Saturday, September 22, 2012
Religion and Slavery
Something interesting that I noticed between the Preface and the Narrative is that both of them comment on the idea of religion in relation to slavery, albeit more so in the Preface. However, they seem to both view the concept a little differently. In the Narrative, Douglass seems to use religion as something that the slave owners used to justify their actions, and he speaks about it in a vehement manner. In the Preface, Stowe fully recognizes that religion has some part to blame for slavery, but then he he comments on how Christianity can be used for redemption towards the end of his Preface. I find it interesting how both of these people view it differently even though the gap between both of these readings is very small. Frederick Douglass's narrative and this Preface are only 7 years apart. Did something happen during that time that allowed people to view religion in a different manner regarding slavery? And Is Stowe's view that of one person or a collection of people?
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Interesting indeed Raghav. I agree that Douglass and Stowe had seemingly skewed views on Christianity. Stowe shed a more positive light on religion, while Douglass was insecure and often questioning of gods virtue. “Does a Righteous God govern the universe?” Douglass goes to great length to narrate the evils of the “pious” slave holder. However, he also draws the distinction between Christianity as a faith and the denominations of the South that prospered from the donations of rich slaveholders, such as Thomas Auld. Douglass believes such faith to be corrupt, a farce, and man's justification for the brutality committed in God's name. He points out the contradiction between the wholesome teachings of the bible and cruel actions of the slaveholder.
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