Christianity and Slavery

Paper Summary:

It is ironic, but entirely understandable, that black slaves in the American south so readily embraced the religion of their oppressors. Christianity was used by the slaveholders as a justification for slavery as well as a tool of mental control. However, because slaveholders prohibited the practice of African religions among the slave populations, Christianity became central to the slave's spiritual, social and personal life. The paper shows that, moreover, a unique syncretic religious culture emerged in the antebellum South, one that differed from that which was born in the Caribbean or other parts of the slaveholding Americas. African religions were most noticeably combined with the dominant white religion of Christianity in the revivalist meetings and in the spiritual songs sung by the slaves, rather than in the rituals of Haitian Voudoun and Cuban Santeria. The paper shows that for southern American slaves, slave masters' hypocrisy did not interfere with a genuine religious faith and belief in an omniscient and benevolent God. Christianity offered for the slave a means to transcend the pain of mundane existence; the next world would offer the joy, abundance, freedom, peace, and love that slavery denied them. Religion therefore served as both diversion and divine intervention in the individual and collective African-American soul.

From the Paper:

"Praise meetings arose from the combination of Christian evangelism and the intense emotional experience of bondage. Blassingame notes that blacks had a "more intense emotional involvement with their God" than the whites who introduced them to Christ. The passionate longing for freedom and emancipation contributed to the unique character of black-led praise meetings in the American south. These meetings combined elements of traditional black religious practice such as music, song, and dance with Christian theology. Shouting and singing were methods of inspiring slaves and emboldening an otherwise degraded spirit. The tenets of Christianity were combined with themes of freedom to create a specifically African-American experience of that religion. This experience and the practice of Christianity differed from that of the white slaveholder. For a slave, Christianity had immediate relevance. Praise meetings served as direct communion with God, as a vehicle to transcend the brutal conditions of daily life. God was personal, not abstract. God was immanent and omnipresent. Praise meetings infused Christianity with emotionality, passion, and sorrow."

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