African Americans and Christianity

[kiki1690]

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

I just had a thought today about Blacks and Christianity. Didn't the colonizers,slave owners etc use the Bible as justification for slavery? didn't they try to eradicate Blacks own religion to replace with that of their God?Wasn't the Bible used in justification for segregation etc? So why are so many Blacks today devout Christians when the basis of it all was used to oppress them? Maybe they would say those are not "True Christians" but that's a No True Scotsman fallacy.

What are your thoughts?

[drunkenshoe]

Unfortunately, religion doesn't work that way. If it did, just looking around would make people run from it. They just embrace it harder the worse it gets.

[aitm]

Christianity is a religion hand built for the slaves and poor. Many other religions were part of the deification of those who composed it and benefited from it, the powerful and wealthy, not particularly exclusive of each other.

[Baruch]

CAn't speak for African-Americans.  But most slaves who came to N America ... were either Pagan or Muslim to begin with.  The first Muslims in the US were Muslim slaves.  People tend to forget this.  I don't think, given the usefulness of slave mentality is for managing slaves, that Christianity was hard to sell to slaves, whose families were regularly broken up.  White America still seeks to break up Black families ... mostly thru drug dealing and street crime and dysfunctional welfare.  And of course there are Uncle Toms available to help out the White oppressor.  Listen to Cornel West some time.

Eventually some African-Americans did recover their African-ness back in the 60s, and the cult of Nation of Islam before that.  After the assassination of Malcolm X and MLK and the death of Elijah Muhammad ... most Nation of Islam folks became regular African-American Muslims ... as Malcolm X was pointing toward.  So in the US, anytime we think of Muslims, we are often thinking of Blacks not Arabs.  Most Muslim Arabs are in Canada or around Detroit.  Even earlier, Marcus Garvey tried to build a cult of "back to Africa" as well.  Usually assimilationists like Frederick Douglas were most influential.

[Jack89]

Slavery was common practice and acceptable by most of the world until just a couple of hundred years ago, regardless of race or religion.  As far as Christian go, some thought it was fine, and others opposed it.  Some of the first abolitionists in America were the Quakers in the mid 17th century, who considered themselves Christians at the time. 

[AllPurposeAtheist]

The main selling point for Christianity is the notion that everything will be honky dorey someday, but you gotta die to find out if it's true.  In many christian minds you can be a shithead all your life as long as you believe that the big spooky will treat you all spiffy in the next life. It really doesn't matter your station in life as long as you mumble those magic words.. Forgive me I'm a sinner,  yadda yadda yadda... Or as Arlo Guthrie sings in Alices Restaurant.. All you gotta do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.. ..with feelin!