Essay on "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Perversion of Christianity by American Slave-Holding Masters -- as Told by Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Slavery remains to be one of the most shameful periods of American history. It was a cruel institution that deprived millions of human beings of dignity, human rights, and freedom for three hundred years. It was also an institution that corrupted those practicing it. To justify their practice of human bondage, American slaveholders resorted to moral and religious hypocrisy. They began to interpret the Bible as it fitted their needs, perverting the meaning of Christianity to justify slavery. Frederick Douglass, a slave who escaped the cruel bondage and became an eloquent abolitionist, exposed this religious hypocrisy of slaveholders in his autobiography. Douglass made it clear that the way American slaveholders practiced Christianity was incoherent, hypocritical, and a perversion of true Christianity.

Douglass begins his narrative with the description of his upbringing and mentions how the slaveholders' interpretation of the story of Ham in the Bible did not withstand the reality of life. American slaveholders claimed that God had cursed Ham and that his descendants then became Africans who, to redeem themselves, needed to serve their masters well. But Douglass explains that the story was incoherent because it did not take into consideration that "a very different-looking class of people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their increase will do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters" (19). Slaveholders claimed that all slaves were descendants of Ham and therefore were in slavery, but Douglass and many thousands had white parents and were nevertheless in bondage. How could the story of Ham withstand in the face of this, Douglass is asking here? He is also making a veiled suggestion that the slaveholders may soon concoct a new theory intended to justify the enslavement of children who had both white and black parents.

The lack of logic in slaveholders' quasi-religious theories was not the only problem of the way they practiced Christianity. Douglass argues that his masters were religious hypocrites. They claimed or pretended to be religious and pious but were in reality cruel and sadistic. In his narrative, Douglass recalls how his master attended a Methodist camp-meeting in 1832 and converted to religion. Douglass says he hoped that this religious experience would encourage his master to free his slaves or at least make him more humane. "I was disappointed in both these respects," Douglass writes. "It neither made him to be human to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to be have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty" (p. 62). Douglass is saying here that his master was cruel but true to his own depraved… READ MORE

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