Why haven’t they rejected English, a language of slavery?
Learning a language is a matter of survival and convenience, acceptance of a religion is not (at least not with regard to modern days).
You have set up this false dichotomy. Blacks are supposed to abhor slavery and reject Christianity OR be grateful to slavery and accept Christianity. And if they don’t fall in line with this dichotomy, they are being hypocritical (or contradictory).
If your husband beats the hell out of you every day, does that mean you have to appreciate the abuse because he buys you new clothes? Do your new clothes make up for the black eyes and bruised kidneys? If you acknowledge the pain he caused you, does that mean you are being ingrateful for the good things he brought you? If I talk badly about the abuse, do I have to praise the abuser for all the nice presents he gave me?
Christianity isn’t a “white” religion.
The fact that it was introduced to slaves under duress doesn’t make the religion flawed. There is beauty there that provided people with hope. Black people took Christianity and shaped it in a way their white oppressors couldn’t have possibly anticipated. In that way, Christianity became just as much the slaves’ and it was the whites’. In fact, Christianity has always driven black people’s struggle against oppression and injustice. What other religion has served that function?
If Christianity was supposed to keep slaves meek and servile, it didn’t work very well. All it did was equip blacks with armor and make them strong. Maybe that’s why so many black people still hold onto the religion.
I’m a black female scientist. For years, science perpetuated myths about black and female inferiority. I can separate the ideals of science from its flawed applications. Just like I can find Christian ideals nobel even though they have been historically applied in horrible ways.
If you are referring to “Christian ideals” such as charity, service, humilty, etc., I would agree with you 100%.
If you are referring to the belief that Jesus Christ was the literal son of the Almighty who came to Earth 2000 years ago, performed sundry miracles, died for our sins, and was resurrected, and that the only path to salvation is to accept him into your heart, well then I would say that this is indeed wholly a product of “white” society (and by “white” I mean the standard definition of Caucasion). I think that it is a religion that was foisted on many other cultures against their will, and that their descendants follow the religion today mostly out of habit and upbringing with little or no thought as to how and why their forebears came to “accept” Christianity in the first place.
But then, that’s just me…
And I explicitly reject your analogy of the abused wife who enjoys the presents her husband gives her. As I mentioned in my OP, to a Christian the act of finding salvation through Jesus is the single most important thing that can happen to a person and not just a “little side benefit to an otherwise horrible act.” We’re not talking about a higher standard of living here, or longer lifespan, or any other possible “side benefit” that could possibly be agued to have resulted from Slavery. We’re talking about the salvation of one’s eternal soul here.
Barry
Hell, not only was there Christianity in Africa before the slave trade started, but there was Christianity in Africa before it hit Europe.
Think about it. Where is Antioch? Where is Alexandria?
We also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many African slaves didn’t originally co-opt all of Christianity. Many took the major aspects of the Christian faith and applied them like a veneer to their old beliefs. I believe there still remains existent a religion which took Christian saints and associated them with the gods of their original African homelands.
Antioch is in Turkey. People quibble over whether Turkey is in Asia or Europe, but it’s definitely not in Africa.
But back to the original point: contrary to what some latter day black Americans seem to think, Islam is NOT an African religion, and Christianity is not a “white” or even European religion. Both Jesus and Mohammed were Asians, of unknown skin color.
D’oh! Oops, I’m sorry!
Dammit.
Well, then, Alexandria.
:smack:
How is this a product of “white society”? Are you saying the story was fabricated out of “white” folklore? Are you saying that all the players and participants were “white”?
Was Jesus a product of “white” society?
The oppressor did not save slaves or their descendants.
You have provided no proof that slaves and their descendants would have been ignorant of the Good News had it not been for their oppressors.
So you simply rejecting my analogy does not progress the discussion much.
One could view Christianity as a tool of the oppressor to keep slaves meek and docile. But someone else could view the oppressor as God’s tool for introducing the message of Christ. If God used the oppressor, then the oppressor does not deserve a lick of credit for anything because God would have found another tool if it hadn’t been for slavery. I think a lot of people subscribe to this idea.
Hey, I never claimed that Christianity is a “tool of the oppressor to keep slaves meek and docile.” Slaves may have been compelled to accept it, but I have no idea if this was done for any nefarious reasons.
