Essay On Phillis Wheatley Religion

Religion has always played a huge role in history, back to ancient religions we now consider just to be mythology all the way to recent times. Christianity has played a very large role in world history over the past few centuries and the United States is no exception. During times of slavery religion has been used by both sides for their arguments, slaver owners use reference to slavery in the Bible as well of biological racism as a tool while Abolitionists tended to use more New Testament ideals and Jesus as a tool for their ideas. One abolitionist who used religion is Phyllis Wheatley, a poet who was born in Africa and brought to America at a young age as a slave. Wheatley calls out Christians in her writings, stating that true Christians …show more content…
He calls out Thomas Jefferson and other “christians” directly and aggressively. But, his intended audience is not those people, it’s the slave down south he smuggled his writings to. He argues that white christians are the real heathens and savages. That they would overthrow God himself if they were given the option, which is not a ridiculous notion by any sense. He also refers to white Christians as “christians,” lowercase. This is an indicator that he believed they didn’t even deserve the title, that they called themselves Christians but weren’t actually Christians in practice. This idea is also reflected in Harriet Jacob’s Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl, a narrative about her life that she published during the early years of the Civil War. Much like Wheatley, she addresses a mostly white audience, whom she directly addresses in several passages throughout the book. She calls out women to get their husbands going in trying to abolish slavery, she calls out religious figures for allowing slaveowners to use Christianity as an excuse, and she even tells missionaries to go to Africa and spread Christianity there and to make them stop selling their children into