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Slave Religion By Albert J. Raboteau

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The reading, “Slave Religion” by Albert J. Raboteau gives us very interesting and conflicting details about slaves and their religious beliefs during the 18th and 19th century. In the beginning slaves were not thought to be religious but that soon changed when it was enforced that slaves must read the Bible and convert to Christianity. Soon after this was enforced slave owners immediately regretted this decision. By having the slaves believe in a higher power gave them a sense of freedom and distracted them from their duties. This was the last thing any master would want from their slaves. There were many strict guidelines the slaves believed in that were not always shared with their masters. For one, it was a major belief that no slave owner
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The idea behind keeping the slave’s faith in the Lord was that the Lord allows slavery because white people are better than the blacks. Basically, any slave who disobeyed their owner was disobeying the Lord, resulting in an eternity in hell, “To be good children of the Lord, the slaves must beware of Satan who created their cunning wicked master of Hell – for it was Satan who created their desires for freedom and tempted them to run away” (Oates

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Justin Brookshire HIST 4001 01/24/2023 The first scholarly historical work of significance considering the topic of slavery as an institution is American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips. As a southerner publishing in 1918, this book was racist in nature against African Americans. Phillips’ argues in his book that slavery was a necessary paternalistic practice between master and slave that established an interdependent agricultural society for the betterment of the country.

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Instead he began to propagate the belief that sharing religion with the slaves would “lay them under stronger obligations to perform the greatest diligence and fidelity”. Though a number of protestant religions moved throughout at the time the Baptist church eventually took ahold of the south to become the most practiced religion. Frey discusses briefly the African culture that made some influence on the lifestyle of the African slaves. Most of the African cultural practices were bogged down or destroyed by the slave owners and American society.

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Jacobs narrative can be seen in many different ways and she provides several different themes. One of those themes is Christianity; Christianity was very important in the lives of every slave because it united them with their families and God. Jacobs narrative provides one truth about Christianity and slaves; Slaves were the only real Christians during the 1800s. White men were all hypocrites because they thought that by going to church meant they were the best Christians ever.

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Slaves were warned to obey their masters, “As to the Lord and not to men.” However, their masters were also held to this same standard. Masters were expected to treat their slaves well and even to treat them as brothers, as God is the master of all people, including

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One is more inclined to believe something if surrounded by it and told by many people. By making those enslaved come to the general church services, the information they receive is controlled by those in power. Another way of controlling was by withholding information from enslaved people. According to The American Yawp, anti-literacy laws made it so enslaved people could not read the Bible and learn of inspirational stories such as Moses freeing the Israelites (The American Yawp, Ch 11, Sec 6, Par 4). Anti-literacy laws have a much greater impact than being unable to read the Bible.

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During the time when Douglass wrote this book, there were several myths which were used to justify slavery. The slaveholder during his time justified this inhuman practice using different arguments. The first argument they used was the religion. From the narrative, Douglass says that slaveholders called themselves Christians which was the dominant religion by then.

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God and religion were no longer seen as holy in most people's mind but as a way to have power over someone else and have a feeling of righteousness in their acts of harm or cruelty. Everybody had an opinion about religion and everybody's opinion was different. Frederick Douglass who was enslaved to many religious people does not view religion as a good thing because how can something be good that gives people the righteousness to kill and treat others as trash. Religion had allowed his white slaveholders/owners to feel saved by god for their wrongdoings by going to church.

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This is where I believe Patterson’s argument fails. He blindly follows the slave master’s goal, and assumes that they were successful. actuality. He not only condescendingly takes whatever agency the slaves had during that time, but he completely ignores records of lived experiences of slavery. He ignores the fact that for many slaves, like Raboteau and others have argued, religion was a form of rebelliousness, a source of moral high ground, and a means to be socially recognized.

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