Let me start this blog by talking about identity. Many will see this as a rather strange place to start a discussion on the role of Christianity among African Americans during a time of slavery. However, to understand this you have to understand the importance and necessity of identity for us as highly social animals, and the many roles it plays in our lives.
By identity I mean forming associations with other people of similar interests and concerns and then identifying yourself with that group. As a social species it is in our nature to form identities. It is impossible for us not to.
For myself I have formed several identities – atheist, Humanist, American, liberal, TCU student, etc. In all of these I identify myself with a certain group and interact with them. I will also have a definite tendency to defend these groups against attacks from other groups and to also promote their cause. How much so varies for each group, but these tendencies exist to a greater or larger extent for all of these groups.
This need to form groups and to protect and promote them has often been decried as harming the progress of humanity or of promoting wars and injustices. And to an extent this is true. However, it is also true that without the formation of such identities we would not exist. At least not as we do now with our extensive scientific knowledge and technology.
Before the advent of agriculture and during most of our species history, our identity was our family group, both the immediate family and the extended family. Outsiders, members of other families, were looked upon with suspicion unless linked to our family through marriage. Or if not suspicion then certainly considered less important than our own family and so expendable when it comes down to a conflict.
This was a problem when we developed agriculture with its ability to support greater numbers of people. Suddenly we had several family groups working in close proximity. Being human, conflicts and disagreements would arise. With each family siding with its own family the creation and maintenance of the larger social groups that agriculture made possible was impossible. They would split up into groups of feuding family groups – a sort of Hatfield and McCoy situation.
What made the formation of larger groups than family possible was the formation of a larger identity, one that superseded that of the family. The first ones were the cities. I should mention here that religion was absolutely essential to the formation of these larger groups. They took the superstitious rituals that were probably practiced by many family groups and combined them into a larger, more formal, and more ritualized religion. One that was merged with and inseparable from the city.
This larger identification allowed the city to resolve disputes between family groups and to have their resolutions stand. It allowed the city to tax and allocate money for larger public works. It allowed these disparate family groups to form together for a common defense against other cities. It formed a new identity that allowed these smaller social groups, the families, to grow and expand and do more than they could ever have before.
This process continued with city giving way to the city state and then empires and nations. Currently we seem to be in the process of forming multinational groupings. And all of this is only possible if the individuals within these larger social and societal groups identify themselves as being members of that larger group. With such identification great things can be accomplished (and of course great evils can be too). Without such identifications then only small things and evils can be accomplished.
So, having spent this long on the nature and importance of identification (and despite its length it is really only a preface to an introduction to the topic), how does this relate to slavery?
Consider the African American who had been ripped from his home, his family, his society, his religion in Africa and taken over to a new land. One with a different language, different society, different culture, and different religion. And then that person is defined as and treated as property.
A desk, a chair, a plow, a property cannot resist, cannot fight back. It can only be and be used. Which was fine with the slave owners. Not so much though for the African Americans. Their old identities did not and could not exist in their new place. To resist and fight back, they needed a new identity.
“Dark and Dismal was the day
When slavery began
All humble thoughts were put away
Then slaves were made by man.”
The above words are part of a poem by Jupiter Hammon, the first black poet in America and a slave since birth. The 25 stanza poem was titled: “An Essay on Slavery with Submission to Divine Providence Knowing that God Rules Over All Things”[i] and, unlike his other poems and essays, it was never published; most likely due to its controversial nature.
In the beginning, blacks resisted Christianity. They feared that their master’s religion was meant as a means of control and oppression. At the time, the Christianity being preached was. As taught to the slaves, Christianity was strongly Calvinistic and taught that everyone had been put in their place by God, and that, given this, instead of questioning their God ordained station they should do their best within that station. Most African Americans were not attracted to this message.
Some blacks though did accept the religion of their masters; for example, Jupiter Hammon. Born a slave in Lloyd Harbor, NY in 1711, property of the Lloyd family of Queens, NY, he was fortunate enough to have owners who insisted that he attend school and learn to read and write. He was born and became Christian before the Great Awakening and the arrival of the evangelical Christianities that did not preach a religion of acquiescence to oppression, and so had a foot in both worlds.
The Christianity taught and accepted by Jupiter at his birth, and rejected by most blacks, was of a Calvinism that “did not believe that Christians, and even less so slaves, should do anything that distracted from a contemplation of a heavenly afterlife.” (Day) This version of Calvinism, and not the one that “emphasized participation in the world with a view toward transforming it” (Day) that many of the whites followed , was what the blacks were taught, when any were taught at all to become Christians.