I think I can accept this as a plausible justification for embracing the fruit of slavery without embracing slavery itself. I have no idea how many African-Americans actually subscribe to this theory, but I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with it.
As for the whole “Christianity is a white religion,” however, I’m going to have to stick to my guns on this one. Jesus and his original followers were of Jewish descent (as am I) and therefore caucasian. And Christianity was brought to Africa by caucasians as far as I know.
However, the veracity (or lack thereof) of my beliefs nothwithstanding, I think that you have shown that they are not necessarily relevant to my original question as to why an African-American whould complain about slavery while embracing Christianity. So, thank you for that.
Barry
Depends on your definition of Christian. To whit:
*…The Christian religion has often been seen as an ephemeral part of Kongo’s religious structure, and indeed, viewed from some perspectives, it was. It is clear from the research of Wyatt MacGaffey and Anne Hilton that Christianity was throughly Africanized, in that there was a more or less direct translation of Kongo cosmology and religious categories onto Christianity…
On the other hand, most scholars who have seen Kongo Christianity in this way have assumed that such a declaration did not constitute true conversion, or that the missionaries were deluded in their notions about their parishioners’ beliefs. Such an analysis has normally been predicated on the modern missionary definition of Christianity, formed in the twentieth century and applied in a colonial situation. By the terms of this modern definition,Christianity makes stringent demands on converts, requiring them to change their lives radically. If such modern missionary standards are applied retrospectively, it appears that the Kongo did not qualify as true converts. But the context of the sixteenth and seventeenth century was quite different, for there was never any real doubt that Christianity was the offifcial religion in Kongo, and the Popes accepted it as such. Most missionaries themselves accepted the Kongo as Christians, even as they denounced them as superstitious. The Propaganda Fide in Rome was convinced that conversion required only minimal cultural alteration, and ruled that only practices strictly forbidden by the Councils could be suppressed. Moreover, in many mission fields of the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some truly remarkable combinations of Christianity and local religions were considered to be orthodox, at least for a time, as in China and some parts of India. It was only in the colonial areas such as Mexico that a strict definition of conversion, such as was widely used in twentieth century missionary work, was applied.*
From The Kingdom of Kongo:* Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718* by John K. Thornton ( 1983, The University of Wisconsin Press ).
Kongo, in modern Angola and Congo, was one of the centers of the Portuguese slave trade and was eventually vastly depopulated ( 70% of the slaves sent to Brazil in the 18th century came from the ports of Benguela and Luanda ). It is to be supposed that a significant number of those exported to the Americas at least nominally qualified as Catholics Christians, as per above. Considering most went to either Brazil or the Caribbean ( with ~10-15% to the Rio de la Plata region ), where the mortality rate was often staggering and at least until the very late 18th century, family life was more rare, it may cast legitimate doubt on how much of this “Africanized Christianity” established itself in the New World naturally vs. Christianity being imposed by the Portuguese themselves ( who did make an effort to convert slaves to Catholicism ). But in terms of raw numbers, some Christians did indeed get transshipped in the Atlantic trade.
- Tamerlane
How does being “caucasian” follow from being of Jewish descent? “Caucasian” does not mean anything to me when brown-skinned Indians, ruddy-cheeked Irishmen, olive-skinned Turks, pale-faced Scandinavians, and downright dusky Ethiopians can all self-identify as such. What does it mean to you?
Folks scoff when blacks lay claim to ancient Egyptian civilization, just because the people were Africans and had nice tans. What you are doing is equally ridiculous. White people cannot annex Christianity as being “their” religion just because they have arbritrarily delineated Europe to include the Middle East. And if you are willing to make the inhabitants of that area “white”, then Islam is as “white” as Christianity. Why do you claim Christianity but not Islam?
Maybe I’ve seen too many TV docu-dramas, but I was under the impression that slave-owners encouraged (or forced?) the slaves to adopt Christianity, and that the slaves (for the most part) embraced it because their faith was one of the few things they were allowed to possess. To assume that they would reject the religion of their captors is to ignore the well-known psychological principle that people tend to indentify with their captors. We’ve seen it even in cases where a person is kidnapped for only a matter of weeks or even days. So I don’t find it surprising at all that the slaves would adopt the religion of their captors over a period of generations. And also consider that they were probably not allowed to practice their native religion, making Christianity the only option. Each new generation of slaves grew up knowing only Christianity. For the descendants of those people to reject it now, when it’s so firmly established doesn’t make sense. I think they’d be more likely to come to the conclusion that slave-owners weren’t good Christians, rather than assume the religion itself is tainted; IOW not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
What thought exactly made you reject Christianity? As for slaves, the Bible not only told slaves how to act, but slave owners as well. So it’ s a bit false to say it was made to control the slaves. Not only that, but it clearly said that all are equal in God’s eyes.
