abolished. Before the American Revolution, Quaker reformers such as John Woolman, Anthony Benezet and Benjamin Lay began to publish their views and bring up the issue of slavery at Quaker meetings. Even in the Southern states, where many Quakers owned slaves their actions led to an increased number of fr...
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,
Through his discussions of religion that are interspersed throughout The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the reader gets the sense that slavery and true Christianity are opposing forces and one cannot be present while the other exists. Not only is the simultaneous existence of the true version Christianity with slavery impossible, it appears that even if real Christianity does exist in a pure form, the introduction of slavery corrupts it inevitably and completely.
Most African Americans of the early to mid-nineteenth century experienced slavery on plantations similar to the experiences described by Frederick Douglass; the majority of slaves lived on units owned by planters who had twenty or more slaves. The planters and the white masters of these agrarian communities sought to ensure their personal safety and the profitability of their enterprises by using all the tactics-physical and psychological-at their command to make slaves obedient. Even Christianity was manipulated in a way that masters communicated to their slaves that God had commanded them to obey their masters. People like Frederick Douglass who preached abolition of slavery, only had to nurture the already existing spirit within slaves to strive for freedom.
...lack of education. Masters did not want their oppressed people to gain any type of knowledge about their situation, closing them off to the basics of reading and arithmetic. The only knowledge they were allowed to have was that of Christianity. Being forced to adopt Christianity upon their arrival in the colonies, the slaves became fascinated by this religion. They hoped to find salvation through the help of the Christian God who will one day deliver them out of bondage. But without the knowledge of reading and writing, it was difficult for the slaves to speak out against the unjust institution. Yet some defied this setback, learning the art of literature that would one day open their minds to the devastation of bondage. Frederick Douglas learned the craft of literacy, and gathered his own ideas about slavery that would help inspire the abolitionist movement.
During the time of slavery religion was important to slaves and their owners. Slave owners often believed that slavery was right “because the bible had said so” However, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin religion created a big power struggle between slavery and religion.
A justified institution as the 19th century emerged; the infamous institution of slavery grew rapidly and produced some surprising controversy and rash justification. Proslavery, Southern whites used social, political, and economical justification in their arguments defining the institution as a source of positive good, a legal definition, and as an economic stabilizer. The proslavery supporters often used moral and biblical rationalization through a religious foundation in Christianity and supported philosophic ideals in Manifest Destiny to vindicated slavery as a profitable investment. They also examined the idea of popular sovereignty and the expansion of slavery in territorial plans like the Kansas-Nebraska scheme to support their arguments. The proslavery advocates even went far enough to include the constitution as a fair legal justification for their practices. Clear-cut attempts to bend the rules on the legality of slavery in documents like the Lecompton Constitution made some rationalizations look weak and rash in concept. With the South’s slavery dependent and fragile economy, Southerners were ready to fight for their survival with whatever means were necessary. Proslavery whites launched a defensive against slavery, which explained the “peculiar institution” as a positive good, supported, in fact, by the sacred words of the Bible and the philosophy of the wise Aristotle. The moral and biblical justification surrounding their belief that the relations between slave and man, however admitting to deplore abused in it, was compatible with Christianity, and that the presence of Africans on American soil was an occasion of gratitude on the slave’s behalf before God.