Christianity And Slavery Analysis

Through this essay I will examine the influencing role Christianity played in encouraging slavery. Through my analysis I will focus on key areas such as; moral justification, white supremacy, and political involvement. Slavery, as defined by Merriam Webster dictionary is the submission to a dominating influence, or; the state of a person who is a chattel of another. Slavery has had an enduring effect upon those brought from Africa to work on plantations and other work environments in the U.S. History reveals that the majority of slaves brought to the U.S. can be traced back to the African interior and sold by traders in West Africa. According to scholar Albert Raboteau, slaves held “a complex system of belief,” where the natural and supernatural,

We now know that some blacks had been exposed to it in Iberia, Africa, Latin America, or the Caribbean region. And as blacks salvaged, adapted, and rebuilt their lives in America, the spiritual realm, like other strains of African culture, experienced variant degrees of permeability. No doubt black majorities in some areas breathed life into traditional African practices such as obeah; and elements of death ways, including ancestor worship, survived everywhere. In many locales, however, traditional African and Muslim practices, dislodged from their native soil, weakened over time, owing to disparate and irregular reinforcement. Moreover, as Africans found themselves increasingly subject to a master society that was overwhelmingly Christian, the most visible religious structure and the one most capable of bestowing benefits was

Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya summarize this inner angst, “During slavery [freedom] meant release from bondage; after emancipation it meant the right to be educated, to be employed, and to move freely from place to pace. In the twentieth century freedom means social, political, and economic justice” (p.10) Noting this consistent theme throughout black history, Lincoln and Mamiya observe that “freedom has always meant the absence of any restraint which might compromise one’s responsibility to God”. And that God wants you free because God made you for Himself and in His image. As slaves were introduced to the faith, usually through Christian slave owners, they frequently encountered prohibitions related to full participation in worship services, in addition to being restricted from learning how to read. It was thought that by reading, slaves would become educated and thereby become more emboldened to seek their freedom. Thus, many slave owners believe that “the freeing of the soul in Christ did not alter the bondage of the body in any way.” Consequently, while some benevolent slave owners treated slaves with dignity, many did not. Christian slave owners frequently applied various constraints to minimize slaves’ participation in church