This page was created by Ashley M. Byock. The last update was by Caitlin Downey.
Praxis Journal Entry 1 -- 8/29/16
Before class on Wednesday, August 31, come back to this page and type up short excerpts from each of your two passages. This will give you some text to work with in class on Wednesday. Be sure to make a note of the page and text you're quoting!
In class on Wednesday, we will work on creating annotations -- so go to the Scalar 2 User Guide (link on Blackboard) and learn about creating annotations.
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I don't know if we're supposed to use that focus question above or create our own. The focus question I chose for myself is, "how did Christianity/religion intersect with slavery for Douglass during his time as a slave?". The following two passages come from the appendix to the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader:
"What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, 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...I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, 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". (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, p. 93)
"They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors". (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, p.95)
I found this quote particularly moving, so I'll include it here as well: "The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master". (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, p.94)
During his time as a slave Christianity was largely—but not entirely--a negative experience for Douglass. Although he sometimes sounds anti-Christian and anti-religious in his Narrative, Douglass actually was a religious man, and he attempted to clarify this in the appendix when he wrote “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land” (p. 93). Douglass felt God’s presence from a young age, attributing his move to Baltimore to an act of divine providence (p.47) and crediting God with giving him the will to live and persevere even in the darkest moments of his life (p. 47).
Douglass learned early on that religion often made a slaveholder even more cruel because it gave them a moral and social justification for their actions and a community of like-minded supporters. Douglass hoped that one of his later masters (who married into slavery) might be inspired to emancipate his slaves after experiencing a religious awakening, but the master’s newfound beliefs and community only inspired worse cruelty to his slaves, whom he starved and beat in earnest even in the company of Christian ministers. White Christians claimed to espouse and practice Jesus’ teachings of love, humility, and acceptance and at the same time encourage slavery or passively allow it to happen. This was not true of all white Christians (as Douglass says of some of the people who took him in after his escape, p. 91), but enough to entrench slavery further into American society and taint Douglass’ views of Christianity for his entire life.