In the last couple of stories that we have read the theme of all of the stories have been religion and slavery. Religion according to Dictionary.com is, “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” The authors made the theme religion very apparent in all stories because most of the slaves and slave owners were Christians but they all practiced their Christian religion differently. In speaking about slaves and slave owners, what is slavery by definition? According to Dictionary.com slavery is, “the keeping …show more content…
William Wells Brown writes his story Clotel to discuss the mistreatment of slave women who kept their faith through their hardships as well as their slave owners that claimed to be Christians. The character Clotel is portrayed as a woman born to a slave and a white man known to be Thomas Jefferson, and throughout the story Clotel fights for her children as well as discusses the slave owners Christian beliefs. The slave owners in the story thought very little of their slaves and although the slave owners were Christians their Christian beliefs didn’t count for the slaves. The slave owners would force their slaves to marry others regardless of if they were married or not and that went against what real Christians believed in because marriage is supposed to be a sacred bond between two people. Another non-Christian like act that the slave owners partook in was having children out of wedlock which was a sin. Just like Clotel a lot of slave women are forced to have sex with their slave owners and get pregnant by them. William Wells Brown puts this in his story to show that the slave owners wanted to believe that they were Christians but they weren’t since they were going against everything Christians believed in with their treatment of the …show more content…
Douglass in writing his narrative describes his slave self as Christian as well as his slave owners as Christian. Although they were both Christians they each practiced their religion differently. Throughout every struggle that Douglass went through he kept his faith and believed God would get him through. The slave owners on the other hand would sell their slaves to get their money for church activities and also required the slaves read the bible but wouldn’t allow the slaves to learn how to read. Fredrick Douglass wrote his narrative to tell about the horrors of slavery and to also show that slaves putting their faith in God and being religious had the best outcome for them and that slave owners couldn’t possibly be Christians since they went against everything God believed
Douglass moves to attack the Christian beliefs of the American people, showing the great discrepancies between the ideals held in the Christian faith and the ideals held by slaveowners. Christians avoidance of abolishing slavery, yet worshipping a loving and peaceful God, may be the worse crime of them all. Douglass explains the hypocrisy of the American people by choosing to continue slavery while claiming the benevolent principles embedded in the Bible. At the moment he gives this speech, “they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, yet they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance” (Douglass 12). The American people acknowledge and thank God for their freedoms, yet purposefully
There are a number of key arguments in “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. A few of which include inequality, education, and Christianity as the keys to freedom in terms of its true values within the institution of slavery. While Frederick Douglass made some key arguments, he also made common ground to make his appeal for the abolition of slavery.
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
The slave owners accepted and rationalized slavery through the Holy Bible. The Bible mentions slavery on numerous occasions, and yet none of these passages condemn it. Timothy 6:1-2 states, “Let slaves regard th...
In his narrative, Frederick Douglass shows how Christianity was used as a major justification for slavery and for the actions of slave masters, but he also shows how the religion provided hope for slaves themselves. In an appendix added at the end of the narrative, he draws a distinction between “the Christianity of this land” and “the Christianity of Christ,” saying that there is the “widest possible difference” between them. As he puts it, “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” In other words, Douglass thinks that Christianity has been corrupted in America, where people hypocritically use it to justify their injustices.
