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There were actually two competing camps within American Christianity regarding how to justify slavery. It was in fact one of the great religious debates of the 18th century. The two groups were called the "Polygenists" and the "Monogenists"
The Monogenists ("one origin") claimed that blacks were being enslaved as a punishment by God resulting from the "Curse of Ham" (more correctly, the "Curse of Canaan") in Genesis 9. Monogenist Christians considered blacks to be of the race of "Ham" or "Hamites," and blamed the curse for the color of their skin and their subservient position to whites.
The Polygenists ("many origin") took a harder line and insisted that blacks were not even human beings, but instead a different species of animal... specifically beasts of the fields as created on the 6th day of Creation Week.
Neither group doubted black inferiority or the morality of slavery. They just had different Biblical rationale for the belief.
Excellent, factual post. Isn't it funny though, how so many like to cherry pick which biblical versus to accept and which to reject? Today, many people justify their hatefest against gays by rationalizing it through, archaic biblical passage.
The most religious area of the country is the south and that is the same area where slavery was most abundant. I'm not religious, but from what I understand, being a christian is support to drive your morals, behavior, your entire cultural outlook.
How do you reconcile that with the rampant slavery and jim crow era all the way up until it was legally struck down? The whole thing doesn't make sense and makes me understand religion, or the role religion plays in peoples lives even less.
Ah, civil war ring a bell? The South is the most religious? Please!
The proper response to this is to say, "Screw the creator and the natural order." We forbid slavery and treat people equally under the law simply because we have decided that it's the right thing to do. The principle of equal treatment does not require actual equality in nature.
The response, then, in a more religious society was to use the bible to support the opposing view. John Brown:
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all thing whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further, to “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” I endeavored to act upon that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done — as I have always freely admitted I have done — in behalf of his despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, — I submit; so let it be done!
Lincoln:
Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Yes, Abraham Lincoln said the Civil War may be god's punishment to the US for the sin of slavery. Henry Beecher, a Protestant preacher in Brooklyn, suggested rifles may be morally useful against slaverholders than bibles:
He (Henry W. Beecher) believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifle."
Two years ago I came across two books that had some of the sermons, preached leading up to the civil war. These sermons were, preached mostly in southern churches, tried to justify slavery by using old testament texts. The mind set of calvinism truly believes that God chose some men to be rulers and others to be obedient servants [ slaves ].
This mind set still lies just below the surface and if given the opportunity, would put the black race back into slavery. It would roll women's rights back a 150 years.
Note the near like slave conditions going on in asia and think of that when you buy products produced by their hands.
John Brown, a radical abolitionist, was a Calvinist and born in New England. He took his religion very seriously, discussing his actions without reference to religion is pointless.
Christianity is a religion written by white folks FOR white folks. In other words, it's a white man's faith. Always was, always will be.
They didn't speak out against slavery because you can easily justify slavery with the Bible...even NOW. The Bible gives you all the liberty in the world to not only practice slavery, but to subjugate and mistreat your fellow man.
Christians know I'm right.
It's a sad thing that so many black people haven't come to the realization that they're Christians because their ancestral slavemasters were Christians. Otherwise, they'd still be believing in the typical African animist faiths, or some other ridiculous belief (that are btw, no more ridiculous than Christian beliefs).
We are free people in this country DESPITE the Christian faith, not because of it. The Bible said the same things it said in 1765 as it did in 1865...so you can't give the Bible any credibility on the topic of human rights and progress. We were freed only because it was strategically important to do so, and because Mr. Lincoln was an enlightened man.
And his enlightenment has NOTHING to do with his faith. In fact, the more devoutly religious one was back then, the more likely they were to support slavery.
Yet, it is sometimes implied that the Muslim faith is less racist, when in fact it is every bit as racist. Arabs/Muslims enslaved Africans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by desertdetroiter
Education and widespread literacy are the reasons for Western Enlightenment. Up until the 19th century, the church was still a yoke and a HUGE barrier to enlightenment.
It was only after many western nations divorced the church from their governments and forced religion to compete in the free market of ideas did the church become somewhat more open to enlightenment in the form or science, art, philosophy, etc...
When the church had ALL the power, they abused it. And we have a duty to remember how they behaved when they didn't have to compete in the free market of ideas.
Yes, but you use the word "Western Enlightenment" (i.e. the U.S., Europe, and Canada). What you really mean is white enlightenment, and the white scientific revolution. It was whites who promoted enlightenment in every way. Notice the volitile reaction, when the U.S. imposes the idea of a free thinking society under democratic rule upon other less evolved societies traditionally run under a theocracy. These societies promote tyrany and violence in extremely oppressed societies which do not allow any deviation from the norm.
Education and widespread literacy are the reasons for Western Enlightenment. Up until the 19th century, the church was still a yoke and a HUGE barrier to enlightenment.
Massachusetts used to be theocracy when it was Puritans. The church supported mass literacy so people could read the bible and because they believed an illiterate society could be prone to barbarism. Towns were required to set up schools. And churches, of course, which were often indistinct from the local government.
Otherwise we have no choice but to demand belief in natural equality regardless of the evidence. Are Iranians stronger Eritreans? Do Irishmen run faster than Eskimos? If so you'd best keep quiet about it because if we don't believe all groups are inherently equal in all things, our whole moral belief system will fall like a house of cards.
It's OK, as long as any credit, of any kind of perceived superiority, is given to the more said oppressed group.
The Irish were the first slaves in the New World. As time went on they sold at a discount to African slaves. Then the Brits had the brilliant idea of mating Irish children with African slaves to create higher value mulatto slaves.
Slavery is as old as mankind and predates all organized religion. Treating other humans as livestock has been rationalized by slave owners throughout history. Organized religions were built on the platform of superiority and inferiority.
Thank you. I just wish to add slavery under the United States only lasted 76 years. other Euro people instilled slavery here, which was here when the Rev War took place.
Somehow it appears the USA is taking ALL the blame for All Slavery when it didn't even exist.
The Romans enslaved Scott's and built Hadrian's Wall to keep the barbarian hordes out. Then the Englaise took us slaves and banned plaid.
So far as i can tell only some Blacks celebrate in having once been slaves. What ever floats their stick I guess.
What i can't understand is why American Blacks convert from what ever religion they happen to have, to be muslims. The Muslims are who sold blacks as slaves since the dawn of man. It makes no sense to me, but I doubt you would know the answer either. Why worship the god of the dog that bit your hand off?
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They don"t
