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Section
Objectives
Section
Review
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Susel Perez
Slave Religion
Slave religion is the beliefs, religious faith, and practices of Africans
brought to the New World beginning in 1619 and that African Americans kept until they were
emancipated. West Africans believe that there is a high god, who created all things and
they believe on lesser gods who follow the high god. Having these lesser gods meant that
they would pray to different gods when dealing with rain, fertility, and crops. They also
believed that a status with the lesser gods was occupied by the spirits of their
ancestors. Africans thought that their ancestors were the living dead because they were
both close to the living as well as the ultimate beings. The purpose of them living was to
honor the ancestors, recognize the lesser gods, and give all power and admiration to the
high god.
Christianity became alive as slaves began to combine their African religious beliefs
with Christian beliefs in order to make up what is called slave religion. At the
beginning, between 1619 and the early 1700’s, slave owners were not really trying to
convert their slaves into Christians. Then, slave owners began to have different thoughts
between each other as well. Some believed that slaves were more than inferior so this
meant that they should try to acquire Christian redemption. Others believed that
converting slaves into Christians would cause many problems because they could start
thinking that they were equal to whites since they were sharing the same beliefs. To them,
a converted slave would become lazy or even resistant to their white masters.
Then, in 1701, this all began to change when white missionaries and slave masters
realized that slaves should be converted into Christians. The formation in London of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was how this all began. The
number of slaves that they converted was limited due to the lack of ministers that were
sent to North America and because some slave owners objected for their slaves to be taught
Christian beliefs. The SPG was converting slaves as they demanded control of their body
instead of African beliefs in which they emphasize on physical movement caused by spirit
possession.
This society was fairly effective but it was not until the Great Awakenings (1740 and
the early 1800’s) that black slaves began to turn towards Christianity in large
numbers. Preachers that were related with the Great Awakening emphasized conversion
of the heart, encouraged overjoyed body expressions, and required a simple confession of
Jesus Christ’s lordship. These ideas were obviously accepted by slaves because they
converted throughout the South, but there were some that still resisted some of the
theology and religious practices of the Great Awakenings. White preachers taught the
slaves that they had to obey their masters as a sign of being faithful to God. In the
other hand, white churches still thought that slaves were not equal because they held
segregated religious services and controlled the free worship by slaves. Plantation owners
went one step further as they established segregated seating by placing the slaves in the
rear, in the balcony, or even outside the church windows.
Slaves prayed secretly to God as their only master and asked for them to be liberated
from their owners. They reinterpreted Christianity by adding some of their African
religion. Slaves identified themselves with the Old Testament Hebrew slaves as they were
liberated by God. If God was able to liberate the Hebrew slaves that meant that if the
slaves would pray enough to him; the same thing could take place for them. To them, faith
was now a belief in and commitment to a God that helped the poor and judged the arrogant
and the strong, their owners. Now, God instead of the plantation owner was the actual
master of the slaves. Slaves believed that if God had sided against religious and
political powers in the Bible, then he could also help them become free. They believed
that Jesus was powerful enough to do anything.
Through their arrangement of God and Jesus, slaves were able to obtain a new meaning in
their everyday life. They created things like "discourse of solidarity" in
which one slave would never give information about another and even went to the
extreme of religious resistance. Rebellion was now taking place. "Invisible
Institution" was now clearly shown as slaves were conducting secret worship and
prayer far away from the eyes of their masters. They would meet in the woods where they
would get ready to receive a visit from the spirit who made them sing, pray, preach,
shout, and enjoy their own free religious space in such an enthusiastic manner. In the
Invisible Institution slaves learned things as oratorical skill and started to become
leaders. Some received food and clothing but also counseling in order to keep in the right
stage of mind.
In 1830’s during the religious awakening in the South the slave owners were now
bringing the Gospel to the quarters and this served as social control and as a way to
convert the slaves. By 1860, about 15 percent of the slaves were members of either the
Baptist or Methodist church. There they heard the same sermons, had the same discipline,
and shared the communion table with whites. In the other hand, slaves still did not only
follow these formal proceedings. Slaves would still listen to their own black preachers
and they would also try to translate the Bible in a way in which it showed that they were
God’s chosen people and that Judgment Day would castigate their masters. Slaves
turned Christianity into their own terms. If their masters did not follow common Christian
behavior then the slaves felt a great superiority over their masters.
Now, in the lower Gulf area, around Louisiana, some slaves followed VOODOO. In other
places where slaves were imported illegally from Africa, they practiced Islam. Others did
not have a religion at all.
Rebellion
African-American slave religion was very varied and was beyond the master’s
observation and knowledge, which was why rebellion began to take place. Slave religion was
proven to be dangerous by Nat Turner’s Rebellion of 1831, which was the most
important revolt in the 19th century. Nat Turner was a slave in Southampton
County, Va., who believed God had called him in a religious vision to deliver his people
from enslavement. He used his literacy, articulation, and impulsiveness to preach and
gather others who would join him as he planned to strike one night after an eclipse of the
sun. He started with six followers but ended with eighty who marched to Jerusalem, in
Southampton County, and they killed fifty-seven men, women, and children until white
authorities ended the revolt. Turner avoided to be captured for two months before he was
caught and was finally executed in November 1831. Some white Southerners saw rebellion
starting everywhere and killed as many as two hundred slaves because of fear. They began
to be stricter and they showed a closer supervision and religious instruction. The Turner
revolt and the aftermath only proved that whites still did not know the slaves.
Works Consulted
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1996. 2452-2454 and 2465.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Random House, Inc., 1972. 232-255.
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Wedding
dance
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Church
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