# How do black Christians justify being christians? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 24, 2007, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237 "2007-06-24T20:51:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/21 "2007-06-25T03:30:53Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] This isn’t true, and I’m surprised that you would believe this considering how long you’ve been on the 'Dope. Do you think black music, food, dialect, styles of worship, and dance are indigenous to North America? These things did not arise in a vacuum created by Massa and Missy. [/QUOTE] I don’t think you’ve taken sufficient notice of the word “particular” in the sentence of **BrainGlutton’s** post to which you are responding here. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/22 "2007-06-25T03:56:58Z")
[QUOTE=IntelSoldier] You think slaves were kept in isolation chambers? What makes you think they couldn’t practice their religion and raise their kids with their own social mores? [/QUOTE] A knowledge of history? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/23 "2007-06-25T04:28:56Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] Tom, hard as it may be to believe, the crazy black lady who keeps calling me the antichrist appears to believe something of that nature. Predestination is real, and all things are as God willed it. [/QUOTE] I note you characterize her as crazy. Would you consider her beliefs to be representative of all black Christians, all Christians, all theists? I don’t mind the little jaunts into personal fantasy with which **Der Trihs** treats us whenever the topic of religion is brought up in **GD**. I simply feel the need to note, every once in a while, that his reality is not shared by much of the rest of the world. (He is not alone. We have a couple of other true believers in philosophically driven worldviews that are only tangentially connected the world the rest of us inhabit. Every once in a while I feel the need to point out that fact to them, as well. I’m not going to beat it to death. I’ve made my point and will not dwell on it.) [QUOTE=Monstro] [Quote=BrainGlutton] And modern African-Americans have no cultural identification with any particular African culture or nationality – there’s no way they could, their bloodlines having gotten all mixed up in the second generation off the boats. [/quote] This isn’t true, and I’m surprised that you would believe this considering how long you’ve been on the 'Dope. Do you think black music, food, dialect, styles of worship, and dance are indigenous to North America? These things did not arise in a vacuum created by Massa and Missy. [/QUOTE] At the risk of ruining a perfectly good hijack/fight, your perspectives are not completely contradictory. The breaking process, accompanied by rules that prescribed Christian services while proscribing speech in the mother tongue, were quite capable of separating slaves from many social expressions (such as religion). It is more than difficult to carry on a religion when you are not permitted to celebrate the same liturgies that had supported your religion, especially when you are surrounded by people who never shared the same rituals, beliefs, and (often) language and when the religious experience you are permitted is tied closely to that of your owner. On the other hand, songs, recipes, stories, cadence of speech, and similar phenomena are passed from one generation to the next in the home, from (primarily) mother to child. Thus, a lot of (disparate) African cultures could be retained in the Americas and, to the extent that they resembled each other, at all, they could manifest in social displays (speech patterns, song, dance, music, food), even while specific cultural phenomena, (religion, language, kinship rules, etc.) could be suppressed by the new environment. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/24 "2007-06-25T09:14:20Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] As for modern black Christians, being Christian I expect that most either ignore any evils committed in the name of Christianity, or deep down think that their ancestors benefited from being enslaved since it converted them to Christianity, and to a true Christian that’s **all** that matters. [/QUOTE] Setting aside your amusing sentence construction that identifies you as Christian, I’m just wondering whether true Christians put sugar on their porridge. After all, who would know better than you? ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/25 "2007-06-25T09:41:22Z")
No, Tom, not all. I call her crazy because I’m _kind_ of sure she has Borderline Personality Disorder. That said, that section of her belief system seems to be something taught to her by her preacher, and by her church, which is a charismatic church in nature. I don’t think the preacher has a honest doctorate of divinity, he’s just a guy with the fire of the Lord inside him and a taste for preaching. She believes we’re in the end times, (I think 2012 is the date she most often cites), and that all is done according to God’s Plan, and that slavery was necessary to convert her heathen ancestors. I don’t think her belief is shared by all evangelical black churches, nor all fundamentalist black churches, but I don’t know so much about charismatic black churches. I’ve just got to say, yes, there exists at least one who has this as doctrine. On the other hand, if they had snakes, I’m pretty sure they’d be handling them. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/26 "2007-06-25T10:53:57Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] …being Christian I expect that … [/QUOTE] Nothing substantive to comment here; it’s just that one rarely sees this egregious a dangling participle (unless you’ve had an epiphany, **DT**? :eek: ) ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/27 "2007-06-25T11:38:54Z")
