Title says it all.
I’m particularly interested in how they felt about black people in heaven.
Well, IF Christians thought non-whites couldn’t go to Heaven, why did the Spanish Franciscans spend so much time and effort establishing missions to convert Native Americans to Christianity?
Why did French Jesuits like Isaac Jogues endure torture and death to convert the Iroquois to Christianity if red men weren’t eligible for Heaven?
Why did Francis Xavier try to spread Christianity to China and Japan, if non-whites couldn’t go to Heaven?
There are many Catholics in India, mostly because Portugese colonists and traders converted their ancestors in places like Goa (hence, there are a lot of East Indians with Portugese names like Da Silva and Da Souza). Why would priests convert dark-skinned foreigners who couldn’t enter Heaven?
Heck, even cruel Southern slave owners often told themselves they were doing their black slaves a favor, since they’d saved the slaves from paganism and taught them Christianity.
I’ve heard this joke in a few different forms…found it just now in a news story about tale-telling at Colonial Williamsburg.
data point:
If you look at the central panel of Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights 9which some thin represents Heaven, or at least Earth during the Millennium), you can see several black people gamboling naked among the naked white people:
The painting dates from circa 1504. Even if you don’t buy those interpretations, the central panel clearly represents some sort of fun-filled Paradise (even if, like some, you see this panel as the Sinful Descendants of Adam), and blacks are having as much fun as the whites, and are mixing freely with them.
I think there are probably white Christians that still believe this or they must think there will be two separate heavens.
There is a separate but equal provision.
Raw speculation, but is it possible that whites thought black people would be “cured” and go to heaven, but no longer be black?
Either that, or they thought that having a really good service position would be the perfect heaven for black people. I think history is pretty clear that whites just didn’t understand (or refused to understand) that non-white people were people.
My husband’s uncle thought this. He just died. I wonder if he’s shocked. 
We don’t talk with that part of the family.
I’ve seen a few historical references justifying slavery because slaves supposedly didn’t have souls. That would imply a belief that some were excluded from heaven but I have no idea where those who held such a belief would draw the line before they’d consider a person to be ensouled.
Not sure where I got the impression, but I’ve always thought that slave owners knew their slaves would meet them in heaven. If they were good Christians slaves, that is. And that slavery was justified because that’s just the social order God intended, and presumably that social order would be preserved in the afterlife.
In other words, slaves would still be slaves in heaven, it’s just that they’d be in slave paradise, and love every minute, finally having accepted their divinely appointed place in the social order.
If (and i’m an atheist so I don’t believe in heaven i’m only talking hypothetical here) I’m a racist who dislikes black people and doesn’t want to be around them but I’m otherwise a good moral person - and there’s nothing in any religious text that would even suggest merely not wanting to be around another race is a sin, let alone one that’s unforgivable and hell-worthy - heaven for me would have to be segregated. If black people were there, it wouldn’t be heaven.
I’ve always said there cannot be a heaven because one person’s heaven is incompatible with another person’s heaven. What if, for example, my heaven requires the presence of my godless wife, the love of my life, who is burning in hell? Without her, heaven would be hell for me too. What if my heaven requires everyone to speak English?
Don’t say “anyone who is remotely prejudiced won’t go to heaven in the first place” because there is absolutely nothing to justify such a claim aside from modern wishful political correctness. My parents have never done anything overtly racist or discriminatory but I know their version of heaven would not entertain the presence of black people. They wouldn’t suggest all black people should burn in hell but for them, having to be around a bunch of black people for all eternity would be inconsistent with any notion of heaven.
Thus religion is nonsense and all concepts of heaven/hell are patently ludicrous.
I am sure that thought in the 18th and 19th century varied. I have been told that the Bible sets aside the ‘mud’ people, but I have never seen anything of the like in my Bible. I do know that a lot of the anti-slavery movement began by white Christians realizing that the Bible makes no distinction.
Then, just like now, there are Christians who live up to their beliefs and others who don’t.
If anyone knows where the mud people thing comes from, I would like to know. Typically, someone has to work hard to get a verse to go there, but who knows?
Data point - Andrew Jackson (not quite 200 years ago, but interesting because he was a slave owner).
When he lay in bed dying, he said “I hope to meet you all in heaven - yes, all in heaven. White and black.” Source is the book American Lion (you may have to search for the quote - I couldn’t make the ‘look inside’ link directly there).
Right, you can’t really make many generalizations about what “white Christians” thought 200 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or today. There’s a wide spectrum. Regarding non-whites, Christian churches were both a driving force behind abolitionism as well as defenders of slavery. (Which was also pretty much true during the Civil Rights movement of the '60s as well).
While I really want to know where the whole mud people thing comes from, I am secretly hoping that nobody here would know. The only people I have known who used the term also had white power tattoos. :mad:
It’s always been my understanding that there won’t be any races of people in heaven. The body is a shell that is left behind. The spirit or soul goes to heaven.
Post #10.
I hope it’s from Harry Potter!
According the the Urban Dictionary Mud People are people of all races who gather and…guess what…cover themselves in mud. In some cases the ceremony could be Pagan.
NOW, mud people should not be confused with mud* person* which is defined: Derogatory name for a black person.