African American Religion In Slavery

During Slavery African Americans created oral traditions, as well as practiced, and created their own idiosyncratic religious practices. Slave owners had tried to create an atmosphere where all slaves were not unique and had no individuality. However, due to the treatment by owners slaves created a religious and folk culture specific to their community that gave them hope and humanized them; through this they were even able to enable resistance to their masters.
Masters tried to teach slaves about Christianity by creating specific slave churches were slave owning ministers would go and teach the slaves. However, this heavily backfired, “The like of this is the preaching, and these are the men that spread the Gospel among the slaves. Ah! such …show more content…
In addition due to the lack of bibles and actual gospel slaves would often write their own songs to be featured in sermons. These songs often detailed their own tribulations as slaves like the harsh work conditions they endured. At the beginning the speaker would start off slowly and then grew louder and louder. The whole crowd would eventually let the spirit of the room take them causing them to all fall to ground out of excitement (Randolph Peter, “The Difference Between the Christianity Taught by Masters and Practiced by Slaves”). These sermons provided them with hope as well that they may not have to be enslaved for the entirety of their lives. Slaves would often put people on watch to prevent them from being discovered this was because of the harsh reaction masters would have towards slaves. For example if a slave was being punished and they called for God they would be told that if they were to do so again they would have, “throat cut, or their brains blown out” (Randolph Peter, “The Difference Between the Christianity Taught by Masters and Practiced by Slaves”). They were threatened for their lives and still wanted to practice Christianity because it had become part of their identity. This is an early sign of slaves integrating to mainstream western culture prior to the abolition of …show more content…
However, there were other religions that played an important role in the development of slave culture. Voodoo or Vodun culture, which literally translates to resistance or war, caused there to be an even greater divide between masters and slaves. The communal experience of helplessness and oppression that each slave felt fueled the beliefs of this new religion that spread widely over the New World like Haiti and parts of the south like Louisiana (Genovese 175). Voodoo really represented an opportunity for the slaves to break away from the established social hierarchy they were subjected to with no hope of escape. It gave them the illusion and hope of power over their powerless situation with practices like spells that gave them a sense of leverage over their masters (in their own minds). In specific conjuration or witchcraft became a popular practice in which slaves would remunerate other slaves, specifically those with the title of conjurer for the service of preventing them from being beaten or killed. The conjurer would do this by mixing ingredients into a powder and would then proceed to sprinkle it around the master by doing this the master would be prevented or unwilling to want to beat or kill the