His main argument in the speech is that it 's unjust and hypocritical for a country to celebrate its freedom while it still has slaves. Now that in itself is a morally viable argument, and it has never been more relevant than today in our racially hate fueled world where every situation is turned into a hate crime. However, back in those days majority of slaves were sold into slavery by their own people. Most slaves were sold by rival tribes as prisoners of war, or trouble makers of the tribe, thus giving us the “bottom of the barrel” of the groups. Another counter to Douglass was that even though slaves were people, they were still considered property. A hard working farmer could have used his last penny in order to purchase that slave because he was unable to tend his farm and provide for his family. One common misconception was that all slaves were beaten and treated lower than swine, while to the contrary some were treated well being given a bed and meals every day in exchange for their hard work. While Douglass may have had a bad time under the ownership of Auld, most northern states did not treat their slaves in this manner. This is one of the main reasons Douglass learned how to read, yet no credit is given to his former owner. Most slaves developed a relationship with their owners, in which their owners taught them useful skills such as reading, writing, simple math and farming skills. Another argument brought into Douglass’ speech was that most churches were segregated, and in turn perpetuated the racism that helped keep slavery alive in well. He proposed that a God that wouldn’t allow such evil and disservice in this world would contradict everything the bible proposes and teaches. He praises the writers of the constitution, considering them his equal and thanking the signers of the Declaration of Independence, calling
Everyone seemed to have thought something different, and the discourse continues to this day. Two of the authors believed that slavery was wrong and should be abolished, but the third believed in and even fought for the right to keep slaves. In Stowe’s piece, she made a Biblical reference, saying “Remembrance of Egypt to the Israelites…” (352). She likely references this because of her religious background, seeing as she came from a notoriously religious family. She believed that just like the Israelites, the slaves should be freed. Her piece was made to make people rethink their morals and ideas that they may have had about slavery. Frederick’s writings were meant to do something similar. He wrote “I remember only the day of the week; for, at that time, I had no knowledge of the days of the month, nor, indeed, of the months of the year.”(344). Slaves at this time got little to no education, and they were treated as objects rather than real living beings. They were seldom fed till they were full, and scarcely clothed. Douglass managed to escape this and moved to a life in Baltimore. He was still a slave, but he was not treated as such. His mistress, Mrs. Auld, taught him to read and write. She was kind and caring, and Douglass said “that woman is a Christian.” By this the audience gets an insight into how Mrs. Auld was treating Douglass and can compare his current situation to his time on a plantation. Over time, she
Because it offers them the possibility of community and identity, many slaves find themselves strongly attached to religion. They cannot build a family structure and they cannot be identified by family name, but through the church, they can build a community and identify themselves as Christians. This comfort becomes virtually non-existent for it too is controlled by the slaveowners who “came to the conclusion that it would be well to give the slaves enough of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters” (57). The fact that one person could have the ability to control the amount of religion another person has and his purpose for having it diminishes any sense of community or identity that it may have initially provided.
Moreover, many owners later came to feel that Christianity may actually have encouraged rebellion (all those stories of Moses and the Israelites in Egypt, after all, talked about the liberation of the slaves), and so they began to discourage Christian missionaries from preaching to the slaves. African Americans have taken their own spiritual, religious journey. God was looked upon as a source of peace and encouragement. The community of enslave Africans were able to use religion and spirituality as a way of overcoming the mental anguish of slavery on a daily basis. To a slave, religion was the most important aspect of their life. Nothing could come between their relationship with god. It was their rock, the only reason why they could wake up in the morning, the only way that they endured this most turbulent time in our history.
Douglass spends most of the first five chapters giving the reader his background from birth. He explains the beginning of his sad life, hardships he has seen and endured on the plantation. Then when he was about 7 or 8 Douglass set sail to Baltimore This is the first time Douglass uses a reference to God. He says” that the transfer to Baltimore is a gift of providence” (Douglass). If he had not been
... “Prior to [Captain Auld’s] conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for the slaveholding cruelty” (Douglass 883). This means that slaveholders use Christianity as a tool to show that they are good at heart and are doing God’s work, but they use it as a divine right to brutally beat slaves. This is what Frederick wants other abolitionists to recognize, especially the abolitionist women.
One of the most famous works on the topic of slavery is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Fredrick Douglass. Written in 1845, this work has not lost its relevance. In fact, many modern scholars are trying to find something new and interesting in this work, in particular with respect to modern realities. I have found a few articles, each of which is addressing a particular aspect of this work. The value of the articles is the fact that they give me a great opportunity to understand not only this work, but also the writer's position as a whole. The main feature of the five articles is that they analyze Douglass’s ideas on freedom, slavery, and the role of Christianity as the dominant ideology.
Frederick Douglass’s memoir, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” describes Douglass’s life as a slave who through a multitude of experiences, reaches his path to freedom. He inherently has a life very disparate to that of a traditional slave. Through good fortune Douglass is able to escape the clutches of back-breaking agricultural work, and instead is given away as a personal slave. While working for the Auld family he receives a somewhat un-strenuous experience, in which he is able to clandestinely become literate. Douglass’s autobiography is a story in which the savior and key to salvation does not take physical form, but lies in literacy. In this memoir, Douglass goes through a process of understanding, in
Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are taken as property of others against their wishes and will. They are denied the right to leave or even receive wages. Evidence of slavery is seen from written records of ancient times from all cultures and continents. Some societies viewed it as a legal institution. In the United States, slavery was inevitable even after the end of American Revolution. Slavery in united states had its origins during the English colonization of north America in 1607 but the African slaves were sold in 1560s this was due to demand for cheap labor to exploit economic opportunities. Slaves engaged in composition of music in order to preserve the cultures they came with from Africa and for encouragement purposes..
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...