Slavery and the Bible

It’s not a great commentary that both Christian abolitionists in antebellum America and slaveholders in the deep south used the Bible to justify and defend their positions.

White agitator John Brown, who led an attempted slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., was a fire and brimstone, washed in the blood evangelical, yet, he, with biblical passages never far from his lips, was willing to die alongside his black brethren for the cause of abolition.

Meanwhile, bishop Stephen Elliott, of Georgia, and many others like him, including most southern elected officials and Confederate secession leaders, thought slavery was a positive good for Africans ripped from their communities – and often from their families – to do the work of the white masters:

Here is the very long-winded Elliott: Opponents of slavery should “consider whether, by their interference with this institution, they may not be checking and impeding a work which is manifestly Providential. For nearly a hundred years the English and American Churches have been striving to civilize and Christianize Western Africa, and with what result? Around Sierra Leone, and in the neighborhood of Cape Palmas, a few natives have been made Christians, and some nations have been partially civilized; but what a small number in comparison with the thousands, nay, I may say millions, who have learned the way to Heaven and who have been made to know their Savior through the means of African slavery! At this very moment there are from three to four millions of Africans, educating for earth and for Heaven in the so vilified Southern States—learning the very best lessons for a semi-barbarous people—lessons of self-control, of obedience, of perseverance, of adaptation of means to ends; learning, above all, where their weakness lies, and how they may acquire strength for the battle of life. These considerations satisfy me with their condition, and assure me that it is the best relation they can, for the present, be made to occupy.”

Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass saw clearly the cognitive dissonance that was so pervasive in this debate:

“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”

Jesus never spoke a word against slavery, and Yahweh, of Old Testament fame, was practically complicit, so modern Christians, attempting to soften the blow and do their own interpreting, have claimed the slavery mentioned in the Bible amounted “merely” to indentured servitude, but nearly everyone, including the most learned biblically faithful readers of the entire 17th and 18th centuries, disagree with them.

Discourse on race in the classroom

race

Tressie McMillan Cottom has an excellent column up on Slate today about teaching structural racism in college and the general and unfortunate trend to run academia, including what happens in the classroom, like a business.

Essentially, Minneapolis Community and Technical College Shannon Gibney, an English and African diaspora studies professor, was reprimanded after more than one complaint of discrimination by white students who said they felt uncomfortable when learning about structural racism.

Of course, white students should feel uncomfortable when talking about race in the classroom, whether it’s historical or modern. And since when does being uncomfortable about a topic equal discrimination?

Just a few feet from both Tillman Hall, named for the flaming racist who helped found Clemson University, and the Strom Thurmond Institute, named for the South Carolina senator who was staunch proponent of segregation (It’s no coincidence, I don’t think, that directly above the institute, the sidewalk is designed in the shape of the Confederate flag), I took a class titled, “Whiteness in America,” and during that semester, I was quite uncomfortable to learn that in subtle and sometimes subconscious ways, whites have used color to their distinct advantage. As a native of the South, I was made to come to terms with the real possibility — many of my fellow students were met with the same sobering reality — that some of my descendants either had servants, indentured or otherwise, or were otherwise rabidly opposed to equality and may have harbored an irrational dislike or fear of black people.

To come to this realization as a 19-year-old is far from settling, but as Cottom points out, that often defines the educational process:

Learning is—should often be—uncomfortable for individuals. When universities have a mission to serve the public good, they balance the needs of individuals with benefits to society and the power of the majority against the humanity of the minority.

And running a college like a business directly defeats the purpose of both:

When colleges and universities become a market, there is no incentive to teach what customers would rather not know. When colleges are in the business of making customers comfortable, we are all poorer for it.

This is where the rubber meets the road for studies in racism and social equality, evolution, gender studies and other potentially controversial topics. The beautiful thing about college — and this is why I personally look back on those years with fondness — is the sheer number of “wow” moments that are pregnant in each lecture or classroom discussion. If students are going to college just to have their previously formed opinions affirmed, they shouldn’t bother picking up the first book, and colleges do them, and all of us, a disservice if they only reinforce what students might want to know about the nature of our world versus other truths that might rattle their cage.

Washington: The path to progress

As I said a couple days ago, I have been reading “Three Negro Classics,” which includes Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery.” Unlike W.E.B. Dubois’ “The Souls of Black Folk,” Washington’s work reads more like a straight biography with some insight dotted throughout, whereas as I would regard Dubois’ “The Souls of Black Folk” more as a work of art in its eloquence and emotive power.

For his part, Washington caught a quite a bit of heat in his day for emphasizing cooperation among the races and for not coming down hard enough on the racist South. An editor of the Boston Guardian, William Monroe Trotter, even dubbed him a traitor to his race.

It’s hard to say whether Washington, in his tireless work to support mutual respect and solidarity among whites and blacks in America, was way ahead of his time in the late 19th century and early 20th century or merely an idealist. In any case, here is what I regard as the most profound statement from “Up From Slavery” and one that we are still striving toward to this day:

In my early life I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one who spoke in bitter terms against the Negro, or who advocated measures that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities for growth in the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear any one advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of another, I pity the individual who would do this. I know that the one who makes this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity for the highest kind of growth. I pity him because I know that he is trying to stop the progress of the world, and because I know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him ashamed of his weak and narrow position. One might as well try to stop the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the track, as to try to stop the growth of the world in the direction of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more brotherly kindness.

Map of slavery in the deep South

According to historian Susan Schulten, in her book, Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century AmericaAbraham Lincoln consulted this map to keep track of slavery in the South during the Civil War. Here is the full map and a few comments on specific parts:

Credit: "Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the Suthern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860. Drawn by E. Hergesheimer. Engr. by Th. Leonhardt." Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collections.