But, while Christianity was taught as a means of oppression, it did not stay such. Instead it changed and became a means of resisting oppression; sometimes actively, sometimes more quietly. It did so by giving blacks “a sense of common identity and purpose that created the conditions for organization and collective action.” (Day).
The African American was treated as and had the status of property, not person. Even Hammon’s owners, who by all accounts were good masters who treated him well, lists Hammon, along with their other slaves, as property in their ledgers, along with cattle and other goods.
To resist this reduction to being nothing more than property, African Americans had to form a new identity as well as a new community. A large part of that new identity came with the arrival of the Great awakening. The Great Awakening created a number of new voices within religion, ones that were not part of the established religions with their political and economic ties, which allowed them to “reevaluate the old theologies and speak out against slavery as an organizational endeavor.” (Day).
Among the white preachers came voices speaking out against slavery and for abolition based upon their reading of and understanding of the Bible. The preachers reached out to the African Americans in society, both free and slaves, with this new vision of the Bible. And the Blacks responded.
As a result of increasing literacy among the African Americans and the increasing numbers of itinerant ministers who were preaching a message of resistance to worldly oppression and not submission, blacks started to convert to Christianity in increasing numbers. They also started to assume leadership roles as preachers and ministers as well as organizing churches.
As they did so their understanding and ways of interpreting the Bible differed from that of not only their white masters and white society in general, but even from that of the white preachers and abolitionists. In fact, because of these changes, blacks often found themselves at loggerheads with their white abolitionist allies.
For example, the slave narrative became popular means by which the abolitionist movement pressed their cause. However, most of these narratives that had the approval of the white abolitionists were those that “focused on the ‘objective facts’ of slavery rather than on individuals’ ideas and interpretations.” (Day).
This control of the narratives allowed the white abolitionists to control the content and priorities of the anti-slavery movement, resulting in an anti-slavery movement that was against slavery but not necessarily for equality. Even though sympathetic to the troubles of the blacks, most whites were not willing to give up power nor to examine with a critical eye their own views and thoughts about black.
Blacks agreed with and used the argument used by the white abolitionists of the Golden Rule being the key to understanding and interpreting the Bible. However, they also identified both themselves and their plight with biblical figures, most especially Moses and the Exodus narrative, although the figure of Christ as the “Suffering Servant” was also important. Blacks found much support and strength through such imagery and identification; and especially in the knowledge that both the Jews and Jesus were triumphant at the end of their sufferings.
And just like the earliest Christian groups, many blacks found the book of Revelation meaningful. It pointed to a time when slavery and prejudice would end, a time of the Apocalypse when “an abolitionist Warrior Jesus” (Harrill) would come in wrath and retribution to end slavery and establish justice for the blacks.
Not only did the Bible provide support and comfort, not only did it provide them with a greater identity than slavery, but many blacks also found within it the sense of group identity and organization necessary for an active resistance to slavery. Those times of unrest among the blacks that led into actual revolt against their masters were most often preceded by a rise in religious activity.
Without the blacks taking on the identity of Christian and making it serve their needs and purposes any resistance to their owner’s identification of them as property would not have been possible, or effective.
This is why, on my part, I consider religion not to be totally evil as many atheists do, and in fact consider that, taken as a whole and looking throughout history, religion has done more good than harm; and that for much of our history has been essential to our progress.
Today new structures and identities have arisen that were not available or possible before which is why I do not consider religion necessary today. As the times have changed so too has the role of religion and its value. But today was not the past and we should not forget today how religion has helped in the past as well as how it has destroyed.
By the way, a very good book on this is Dr. Cedrick May’s book Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760 – 1835. Also insightful was Dr. J. Albert Harrill’s book Slaves in the New Testament: Literary. Social, and Moral Dimensions. All quotes, with the exception of Hammon’s poem, used in this blog are from these two books.
NOTE: a great deal of this blog was taken from a paper I just finished for my class on “The Bible in Historical Context” about how the Bible was used to both justify and condemn slavery in pre-Civil War America. I hope to do a couple of more blogs whose origin were sparked by this paper and class.
[i] I would like to thank Dr. Cedrick May of the University of Texas at Arlington for allowing me to study this poem before its publication in June.
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