Essay On Slave Religion

New interpretations of religion also developed from the influence of African slaves. Due to their captors being largely Methodist many African slaves coverted to Christianity, however they assimulated many of their own beliefs into the religion putting an emphasis on Jesus being one who liberates (the context behind being the scripture where Jesus liberates the Hebrew people). "Cut off from their native African religions, most slaves became Christians but fused elements of African and Wesern traditions and drew their own conclusions from Scripture. White Christains might point to Christ 's teachings of humility and obeidiance to encourage slaves to "stay in their place," but black Christians emphasized God 's role in freeing the Hebrews …show more content…
As stated in a text: "the real reasons for slavery were hardheaded economic decisions by ambitious entrepreneurs, who realized early on that a slave-labor system in the labor-intensive agriculture world of the American South and the Caribbean was more profitable than a free-labor system." (Doc. 4). At one point planters hired former indentured servants who would work for very little money but there were drawbacks entreprenuerally to this. Indentured servants cost very little to employ but they still cost more in the long run than owning slaves. They were also quite unpreditable and hard to control as their multiple revolts had proved (such as Bacon 's Rebellion), where slaves could be more easily controlled because they were regarded as property and had no rights. They could be 'disciplined ' in any way their owners saw fitting without any protection under the law; the discipline could very well constitute flogging or even in some extreme cases death (such as after the New York slave Revolt in 1712 where 21 slaves who tried to revolt were burned slowly at the stake). These violent and inhumane punishments served to somewhat deter revolt by keeping the slaves living in