Christianity In African America Essay

African-Americans utilized American Christianity as an embodiment of hope and comfort during a time of oppression. While they endured backbreaking labor and physical abuse from their overseers, they likely sought a spiritual experience characterized by movement and loud vocals such as when they were “seized by the spirit” for a positive physical ritual in their life. Additionally, God to them was an entity outside of the plantation that was rooting for them because he believed in universal human equality and the evils of slavery and abuse. For slaves, especially in the South, this encouragement was likely hard to come by. If this was the case, slaves believed that judgment would set things right and that hopefully they would not live their whole lives enslaved. However, the teachings that slaves were given during white sermons were fragmented and they knew it. Specifically, African-Americans acknowledged the emphasis on servitude expressed in white interpretations but the lack of passages related to their masters’ wrongdoings.

Furthermore, they noted how the most religious masters could be the harshest because of the fact that they used their interpretations of biblical text to justify the abuse and mistreatment they dealt upon their slaves. One slave even recounted being whipped the afternoon following Communion. The main hypocrisy slaves noticed, however, between biblical teachings and their masters’ behavior was their interpretation of passages like “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self”. Even when plainly stated in the Bible, Christian masters did not choose to believe that human equality applied to African-Americans

Upon reflection of this article, I realized the incredible impact that Christianity had on the African-American community to this day.

I have been to Episcopalian church services and Church of Christ services and noticed the differences in worship that this article describes between races. It is clear that the African-American culture of worship has transcended many generations because the services tend to be very animated and much about movement, vocalization, and preaching while in the same way predominantly white Episcopalian services are more reserved, traditional, and about hearing passages from the Bible. I also noticed that, in Christianity, some services and even denominations tended to be predominantly one race (specifically either black or white). This is a very large generalization, but it made me wonder if this unintentional separation is a part of the “legacy of slavery” we discussed in Reparations for Slavery? last

week.

Galli, Mark. “The Inconceivable Start of African-American Christianity.” Christianity Today, Christianity Today, 21 Feb. 2014, www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/inconceivable-start-of-african-american-christianity.html.