Summary Of Raboteau Slave Religion

In Raboteau Slave Religion, Raboteau demonstrates the differences of African American spirituality from that of Europeans through showing the differences of how slavery manifested, rationalized and molded each belief system. In chapters three through six, the reader is brought on a journey through each religious world view to further understand the actions that made each “Christian”.
The Africans need of salvation and slavery being the hand of God to elucidate the heathen ways of the African, was a huge reason why evangelizing to slaves began. Slavery, an institution created to dominate both mind and body of enslaved, also had an interest of controlling one more thing; slave salvation. European missionaries believed it was these slaves earthly masters duty to align them with their Heavenly Father. Chapter Three continues with the eventual conversion of some slaves, while others are not eager to join a system which played a logical role in their enslavement.
The defined lines of what Christianity was amongst Africans and Europeans, and the roles each played in this new-found life, quickly took a turned into personal interpretation. In chapter four you quickly see how the institution that was presented to the enslaved to control them became a different truth
for the African. This new-found hope and strength in their father up above and believed that he could bring them through slavery united the enslaved even more.
This unity encouraged the African churches throughout the country.
Which made it even harder to live their lives in their new-found hope due to the lack of literacy, church regulations, and changes on plantations. Chapter Five’s main idea is the slavery amongst the enslaved being an institution by itself and the way both whites and black went about this institution. Once converted slaves amalgamated their Christian life with their slave lives; while whites did not. This caused problems on plantations when it came to issues like thief, lying and being a true follower of the faith. Slaves thought whites were apathetic to the Christian life and used the bible to their advantage to further ideals of
submission.
This abundance of apathy lead some slaves to believe that they were the moral standard, in addition to, believing a righteous God would reverse the roles of master and slave in the life to come. This non-hegemonic belief lead to both rebellions and rebellion conspiracies. The idea of Chapter Six being “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17) asked the question, what is the slave’s masters and what is God’s. Isn’t the slave and the slave master both children of God?