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Frederick Douglass False Religions

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Christianity relies on the belief that God created everyone as equals. Slaveholders sell black men to build churches, black women to support gospels and black babies to buy bibles. Does this sound like equality? No. So how can slaveholders call themselves Christians? According to the constitution anyone can be whatever religion they choose to be, but according to Douglass, they are hypocrites. There are two types of Christians; false and real. False Christians are white, religious hypocrites who uphold slavery, while real Christians treat other races equally. The slaveholders in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” such as Thomas Auld and Edward Covey, are all false Christians.
There are two kinds of Christianity in Douglass’s …show more content…

Thomas Auld is born a poor man who marries into slaveholding. Douglass says he is “cruel, but cowardly” because he sometimes speaks with great authority and rage, while other times he seems as if he is “an inquirer who [has] lost his way.” Due to his lack of strong authority his slaves call him “Captain Auld” instead of “Master;” the proper term slaves usually use to refer to their master. According to Douglass, the act of starving slaves is “regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders.” There should always be enough food for the slaves regardless how bad it may be. Thomas Auld feeds his slaves so little, they must beg and steal from the neighbors. After Auld converts to Christianity, he prays frequently and soon becomes a class leader, exhorter. Douglass thinks Mr. Auld will be less cruel and possibly emancipate his slaves, but he only becomes more of a savage. He uses his religion to forgive his vicious actions, which makes him a false Christian. Douglass and Thomas Auld come to despise each other, so he gets sent to Mr. Covey to be “broken …show more content…

He is a poor farm renter, and his reputation for breaking slaves is the only reason he can afford his rent. He gets “misbehaved” slaves from wealthy slaveholders for a period of time for free. In return he makes sure these slaves know they are not men and only property. He thinks of himself as a real christian; he is a “professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a class leader in the Methodist church.” But Edward Covey is a false Christian. When Douglass lives with Mr. Covey “scarce a week passe[s] without his whipping [him]. [Douglass] [is] as seldom free from a sore back. [Douglass’s] awkwardness [is] almost always his excuse for whipping [him].” Slaveholders who consider themselves real Christians live a lie due to their ownership and cruel treatment of

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1. Fredrick Douglass witnessed harsh and violent actions throughout his slave life, as slave owners utilized Christianity as a justification for these actions and for the system of slavery. Douglass experienced this religious abuse throughout his life as a slave. However, in 1832, when he began working for Captain Auld, he witnessed the misuse of religion in the setting of a violent action. After Auld whipped a young woman, he justified his actions by quoting the Bible: “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many strips” (33).

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Christianity was, to the slaves of America, (something with a double meaning). In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, Frederick Douglass, the author, argues about how Christianity can mean one thing to a free white man and something completely different to a black slave. The slave owners follow the ‘Christianity of the Land’ while the slaves follow the ‘Christianity of Christ.’ Frederick begins to build his credibility to a, white, northern, audience by including documents from trustworthy writers and by getting into personal experiences through his writing. Throughout the narrative, he is articulate in how he writes, and it shows the reader that he is well educated.

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Douglass tells us this by saying that he believes anyone who is a slave owner cannot be a Christian. In his view, he believes being a slave owner violates the very principles of being a Christian. Auld quote he believes that the Christianity practiced by the Slave owners and the Christianity practiced by non-slave owners are two

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Slavery: Effective on Slaves and Slaveholders In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass recounts his life in slavery to reveal to his readers the horrors of the American slave system. To effectively inform his readers of the corrupt system, he publicizes the slaveholders’ hypocritical practice of Christianity. Although he himself is a Christian, Douglass’s narrative is a scathing commentary on the ironic role of Christian religion in the Southern slaveholding culture. Throughout his book, the author expresses and exemplifies his perspective on religion by illustrating the falseness and hypocrisy of the Southern people. To start off, Frederick Douglass suggests that the Southern people’s religion is false and insincere.

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This excerpt illustrates the difference between Christianity and the Christianity of the slaveholders and draws a daunting hiatus between them that cannot be crossed. Douglas said knowing true, pure faith necessitated the rejection of the accepted, wide-spread slaveholder religion as the “enemy”. The establishment that slaveholders called Christianity was simply not Christianity as it validated the actions of whipping, killing, and subjugation of fellow human beings. It was “hypocritical” because it allowed people to commit atrocities in the name of faulty high moral standards and was “the climax of all misnomers”. It was a ruse to call their system Christianity since it was manipulated into whatever it was needed to for, making it “corrupt”

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“ I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, woman-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” (Douglass 100) Douglass does this to show how hypocritical people in the South were being. Churches were teaching the Christian practice of being kind and compassionate while not actually practicing it themselves. Douglass argues that the actions of some people are against religion.

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Throughout his narrative, Douglass’s descriptions of the white slaveholders expose the Christian hypocrisy found in the American slave system. Douglass first does so by exposing how the lesson taught by Christians to help those in need is contradicted by the experiences Douglass has especially with hunger. Douglass reflects on these experiences when he states that for the “first time during a space of more than seven years” feeling the effects of the “painful gnawing’s of hunger…” (54). This event shows the Christians’ lessons of selflessness and kindness is hypocritical as they treat their fellow humans as subhuman. The Christians at the time rely on scripture to make a case for slavery in America.

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Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the  kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.

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Douglass encountered multiple harsh realities of being enslaved. For example, the ex-slave was practically starved to death by his masters on multiple occasions. In fact, “[He was] allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and very little else... It was not enough for [him] to subsist upon... A great many times [he had] been nearly perishing with hunger” (pg 31).

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This being the case Douglass criticises the ideal of religious inequality. For instance, Douglass recites the cultural of the society when he was a kid, “One class of the population is too high to be reached by the preacher; and the other class is too low to be cared for by the preacher. The poor have the gospel preached to them, in this neighborhood, only when they are able to pay for it. The slaves, having no money, get no gospel” (Douglass n.p). Here Frederick reveals the systematic inequality brought by the injustices of slavery.

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