Credit: “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the Suthern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860. Drawn by E. Hergesheimer. Engr. by Th. Leonhardt.” Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collections.

This section of the map, which depicts areas along the Mississippi River, shows how crucial victory in the West was for the Union Army in breaking up the slave power. Vicksburg, along with sieges at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, provided key leverage for the Union Army as it made its way eastward leading up to Sherman’s March to the Sea:

BigSlavery1

As a friend of mine pointed out, one can almost track the route Sherman took through Milledgeville to south Georgia and back up through South Carolina simply by following the counties in which slavery was the most entrenched. Sherman most certainly had a copy of Lincoln’s map or one like it to know where to go in order to strike the most severe blow possible to the slaveholders.

As he famously said:

Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and people will cripple their military resources. I can make the march and make Georgia howl.

BigSlavery2

The irony here of the next section is that in the land of Virginia natives sons, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Washington, men who helped build a nation that was based — loosely for a 188 years — on equality, slavery was deeply ingrained in their home state. The U.S. Constitution, of course, protected slavery, and many of the Founders, their best intentions aside, were more of less hamstrung to do anything about the peculiar institution lest they abandon striking any kind of compromise on ratification. Even with protecting slavery, ratification of the Constitution was far from certain.

BigSlavery4

Mountain folks largely eschewed slavery and preferred sustenance living, as we see a lower percentage of slaves in the foothills and hills of Appalachia. Some small-time, non-slaveholding farmers no doubt resented having to fight a war that was waged to protect the rich planter class and their ilk, who more or less spun the “state’s rights” argument to get Johnny Reb to keep supporting the war effort. And, of course, in the wake of Nat Turner and John Brown, Southern whites were constantly paranoid about the possibility for slave insurrections. Fear, as ever, is a powerful motivator:

BigSlavery4

View full sized map here.

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Biblical slavery: totally humane and moral

Via NonStampCollector:

The maker of the video doesn’t mention it, but Exodus 21:20-21 makes a pretty strong case against anyone who claims that the slavery and/or indentured servitude found in the Bible were actually benevolent systems:

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

In other words, flog or otherwise maim your slave all you want — male, female, it makes no difference — just be sure that you keep them alive so the abject misery can continue.

Infidels be warned

The International Humanist and Ethical Union has determined in a recent report that nonbelievers can be killed for their nonbelief in seven states. If you think religion is bollocks, you may want to avoid these: Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Of course, as this article from Slate points out, the hostility toward nonbelievers does not just persist in radical Muslim theocracies. Right here at home, seven states — what is it with religious people and their fascination with the number seven? Yahweh‘s favorite number, no doubt! — ban atheists from holding public office. These bastions of reason and logic include Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Many of these, as you will notice, were, unsurprisingly, in the old Confederacy, including my home state, which can pride itself on being the first to leave the Union and the last to rejoin.

Just out of curiosity, I did a little fact checking on Tennessee, and as plain as day, here is the statute right there in the current state Constitution (ARTICLE IX. DISQUALIFICATIONS):

§ 2. Atheists holding office

No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.

I think it’s also curious that not only does a person have to be a believer to hold public office, belief in a future state is also required. Why would the latter part be included? Perhaps so that if and when this public servant inevitably fails his constituents in some way or another, he and they can take comfort in the thought that they will one day walk on sunshine with Jesus, free from the trappings of this world and its tough decision-making. No, the state wouldn’t want any nonbelievers in office approaching life on the notion that they had better get it right the first time and that there are no cop out solutions like prayer if, by chance, they happened to make life for millions of blacks a living hell for generations after they were supposedly emancipated, or if they allowed hordes of KKK members and other racists to run rampant in the South, scarring innocent women and children for decades. No, they might say: “It’s all permissible as long as we teach those people about the good news of the gospel; my mistakes as a racist, oppressive public servant in the South and their misery and the misery of their children can all be scrapped because one day we will be reconciled under the warm glow of heaven.”

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10 Commandments vs. Bill of Rights

The man-made, extensively debated, committee assembled, legislatively enacted Bill of Rights contains more useful morality in its first adopted amendment than we find in all 10 commandments combined. — Steve Shives

See more here.

Recent book buys

As if I needed more books that I may never get around to reading:

The literature anthology at the top and “Perspective on Culture” were in the free bin. The others were no more than $4 apiece. Thank you, McKay Used Books, CDs, Movies, & More, and of course, my obscure reading tastes.

Slave religion and the peculiar institution

My knee bones am aching,
My body’s rackin’ with pain,
I ‘lieve I’m a chile of God,
And this ain’t my home,
‘Cause Heaven’s my aim. — slave hymn

***

The relationship between plantation owners in the antebellum South and their slaves provides a glaring example of how passages in the Bible have been cherry-picked by various groups to justify all kinds of actions and ideologies. Probably most consequential and most detrimental to human decency are passages that either condone slavery or provide rules that govern the master-slave relationship. One of the areas of study in which I am most interested is antebellum America because it is in this era that the issue of race was the most tense and had a critical capacity to, and indeed did, rip the nation apart. It also in this period of American history that Christian doctrine was pulled in opposite directions to justify, or at the least to validate, the existence of slavery at one end of the spectrum, and on the other end, to rail against the peculiar institution.

Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in Antebellum America” by Albert Raboteau, explores how African born slaves and their later American descendants came to view Christianity in this country, how some adopted the relatively “new” religion that wouldn’t have been terribly foreign to their forefathers in Africa because of various related elements and how slave religion in America evolved its own unique method of worship that was — and one is hardly surprised at this — often mocked or at least described in derogatory terms by white observers.

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