Is it time for another emancipation proclamation from Christianity for a community that has been oppressed by it for 200+ years?
June 19th, also known as Juneteenth is an important day in the African American community. It was on this day in 1865 that slaves in the state of Texas found out that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation three years before, but word had not gotten to the slaves in Texas that they were free.
That same year, the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution was passed, and that made slavery illegal in all US states and territories.
Juneteenth is a celebration of the freeing of slaves and the outlawing of an immoral institution. Juneteenth is usually celebrated with carnivals, beauty pageants and singing of gospel songs such as “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, also known as the “Black National Anthem”.
One notices the thread of gospel songs such as “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Go Down Moses (Let My People Go)”. That is because the African-American community is, in spite of the oppression the community has suffered at the hands of fellow Christians, very strongly Christian.
They largely credit Christianity, or at least what they feel Christianity is, with providing them strength and helping to mobilize the community to fight for their rights. The civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was a reverend, and so were many of the leaders of the civil rights movement. But perhaps it’s time for the African American community to re-evaluate this religion once and for all, if they truly want to be, as Dr. King put it “Free at last!”.
How did the African-Americans become Christian?
The majority of African-Americans have ancestry that traces back to what is now Ghana.
They were brought on ships that left the west coast of the African continent, endured a grueling journey on the middle passage, and finally ending up in the European colonies in North America, South America and the Caribbean.
In the American colonies, the slaves were disallowed from practicing their indigenous religion. Some white slave masters would preach to their slaves on Sundays and read certain passages from the bible. Eventually, with the slaves being disconnected from their culture and traditions due to being away from their home, they started to accept Christianity and make it their own. Some “benevolent” white slave masters would allow for their slaves to be baptized; a few would even do so themselves. The slaves took Christian names, more often than not they took the surname of their masters.
Even if they converted to Christianity, slave masters more often than not did not allow their slaves to learn how to read, even the bible. African-Americans adapted to that and would hear the bible passages their slave masters would read, then they would repeat it in song mode. This helped to give rise to gospel music style, which has been part of American musical history for more than 200 years. One person starts with a line, then the rest of the group repeats it. Just hear this African-American spiritual, as they call it, from the movie “12 Years a Slave”:
To further limit what their slaves could listen to, a group of slave masters and their supporters created a “slave bible”, which omitted the exodus story, in which Moses demanded his people be freed from the slavery of the Egyptian rulers and emphasized passages that command slaves to obey their masters even if they are cruel. In summary, the African-American community became Christian because they had no choice. But it was their resiliency that helped them adapt Christianity to their own sort of style, borrowing elements from their previous culture as well as using the bible as a “liberation tool”. Much like Latin Americans came up with “liberation theology”, African-Americans claimed the bible and Jesus as their own. That unfortunately has had a deleterious effect on the development of the community since they were emancipated more than 200 years ago.
The insidious effects of the Christianizing of the African-Americans
African-American Christians are left with many traditions that were started during the slave era, that are still practiced to this day in their churches. These traditions emphasize how the white Christians thought of their fellow Christians who were not white.
Take for instance, this tradition of church ushers wearing white gloves. Ushers are the ones who collect tithe money from the parishioners. Apparently, when slaves were forced into serving at white churches, they were asked to wear white gloves in order to not contaminate white parishioners they were collecting money from. They were also forced to hold their hands behind their backs so that their slave masters could make sure they were not stealing tithe money. This is unfortunately still a tradition in African-American churches today.
There were also tests such as the vein test and the comb test, which were used to keep out African-Americans who were less white. If no one could see your veins when shaking your hand, or if you couldn’t comb your hair through in one pass, you wouldn’t be let in.
This, in addition to the segregation of African-American and White American Christians; each group had (and still have) their own churches with no mixing at all. Dr. King said it best when he said “11:00 am on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the country”. Many white Christians will argue that African-American Christians are not adequate Christians, because their church services are loud. Starting last year in 2020, after the riots following the murder of George Floyd, many white Christian church leaders are attempting to reach out to African-American churches to reconcile with them. However, they are only doing so because they are saving face. They could care less otherwise, it’s an empty gesture.
A personal anecdote: I once went to an African-American Seventh Day Adventist sabbath service once, with my brother and my mother. I actually liked it. The pastor was loud and exuberant and the congregants were far from quiet. They would often show “Amen!” periodically. And the music service was what you would expect.
Where does the justification for dehumanizing the African-Americans come from?
All of this is rooted in the bible of course. The story goes:
“The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded[a] to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said, “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”
He also said, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”
~ Genesis 9:18-27
The story is widely understood to mean the descendants of Ham, or Canaan, are dark skinned, while the descendants of Shem and Japheth are light skinned, and that enslaving the descendants of Ham is justified. The “curse of Ham” as it is widely known, was used to justify slavery in the USA until 1865, when the civil war ended. It was also used to justify segregation in the southern USA states until 1965, meaning whites and African-Americans lived in separate parts of cities and towns, had separate schools, and separate societies. It was also used to justify lynchings of African-Americans accused of any sort of crime, big or small. White Christians thought nothing of sending postcards celebrating lynchings to other fellow white Christians, as you can see in this example here:
Conclusion
It’s my sincere hope that African-Americans can reevaluate the utility of this “religion”. But it has to come from within the community. It cannot come from outside. It will involve a lot of introspection, research, questioning and re-questioning. I would argue the gains made in fighting for civil rights has occurred not because of Christianity, but in spite of it. It comes from others recognizing that there is something wrong with bible passages that justifies poor treatment of a group of human beings just because of their skin color. It’s going to have to be a constant process, and there will also need to be an alternative to Christianity. An alternative that replicates the positive aspects of the church, such as providing social services for the community as well as participating in violence prevention in urban neighborhoods rife with violence. That answer will have to come from within the community though.
