Readings

Chapter 2

From what I read in this weeks reading I could not help but see a connection between what Christianity is and teaches and what it keeps in place for the times.
--Page 39: "Slaves and free blacks appropriated the Gospel message and reshaped it to Afro-Christianity, but white evangelicals eventually abanoned their early antislavery position because they aspired to respcetability among slaveholders."
In this example from the text, it makes it seem as though in early teachings of christianity and evangelical thoughts were that slavery was wrong and that it was not a very christian act, but the thought was pushed aside to get slaveholders (rich plantation owners) on the side of evangelicals, for power or money, and thus is an example of how the christian doctrine can be changed and reinterpreted according to the times and what the public and majority has in mind.

It seems as though in the pre-civil war era christian doctrine was used in the south to reinforce what slaves went through and that what was done was ok and christian. but i find it interesting that slaves took the same religion as their owners but did not take everything; they did not take up hate, but a sense of hope.
--Page 43: "The slaves embraced the faith of their masters, and, however creative and potentially subversive the result, most did not use their religion as an occcasion to rise up against their oppressors."
This shows that the slave, afro-christian interpretation of the christian doctrine was one of love and hope in a loving god, yet the white christian took it into another more active subversive light, yet it was all the same text.

Page 46: "The 'body' of the church might be black and female, but 'the mind of the church' was white and male."
For some reason this was a scary image to me. Like a puppet and puppeteer. The fact that women and slaves were the mass of the church and the doers and followers, whereas the men controlled and interpreted the texts of "god" (was it what god wanted or what they wanted to get out of it?) and preached to these minds. scary.