:: AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGION INTERPRETIVE ESSAYS IN HISTORY AND CIILTIIRE ::EDITED BY TIMOTHY E. FULOP AND ALBERT J. RABOTEAU Routledge NewYork LLondon I o6 :: AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGION lection of Turner's writings and speeches in Edwin S. Redke¡ ed., Respect Black RELIGION AND RESISTANCE AMONG aa '¡ aa (NewYork: Arno Press, 1971), passim. For the opinions of other black clergymen ANTEBELLUM SLAVES, I 8oo-t 86o 6 on this issue, see "What Should Be the Policy of the Colored American toward Vincent Harding Africa," a symposium published in fhe A.l4.E. Chutch Review 2(July 1995):68_74; Bishop W J. Gaines, The Negro and theWhite tulan (1887) (rpt., NewYork: Negro Press, 1969) Universities 19-21;AlexanderWalrers, My Lfe andWork (London and ::Christianity was often experienced by African- Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1917) 173. Americans as a double-edged sword, one edge emphasiz- 20. Minutes and Proceedings oJ the First Annual Meeting oJ the American l4oral ReJorn Society ing obedience and accommodation to the status quo (1937) in Earþ NegroWriting, 1760-1837, ed. Dorothy Porter (Boston: Beacon and the other inspiring against unjust struc- Press, 1971) 203. rebellion tures. One illustration of this tension in the twentieth 21. See James Theodore Holl¡ "The Divine Plan of Human Redemption, in lts century are the contrasting figures of Malcolm X who Ethnological Development," A. M. E. Chur ch Review 1 (October 1 8 84) : 79-8 5 . argued that Christianity "deceived and brainwashed the so-called Negro to always turn the other cheek . and SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FUIITHER READING to look for his pie in the sk¡" and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boles, John 8., ed. I4asters and Slaves in the House oJthe Lord: Race and Religion in the whose Christian beliefs inspired the civil rights move- American South, 1740-1870. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988. ment. Likewise, Antebellum slave owners attempted to creel, Margaret washington. "A Peculiar People": slave Religion and community-culture use religion as a mechanism for social control by giving Among the Gullahs. NewYork: NewYork University Press, 1988. preeminence to the Biblical passages of St. Paul that stress Mathews, Donald. Religion in the old sourå. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977 . obedience, but asVincent Harding demonstrates in the Raboteau, Albert l. Slave Religion:The"lnvisible Institution" in the Antebellum Sou¿å. New following seminal essay published in 1969, Christianity York: Oxford University Press, 1978. could also provide motivation and a foundation for black Sernett, Milton C. Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation protest.:: À4issions, and the Flowering oJ Negro Christianity, 1787-1865. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975. - aa RELIGION AND aa 6 RESISTANCE AMONG ANTEBELLUM SLAVES, rSoo-r86o Vincent Harding aa aa In these days of ecumenicism among the academic disciplines, it would likely be both fair and appropriate to describe the state of our historical under- standing of Negro religion in America as a variety of cultural lag. This is clearly the case when we try to assess the role of black religion in the antebellum period of American histor¡ and especially when an attempt is made to understand its relationship to acts ofprotest and resistance. Stated in simplest terms, the situation may be described in this way: Thanks to the crucial work ofApthekeq the Bauers, Stampp, and others, we have moved beyond a naive and often distorted view of huppy or indifferent Negro slaves whose docility was a sight to behold.l Indeed the movement towards the new theme of slave rebellion and resistance has often been so strong that the in- evitable reconsiderations and revisions have already set in.2 But it would appear unlikely that even such fascinating and worthy caveats as those raised by Elkins, \Made, and Genovese will drive us back to the old dominions-if for no other reason than the uneasiness our increasingly black-oriented age feels with such in- terpretations. So the new slaves seem to be a permanent fixture. On the other hand, we have not yet been released from the traditional views of black religion that supported the older generalizations concerning submissive and humble slaves. Here precisely is the lag. Much of the current historical opinion about the role of religion among ante- I I O :: AFRICAN-AMËRICAN RELIGION RELIGION AND RESISTANCE AMONG ANTEBELLUM SLAVES :: I I I bellum southern Negroes still follows the classic lines set out in Benjamin Mays' I have met, at t}re south, many good, religious colored people who were under The Negro's God, which claimed tlat the Negroes' idea of God "kept them submis- the delusion that God required them to submit to slavery and to wear their sive, humble and obedient."3 Repeatedly Mays