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Religion In Albert Raboteau's Slave Religion

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In Albert Raboteau’s Slave Religion, I expected to read a book dripping with rant-filled commentary. Judging the book solely on its cover, I would not normally pick up –or even read– a book that did not jump out at me from the design on the cover, and this book did not jump out. However, Raboteau’s depiction of the life of the slave did jump out at me. In elementary and high school, teachers briefly touch on the topic of slavery and its role in America, but religion is never touched on with slavery –at least my teachers never taught them together. So finally getting to learn the two side by side, it was fascinating to see how Africans created a version of their own religion of Christianity. The methods that slaves took to survive the cruelties …show more content…

To me, this “creolization” of Christianity and African tradition was a means to keep a piece of the slaves’ original religious background alive. This creolization was also a means of an identifier while being stripped of their African identity. In the beginning of the book, Raboteau describes the traditions and cultures of Africans; the “spirit possession,” the dance, and the emotion they experienced as they praised and worshipped their many gods. In addition, he talks about the pressure of “Salt-water” Africans to convert and adopt new traditions. Because of this pressure “seasoned” slaves put on “salt-water” slaves, forced conversion to American slavery customs was inevitable. With being pulled out of their tribes, separated from their families, forbidden from their native language, and barred from their native religion, African slaves adapted to keep a piece of themselves, their religion, and their homes alive; by mixing the emotion and the dance from their native religion into this Christian-creole. As a result, slaves hid a small piece of Africa in an American religion, which they took on as their

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The answer is to keep them controlled and confounded. Europeans stripped Africans of their conventions beginning with their name, this in some degree made Africans like clear canvases prepared to be painted once more. Christianity gave slaves trust that one day their circumstance will change on the off chance that they supplicated sufficiently hard and comply with Christ words. It likewise gave them a shiny new vision of what God ought to resemble. White is great, Black is terrible.

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Douglass’s words that captured such “veracity” is his saying that “slaveholder’s profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture” (xiv). The strong declaration, which gained many witnesses, proves his first-hand experience with slavery and therefore, justifies his credibility, regarding his religious persecution. Through this, he proves that Christianity, as they call it, is an illicit form of religion bent toward justifying white slaveowners’ actions while praying for “heavenly union” (Douglass 106). In the following occurrences, Douglass provides insight into the religious masking that Christian slaveholders use to cover-up the unjust treatment of their slaves, shining light onto the misinterpreted cult they have formed to justify their crimes and the effect religion has upon the white dominant culture

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The book’s first chapter’s main purpose was to highlight the history of the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans in “the New World”. Answering the question of what African American religion is hard to do without the history of why blacks in America behave the way they do. The first Africans were brought to America in the 1600s and those who bought them were given benefits to encourage the use of this cheap form of labor. Slavery played a major part as to how the Europeans, mainly English, viewed Africans helped which ultimately shaped the way Blacks viewed themselves once fully integrated into the way of life in America. The drastic difference from Africans appearance and the Europeans was the main component to how they were treated

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