African American Religious Beliefs Essay

African Americans in the United States have always had a negative experience with many conflicts in their fight for freedom from the ideas of slavery or racism. African Americans have always sought freedom from the prejudice and negative connotations that white Americans have placed on them. The religious beliefs of African Americans are very true to their roots and also incorporate this fight against the white man for their freedom from slavery as well as freedom from prejudice and racism during the time of their tremendously harsh treatment in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Overall, the religious experience of African Americans has grown and changed from the times of being influenced by the religious beliefs of the white men, utilizing

Of these, 427,000 slaves were sent to the colonies” (Colonial America, Unit 3, Lecture 5). With these shipments of slaves came their religions and rituals that they held dear to them as they were sent off to a new world governed by the white men. Eventually, the white men would try to get these slaves to conform to their religious rituals and give up their previous rituals and religious ways of life. These rituals that were being cast out by the white man included folklore and music to which they would dance for their deceased in order to properly honor them and the life they lived while on Earth. As the colonists began to see that they had differing views of religion, they began to drastically change their ways of life by converting them to Protestantism or Catholicism in order to “overcome African culture” (Colonial America, Unit 3, Lecture 5). Although this conversion was taking place, their baptism into these new religions did not change the fact that they were still enslaved to the white man. In order to easily facilitate the complete conversion and decline of African culture in these slaves, black preachers came into play as an agent in order for the slaves to fully take in Christianity and accept it as their own by creating African Christianity which still had many of their own rituals that they did not let