referred to this religion as "other- chains with meekness and humilitv. worldly" and "compensator¡" inclining its votaries "to do little or nothing to im- prove their status here. Even so shrewd and perceptive a scholar as E. Then he added, "I could entertain no such nonsenses as this. ."10 For Franklin Frazier later adumbrated the theme in his important work on The Negro Douglass, as for countless others, the requirements of God pointed in other Church.s There the antebellum Negroes-especially in the South-were identi- directions, and black religion led them away from slavery. Often it led to protest, ffed with a religion that "turned their minds from the sufferings and privations of resistance and death. this world to a world after death where the weary would find rest and the victims Recently a teacher of religion has tried to articulate this theme of the protest of injustice would be compensated."6 role of Negro faith. In his Blacå Religion,JosephWashington wrote, "the religion The views of Mays and Frazier are representative of most discussions of the of the Negro folk was chosen to bear roles of both protest and relief."l1 Indeed black religion that developed before the Civil War. In many ways these men Washington went on to suggest that "The uniqueness of black religion" since the helped to set the theme.Their views, of course, represented anAmerican adapta- days of slavery ïr/as to be found in its constant and often risky search for "the elu- tion of the classic statement by Karl Marx: sive but ultimate goal of freedom and equality by means of protest and action."l2 Like so much of Washington's work, those last phrases may be understatements, Religion is the sign ofthe oppressed creature, the heart ofthe heartless but they help to balance the scales set by Frazier, Mays, and Marx. world. the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of thepeople.T Perhaps, then, this paper can be thought of as an attempt to suggest pathways In this essay what we question is not the applicability of such an understand- towards an historical documentation of JosephWashington's intuitive thesis, at ing of religion to a majority of antebellum Negroes. Indeed, the traditional view least that part ofit which seeks to appreciate the proper relationship ofblack re- often has much support in the records. For instance, it was not accidental that a ligion to Negro protest and resistance. Without such an attempt we shall be in slaveholder said in the 1830s, "The deeper the piety of the slave, the more valu- danger of fruitlessly trying to apply the religion of Ulrich Phillips' Negroes to able he is in every respect."sThis was a widespread opinion. Nor was that elo- the defiant men and women who often leap out of the pages of Aptheker and quent refugee from slaver¡'William Wells Brown, wrong when in 1850 he Stampp. To quote Douglass slightly out of context, "we can entertain no such claimed that religious instruction for his fellow-bondsmen consisted "in teaching nonsense as this. ." (Even Marxists came to realize that religious commitment the slave that he must never strike a white man, that God made him a slave; and might produce revolutionary action. 13 Those who claim to be unhindered by the that when whipped he must find no fault. ."e fetters ofideology can do no less.) That was likely an accurate description of most instruction, and many slaves seem to live by it. (Generall¡ of course, they had no other choice than to give at least an impression that they did.) However the present dispute does not center II there. Rather this paper seeks to raise the issue of the ambiguit¡ the doubleness, It has seemed wise for the present to confine this statement to the period of black religions experience. It seeks not to deny the opiate quality of much 1800-1860, and to focus on Negroes in the South.Therefore it may be significant slave religion but to offer the suggestion that there were significant, identifiable to note that it was in 1800 that South Carolina's legislature indicated a keen aware- black responses to religion which often stormed beyond submissiveness to ness of the connections between black rebellion and black an defiance. possible religion, awareness that was apparently tlre property of many southern white persons. Perhaps Frederick Douglass best sets the scene for an understanding of this In that year the legislature passed one of the first of those countless nineteenth- ambiguous and two-edged Negro reaction to religions teaching. In one of his au- century laws restricting black religious services.This one forbade Negroes tobiographical rvritings, this most famous of fugitive slaves, recorded words which scarcely covered his underlying scorn. He said, even in company with white persons to meet together and assemble for the RELIGION AND RESISTANCE AMONG ANTEBELLUM SLAVES :: I I 3 I I 2 :: AFRICAN_AMERICAN RELIGION in Ma¡ 1810, to instance, one Richard Byrd of that state wrote to his Governor purpose of .