Given our discussion today and the way Christianity comes up in the entire text, consider your view about the relationship between Christianity and the narrative. In the course of your response, make sure to include at least two specific close readings, in which you analyze an important passage, sentence, phrase, or repeated word. Remember that your emphasis may be exploratory rather than definitive.
Questions you may consider if you wish: What does Christianity mean? Are there different views on what it means to be a Christian? How are Biblical references used? How can we see the importance of Christianity in abolition in this text? Is the text engaging in "mere rhetoric" (utilizing ideas about Christianity for the sake of argument alone) or is the text engaging in "genuine belief" (exploring what it means to be a true believer)? How do these two possibilities relate to each other? Are they mutually exclusive?
In this reading, it seems that the definition of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian is fluid for the slaveholders, a term that they can bend and use to justify anything that they do, even to the murder of slaves. As I pointed out in class, the passage about the lady on the train, beginning on the middle of page 61 of the original text, is a great example of the fluid definition. The first mention of ‘Christian’ in this passage is when the old lady calls the female slave that she sold a ‘good Christian’, and that the slave prayed for her, which caused the old lady to convert in the first place. This story of a slave inspiring religion in an old woman who was very much on the side for slavery was hard to believe, and leads me to think that the woman may have been lying, to make the slave she sold look better. She does compliment the female slave much in that passage, which also leads me to think that the woman was jealous of her slave, so the illness was the perfect excuse to sell her and separate her from her family, and essentially make her life miserable.
The second mention in this passage is when the lady thanks the Lord that her husband left her and her son so ‘well provided for’, when in fact it is she that changed his will to accommodate her lifestyle choices. Her husband willed all of their slaves free, but she could not stand for that loss of income from using their labor or selling them, or the loss of status and lifestyle that she was so used to. This is actually exactly what she does-she says that she had just come from Richmond and had sold the remaining 40 slaves, so that she could go live with her son in New York.
She does speak on the subject of her runaways returning, mentioning that if they should, she would ‘cook their infernal hash’ which is an act very un-Christian-like, but which she would deem as appropriate retribution for their actions.
She says, ‘God forgive me, the n***s will make me lose all my religion.’ It took me a while to decipher the meaning from this statement, but I think what she is admitting is that the treatment of slaves in such a manner as she has just described is wrong according to Christian beliefs. Still, the fact that she prefers them to be slaves, and would never wish freedom upon them, leads me to think that perhaps she does not fully grasp the Christian living concept.
The second passage I will discuss is from the reading for Part II, beginning on page 94 of the original text. It begins with a litany of names of ministers who spoke in defense of the Fugitive Slave Act, attempting to make their religion fit what they wanted to believe. I actually sat in Mass this past Sunday, and listened to the priest in his homily address the issue of who God is, and that the biggest mistake a person could make was to project onto God what he thought God to be. This is exactly what these preachers were doing. I will not go into those passages, but wish to focus instead on the end of this passage.
“ In the 23rd chapter of Deuteronomy, 15th and 16th verses, it is thus written:--"Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him." “
I believe that this passage can stand alone as testimony against the Fugitive Slave Act, and can easily brush aside all other comments to the laws righteousness, at least from a theological standpoint. It clearly states that once a slave has freed themselves, they cannot simply be given back over to the same cruelty that they have just escaped from. Expecting no gratitude or repayment, the Bible here clearly states that you must help the man who has freed himself from oppression.
The thoughts I have from reading these passages on the relations of Christianity and slavery is that that the two are not mutually exclusive, and to be a true Christian means to believe in liberty for every human, regardless of race, religion, gender, or age. Any slaveholder who called themselves a Christian is a hypocrite, and any that called themselves a Christian and did not stand against the injustice, but enabled it in their silence and ignorance, was also a hypocrite.
The text itself engages in true belief, as the many prayers left by the author throughout the test show. However, rhetoric was practiced among the preachers who told that God was on the side of the slaveholders, as proven by the passage that I have quoted above. The two of these concepts are indeed mutually exclusive. Genuine belief is taking what is said for what it really means, and believing it to be truth as such. The rhetorical side, however, takes the parts that are useful for the argument being made and ignores other parts, especially those that would hurt or refute the argument being made.
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