> [@](#): > > **Chief Pedant** : Implicit in this question is the notion that for non-Blacks Christianity makes intuitive sense. When I consider how the rain of painful and capricious events falls equally on the just and the unjust, Christian and non-Christian, I come to the conclusion that Christians do not “justify” being Christians. They accept their beliefs by faith or default, but not because it makes sense or because it has been historically (or currently) beneficial per se. Are you distinguishing between making “intuitive sense” and making sense on a logical, deductive reasoning basis? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/28 "2007-06-25T12:03:39Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] I don’t think you’ve taken sufficient notice of the word “particular” in the sentence of **BrainGlutton’s** post to which you are responding here. [/QUOTE] Then, white Americans don’t have a particular European cultural affialation either, since their French, English, Irish, Scandanavian, and Mediterrainian bloodlines are just as equally mixed up. I’m not thinking this is what **BG** meant, but I could be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/29 "2007-06-25T12:38:26Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] I could be wrong. [/QUOTE] You are. The key point is that BrainGlutton said: > [@](#): > > have no cultural identification with any particular African culture or nationality There is no way to interpret that as meaning that current African-American culture has nothing to do with African roots, which is what you suggested. He is simply saying that due to the slaving melting pot, African Americans lost knowledge of the **particular** African culture or nationality from which they came. Your latest post makes little sense because you start a sentence talking about culture and end it talking about bloodlines. Furthermore, it makes perfect sense to talk about white Americans having particular affiliations with particular European nationalities because for many of them, actual geneological records and family knowledge exist. They were for the most part lucky enough not to be stripped of their names and much of their past as slaves were. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/30 "2007-06-25T12:43:28Z")
[QUOTE=monstro] Then, white Americans don’t have a particular European cultural affialation either, since their French, English, Irish, Scandanavian, and Mediterrainian bloodlines are just as equally mixed up. I’m not thinking this is what **BG** meant, but I could be wrong. [/QUOTE] I think **BrainGlutton** ’s point was that while American blacks may have some cultural heritage from Africa, they cannot and do not identify with the specific tribe/state/area/etc of their ancestors. A big part of this is they don’t _know_ which particular grouping in Africa their ancestors came from. Point of fact, most white Americans don’t have a particular European cultural affiliation and many of us _do_ know where our ancestors came from; or could find out if we so wished. German-Americans might celebrate Oktoberfest with a bit more vigor, Italian-Americans Columbus day, and Irish-Americans St. Patrick’s day, but in general white Americans have melted together so much that even the ones who _do_ have strong cultural ties with their ancestral homeland have such ties in a very Americanized way. Ever see that episode of the Sopranos where the Sopranos go to Italy and bitch about the cuisine and et cetera? To that particular Italian-American family they think “their people’s” food is what their mother’s and grandmother’s made, food which actually bears only passing resemblance to genuine Italian cuisine. There used to be whole enclaves of America that were distinctly German, German cuisine, German language newspapers, German-language churches et cetera. BY and large, that isn’t the case anymore, those generations are long dead and their children are anglicized, many of them have even anglicized their names. White Americans are aware that we have a “European” heritage, most of us don’t strongly identify with our ancestral country because our family came over so many generations ago that it just isn’t part of our family-life any more. Most American blacks have family lines that have been in America longer than a lot of the whites out there, a huge influx of European immigration happened after the Civil War, and by and large the biggest migration of Africans to the United States happened via the slave trade. Not only is the point of “immigration” farther back, but since it was forced immigration with intentional destruction of the immigrants familial name and suppression of their culture it’s ludicrous to suggest that any but a very small fraction of American blacks have any genuine cultural ties to _specific_ African religions/tribes/regions et cetera. They certainly have cultural ties to _Africa_ in that some of its cultural traditions survived and were passed down by slaves, but those traditions were all mixed together in slave communities making them a distinctly American form (parallel to the white Americans similar situation.) I know of a few prominent black leaders who have managed to track down what tribe their ancestors were captured from, but that’s not exactly a common thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/31 "2007-06-25T13:24:10Z")
[QUOTE=Zoe] Are you distinguishing between making “intuitive sense” and making sense on a logical, deductive reasoning basis? [/QUOTE] I am unfamiliar with “intuitive sense.” For something to make sense it needs to follow a general pattern of logical, deductive reasoning that it is reasonable to hold such a position. For things which do not make sense, a resolution for some people is found by accepting “on faith” or by intuition that which is contradictory to even a logically obvious conclusion. Applying a label of “intuitive sense” to such a situation may encourage the faithful but such a use is a word game that does not make…actual sense. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/32 "2007-06-25T14:50:10Z")
[QUOTE=BluePitbull] Well, an atheist classmate asked a few questions about slave owners and how they used christianity to control slaves. Since they were never given a real choice to practise their own African religion, how can they justify being christians now? Of course, it could just be a strawman fallacy, but how would you answer that? [/QUOTE] Mind your business. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/33 "2007-06-25T14:58:38Z")
