"Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan
land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.” [1]
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.” [1]
As we continue
to uncover the depth of slavery in America – the depth of the ideologies, the
extent of the horrors, the fullness of the dehumanization – I can’t help
but be struck with the fact that any person could even entertain the idea of
associating themselves with those who have enslaved and crushed and disparaged
them. Those who have labeled them as
alien and thus allotted and justified treatment worse than that of an
animal. Specifically, I am thinking of
religion, of the fact that African and African American slaves chose to adhere
to the Christian religion. I think
(correct me if I’m wrong) that many would say that religion is useful and
helpful for those who need something to hope in, something to cling to,
something to uphold them. I mean we all
tend to think that someone can believe what they’d like and that’s fine and
true and good if it helps them and contributes to their happiness! It confuses me, then, to think that these
people who were beat, whipped, raped, scorned, humiliated, killed, terrorized,
dehumanized by slaveholders, from whom slaveholders tried to strip everything,
to whom slaveholders assigned hidden expectations and identities, that these
same people would even start to consider the religion that they claimed
informed all their (the slaveholders’) decision making. If religion is what they believe to give them
a hope to sustain them, why didn’t all of them maintain their religion from
their ancestors, the ones that were already tied into their identity? Or why didn’t all of them create their own
religion that was separate from the religion that seemed to be subjugating them
to this horrific treatment? There are
many options for religion, including the ideas they previously held, why did
any of them choose to convert Christianity?
I thought at first that the ones who
did choose Christianity must have had “nicer” owners. How ridiculous, they were still enslaved,
they were still in this rotten and selfish system. I guess my next idea is that there is a true
interpretation of Christianity. But who
decides this? And why did the enslaved black
people – excluded from the places that taught Christianity or from studying
Christianity – seek to find this true interpretation in order to conclude that
the white people who claimed it were actually wrong and (in the words of Dr.
McKinney) going to hell? Perhaps it
started as an act of rebellion – a way for slaves to assert their humanity into
the narrative that others were attempting to weave for them – and evolved into
a conviction? This is an intriguing
question for me, because Christianity was not something these enslaved people
lightly believed. Phillis Wheatley
believed in this God enough to say “ ‘"Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land.” ‘Twas mercy? Mercy that brought her to a life of
suffering, of debasement, of enslavement?
No, there was something powerful in what Wheatley believed, something
beyond just an aid to facing things are hard.
There was something about the Christian God that made her, and others,
believe that though “[they were] afflicted in every way, [they were] not crushed,
perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down
but not destroyed.” To believe that
“this light, momentary affliction [was] preparing for [her] an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison,” enough to say that mercy brought her from her pagan land.[2] What gave Christianity that kind of
power?
WC 574
I pledge - Katie Imperial
I pledge - Katie Imperial
[1][1] Wheatley, Phillis. Poems of Phillis
Wheatley: A Native African and a Slave. Applewood Books, 1838.
[2] 2 Corinthians 4
Katie, your question at the end is an important one. I'm not sure that there's a singular answer that explains it, but I'm sure some scholar familiar with black Christianity in the Antebellum south could shed some light on the question.
ReplyDeleteI can speak to why enslaved Africans may have abandoned part of their traditional belief system and adopted the religion of their oppressors, and it goes back to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. West African traditions had no framework for what was beyond the coasts of the ocean, as they had no tradition of maritime trade. [1] The sea was an otherworldy barrier at the edge the world of the living, and the European slavers came from it and started taking people away back through it. It would be understandable for an enslaved African on board one of these ships to abondon the beliefs they used to use to understand the world becuase he or she would have no community to center themselves or their beliefs, much less evidence that the world was in some way governed by the rules their beliefs layed out. Upon arrival in America, the enslaved person would likely be completely alienated from their home, and would soon be alienated from most everyone who had shared the trauma of the boat with them. Alienated from community, the enslaved person would soon be treated violently at the hands of whites telling them that their reward awaited them in heaven. While the twisted nature of this statement is obvious enough to us to make us balk, to a slave with few other avenues of coping, Christianity would have had an attractiveness to it.
[1] Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 121-122.
DeleteKatie, I thought that your post raised many very important questions. I understand how christianity, in some ways, has been enforced by slave owners, however, I have been wondering how they decided to give up completely on their religion of their ancestors. I do completely understand the fact that it must have been really hard to leave a central place of warship for them, and go to a new land where their religion has never even been heard of, and no place of warship. But much of the African's religions are oral religions and get past down from generation to generation.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you brought Phillis Wheatley into the argument. Obviously, she is a very smart and talented writer and thinker, and I am now wondering how she was so quickly ready to convert to her masters religion. Wheatley was able to have a short childhood in West Africa, and I am curious what her specific reasons behind abandoning her African religion.
Katie, one interesting point you touch on explaining why slaves adopted christianity is that they could have used this religion as a form of rebellion. As pointed out in our reading, "Racial Formation," as slaves learn more of the culture of their masters, they begin to use the oppressor’s “tools” to resist. In this case, slaves adopted the master's Christian religion as a tool of their own to fight suppression of their humanity. Where their masters would point to passages calling for Christians to submit to their superiors, slaves would instead focus on Exodus themes of suffering, perseverance to assert their humanity and call for emancipation. A nice explanation from the chapter reads "In their language, in their religion with its focus on the Exodus theme and on Jesus's tribulations, in their music with its figuring of suffering, resistance, perseverance, and transcendence, in their interrogation of political philosophy which sought perpetually to rationalize their bondage in a supposedly "free" society, the slaves incorporated elements of racial rule into their thought and practice, turning them against their original bearers."
ReplyDelete