Slave Religion Research Paper
We'll soon be free,
We'll soon be free,
We'll soon be free,
When de Lord will call us home. For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation of bondage and naturally transmitted into traditional religious practices that have since served as a pillar of African-American culture. Overall, this genuine faith created a common bond among enslaved African-Americans who forcibly scattered across fifteen of the twenty-six American States. According to 1860 U.S. census data, 3,953,000 occupied Southern and Border States--the largest number lived in Virginia, with Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina following respectively. Although long distances separated enslaved families and friends, a natural increase in the slave population preserved and transmitted religious practices which became truly “African-American”. Even though countless research and data proves that Christianity generally impacted slaves as a group, slavery had a wide variety of faces, which created differences among individual slaves. In the Antebellum South, enslaved African-American’s worked in rural and urban areas within the parameters of white slave-owners and fellow blacks. The diverse forms of slavery correlated mainly with the slave’s location in the south and not only impacted the slave’s day-to-day life but affected the religious landscape for African-American slaves. Although the
We'll soon be free,
We'll soon be free,
When de Lord will call us home. For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation of bondage and naturally transmitted into traditional religious practices that have since served as a pillar of African-American culture. Overall, this genuine faith created a common bond among enslaved African-Americans who forcibly scattered across fifteen of the twenty-six American States. According to 1860 U.S. census data, 3,953,000 occupied Southern and Border States--the largest number lived in Virginia, with Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina following respectively. Although long distances separated enslaved families and friends, a natural increase in the slave population preserved and transmitted religious practices which became truly “African-American”. Even though countless research and data proves that Christianity generally impacted slaves as a group, slavery had a wide variety of faces, which created differences among individual slaves. In the Antebellum South, enslaved African-American’s worked in rural and urban areas within the parameters of white slave-owners and fellow blacks. The diverse forms of slavery correlated mainly with the slave’s location in the south and not only impacted the slave’s day-to-day life but affected the religious landscape for African-American slaves. Although the
Bibliography: Oxford University Press, 1972. Print. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers ' Project, 1936-1938. Library of Congress, 23 Mar Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1999 Jones, Charles Colock. Religious Instruction. 1834, p. 77-80 May, Nicholas. "Holy Rebellion: Religious Assembly Laws in Antebellum South Carolina and Virginia." The American Journal of Legal History 49.3 (2007): 237-56 [ 8 ]. Stanley, Slavery, 149; Stuckey, Slave Culture, 102; Young, Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation: African American Slaves and Christianity, 1830-1870, 201-203 [ 9 ] [ 10 ]. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 147-159; Library of Congress, Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer’s Project, 1936-1938; [ 11 ]