[QUOTE=Chief Pedant] I am unfamiliar with “intuitive sense.” [/QUOTE] Well, you’re the one who used the phrase. We were just wondering what you meant by it. Actually, the phrase “intuitive sense” makes sense (intuitive sense?) to me. It suggests that, rather than reasoning things out at a _conscious_ level, you accept that something “adds up” or is reasonable based on unconscious or unacknowledged observations and mental processes. Or, “makes intuitive sense” is just the opposite of “is counter-intuitive.” In mathematics, for example, we talk about somebody having a good intuition: if they think something’s true, it probably is, even if they can’t prove it. (Ramanujan, for example, came up with all sorts of wild facts and formulas that he didn’t formally prove.) But something can be counter-intuitive—can go against one’s sense of what is or ought to be true—but still be demonstrably true. But, I’ve gotten away from the main point of the thread. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/34 "2007-06-25T15:17:48Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] The breaking process, accompanied by rules that prescribed Christian services while proscribing speech in the mother tongue, were quite capable of separating slaves from many social expressions (such as religion). It is more than difficult to carry on a religion when you are not permitted to celebrate the same liturgies that had supported your religion, especially when you are surrounded by people who never shared the same rituals, beliefs, and (often) language and when the religious experience you are permitted is tied closely to that of your owner. On the other hand, songs, recipes, stories, cadence of speech, and similar phenomena are passed from one generation to the next in the home, from (primarily) mother to child. Thus, a lot of (disparate) African cultures could be retained in the Americas and, to the extent that they resembled each other, at all, they could manifest in social displays (speech patterns, song, dance, music, food), even while specific cultural phenomena, (religion, language, kinship rules, etc.) could be suppressed by the new environment. [/QUOTE] However, in the Americas outside the United States in such places as Cuba, Haiti and Brazil, the slaves managed to preserve much of their religious heritage in such forms as Vodoun (“voodoo”), Santeria and Candomble. African religion didn’t die out when Africans reached the Americas, though it was relatively scarce in the United States and Canada. For that matter I seem to recall that there was a kind of underground Vodoun movement among the slaves of the Gulf Coast–from contact with the Caribbean islands, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/35 "2007-06-25T16:00:22Z")
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink] Well, you’re the one who used the phrase. We were just wondering what you meant by it. Actually, the phrase “intuitive sense” makes sense (intuitive sense?) to me. It suggests that, rather than reasoning things out at a _conscious_ level, you accept that something “adds up” or is reasonable based on unconscious or unacknowledged observations and mental processes. Or, “makes intuitive sense” is just the opposite of “is counter-intuitive.” In mathematics, for example, we talk about somebody having a good intuition: if they think something’s true, it probably is, even if they can’t prove it. (Ramanujan, for example, came up with all sorts of wild facts and formulas that he didn’t formally prove.) But something can be counter-intuitive—can go against one’s sense of what is or ought to be true—but still be demonstrably true. But, I’ve gotten away from the main point of the thread. [/QUOTE] _Mea culpa_ for posting in haste. I should have said, “intuitively makes sense.” By this I mean the blink reaction is that there is a logical reason for accepting a particular notion. My apologies. I should have written this: “Implicit in this question is the notion that for non-Blacks Christianity makes intuitive sense.” as this: "Implicit in this question is the notion that for non-Blacks Christianity makes sense instead of being accepted as intuitively correct based on (potentially false) assumptions. To the point of the OP I was suggesting that many notions within Christianity do not, in fact, bear up to logical scrutiny for any group–not just slaves–despite a predilection to believe them. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/36 "2007-06-25T17:49:56Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Christianity started out as a slave religion, and has a lot within it that would appeal to a slave. The notion of an everlasting freedom granted in the afterlife can appeal to someone who cannot see freedom occurring in this life. [/QUOTE] To get things back to the OP, I think that this post hit the nail on the head. At their most basic level, before all of the dogmatic crap of the various churches got added on, Christianity is essential an anti-establishment movement. It posits a god who loves everyone irrespective of birth, non-violent resistance, rails against wealth, advocates an individual relationship with god, and views life’s tribulations as temporal with regard to eternal life. There is alot in there that would be very appealing to an enslaved people. I’ve also read that black slaves identified very strongly with the stories of the Isrealite’s enslavement and subsequent exodus. In a way, its ironic that the southern society insisted on stripping blacks of thier culture and forcing them to accept, among other things, Christianity. Because while one can construe pro-slave positions from the religion’s teachings and use that to keep your slaves down. There is as much, and probably even more, in there to give slaves succor against thier own trials. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/37 "2007-06-25T18:38:41Z")
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] There used to be whole enclaves of America that were distinctly German, German cuisine, German language newspapers, German-language churches et cetera. [/QUOTE] Not so long ago, either. [Lawrence Welk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Welk) was a native-born American. He talked with an accent because he grew up in a German-speaking town in South Dakota and learned English as an adult. ---
**Author:** ![gatorman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/96bed5/32.png) [@gatorman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorman)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/38 "2007-06-25T23:53:24Z")
Lets not forget that many arab muslims were also DEEPLY involved in the slave trade, and were major suppliers of black slaves to Europeans. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2007, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/39 "2007-06-26T00:02:33Z")
I just wanted to say MichaelQReilly, thanks for joining. A very insightful post indeed. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2007, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237/40 "2007-06-26T13:20:14Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] I just wanted to say MichaelQReilly, thanks for joining. A very insightful post indeed. [/QUOTE] Wow. Thanks. Glad to be here. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-black-christians-justify-being-christians/409237.md?page=3)