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Frederick Douglass Christianity Essay

471 Words2 Pages

Fredrick Douglass-On Christianity From slave to a free man, a free man to a preacher, a preacher to an abolitionist, an abolitionist to an immortal figure. This is the path of Fredrick Douglass, one of the most influential black men in U.S. history. Without him, the horrors taking place within the Southern slave trade would not have come to be so widely recognized and fought against in the North. In his autobiography, Fredrick Douglass makes two very distinct points regarding Christianity in the South that are astonishing. The first point revolves around a comparison he made between his first master who was a “devout” Christian and his second and final master, who was an unbeliever. Douglass writes in his comparison that he believes he gained an advantage with his new master because he “made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion”. This seems contradictory in theory, but in reality it is not. Before we discover why he was of this opinion, we must dig deeper. Later in his biography, Douglass makes a comparison between the “Christianity of this land” (meaning the South), and that of the “Christianity of Christ”. He makes it very clear that these are two totally different belief systems. The “Christianity of the land” was the Christianity of …show more content…

They reflect Christ to the best of their ability; they are holy, pure, and peaceful. This is the idea that Fredrick Douglass was trying to put forth, and this same idea is still true in the 21st century. Although 80% of Americans claim to be “Christian”, only 5% claim that Christ is the sovereign Son of God, the supreme ruler of the universe. This comparison of statistics is more than evident when we look at the fact that more preachers than ever are adulterers, thieves, and idol worshippers, the very thing they preach against. This is more than enough evidence to show what exactly Fredrick Douglass meant when he made that

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467 Words | 2 Pages

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Frederick Douglass An American Slave Rhetorical Analysis Essay

732 Words | 3 Pages

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646 Words | 3 Pages

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1071 Words | 5 Pages

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1080 Words | 5 Pages

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197 Words | 1 Pages

Throughout the “Narrative of Fredrick Douglass”, Douglass develops an image between true and false Christianity. Douglass elaborates his point in the opening appendix, calling the former “the Christianity of Christ” and the latter “the Christianity of this land.” Douglass describes the ordeal that slaveholders’ Christianity is not a given evidence of natural goodness, but an artificial state of self-righteous brutality. To tackle this distinction, Douglass states a basic contradiction between the charitable, peaceful beliefs of Christianity and the violence from the immoral actions of slaveholders. The character that is described as a good example for this theme is Thomas Auld.

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1049 Words | 5 Pages

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346 Words | 2 Pages

That which is inhuman, cannot be divine!” (19). The “American religion” was used as “a thin vail to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages” (20) and their “prayers and hymns, your sermon and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy” (20). Hence, Douglass purpose was not to primarily motive to can “American religion” a lie was to emphasize the “national inconsistencies” and bring up change. Douglass also uses the same method when stating that “it [the Constitution] will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery” (38).

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1689 Words | 7 Pages

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655 Words | 3 Pages

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