The only white part that has been changed is the picture of Jesus as being a white man. Christianity is not a white man’s religion, and any understanding of Scripture must come from an understanding that it was not originally in English. Some people may forget it, but some people eat bugs, but it doesn’t really matter.
Slight hijack-This line of reasoning regarding slavery as a reason to discredit Christianity shows a lack of knowledge of what the Bible really says. I have heard the same line used when it says the Bible oppresses women by making them submit to their husbands. The Bible does say, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord,” but it also instructs, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians 5:22,25). A man who under-stands that Jesus Christ sacrificed His life’s blood for the Church will likewise love his wife sacrificially and passionately. He will honor her, respect her, protect, love, and cherish her as much as he does his own body, as he is instructed to do (Ephesians 5:28). He will never say or do anything to harm or demean her. It is in this atmosphere of love and security that a godly wife willingly submits herself to the protective arms of her husband. She does this not because he is better than she is, but simply because this is God’s order for His creation.
Now back to the regular program…
by godzillatemple
Do you ever hear anyone say “Thank you Jesus for enslaving my ancestors so that I might drive this luxury sedan and eat out every Friday night?” Should blacks be saying this?
IMO, religion is not something people are supposed to shop for and select based on things not related to the religion itself. If that was the case, there would be no such thing as true believers, because everyone would be able to adopt and discard their religions as fickily as they do politicians. If someone is raised in the church and brought up to believe in the tenets and theology of Christianity, it would be unreasonable to think that this person can just give up all their beliefs just because the Christianization of American slaves was a by-product of slavery.
I don’t have a lot of admiration for people who subscribe to Islam or anything else simply out of reaction to the slavery-Christianity association. There’s more to religion than just its uses and abuses throughout history. And while Christianity may have been a part of a culture that practiced ugliness, the fact is is that it also became woven into another culture. So to expect people to rebell against Christianity is to also expect them to rebell against their heritage.
I guess I’m confused about what you’re considering white. We have “white” as decided by textbooks that want to divy up the human population into 3-5 racial classifications. And then we have “white” as decided by what our eyes and minds say. The jews from back in the day would probably only be classified as white from the first definition, if that. But practically speaking, would you really group the Middle East into “white society”?
If Christianity is a “white” religion because Christ and the Apostles were Jews, then Islam is equally or moreso a “white” religion because Mohammed and his ilk were Arabs, and were specifically Arabs who had had centuries of trade with Persia and the Roman Empire. So why is it “wrong” for Blacks to embrace Christianity but “right” for them to embrace Islam. Indeed, Christianity originated closer to Africa (by a bit) than did Islam, and there were African Christians long before there were African Muslims.
Not all Christian churches. Some (thankfully a small minority) preached that the dark skin of a black man was the Mark of Cain.
Da’hell? I didn’t know that Jerusalem was in the Caucasus.
:rolleyes:
The divinely inspired concept of Christian Love is inextricably built into the foundation of Western Culture and Western Culture is the economic engine that drives the world today.
Lacking precepts similar to “Brotherly Love”, other religions and other forms of cultural behavior modification simply don’t work as well within this egalitarian economic method of group well-being and the acquisition of material goods.
The newly freed black slaves in the states were poor but they weren’t dumb. Christianity was the way of the country that they found themselves free in. The cultural aspects of the african religions and cults had established a social structure that had led to their ancesters being enslaved in the first place.
On the other hand Protestant Christianity is the handmaiden of equality and Democracy. So the answer to the question “Why do so many African-Americans embrace Christianity?” is obvious.
Where is the choice?
Originally, the reason why so many embraced Christianity in Ancient Rome was because it was a very liberating religion-you know, “blessed are the meek, blessed are those who thirst for mercy”, etc etc?