Abstract
Slavery in the United States occupied national attention and inspired religious, legal, and political battles to an extent that few other issues have. It became one of the most fiercely and continually debated controversies in the nation’s history, leading to massive legal and cultural changes. In this essay, I examine two factors regarding the Bible that shaped the nature of American debates over slavery. First, the Bible is steeped in the ideology of slavery. It comprises writings by authors who conformed to their societies’ customs in embracing slavery as a legitimate practice. Second, the Bible was a symbol of tremendous authority, making it difficult for abolitionists challenging the legitimacy of slavery to use the Bible convincingly in their arguments. Because so few individuals ever conceived of challenging the Bible itself, religious debates over slavery typically concerned what the Bible meant and not the problem of human brutality, per se.
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Notes
Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 20–25.
David M. Whitford, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era: The Bible and the Justifications for Slavery (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009)
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Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002
Thomas Virgil Peterson, Ham and Japheth: The Mythic World of Whites in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978
On racial classification, see Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993
Robert E. Hood, Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994
Colin Kidd, Forging of Races; and Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997) 103–142.
Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph (Boston: Bartholomew Green and John Allen, 1700) 1–3.
Samuel Hopkins, A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans, in Timely Articles on Slavery (1776; reprint, Miami: Mnemosyne, 1969) 563.
Joanna Brooks, American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 33–35.
Eddie S. Glaude, Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 60.
David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter Hinks (1829; reprint, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) 11, 13, 40.
Herman E. Thomas, “Toward an Understanding of Religion and Slavery in J. W. C. Pennington,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 6 (1979) 148–156.
James W. C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, 3rd ed. (1850; reprint, Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1971) 55.
James W. C. Pennington, A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People (1841; reprint, Detroit: Negro History Press, 1969) 17f.
James W. C. Pennington, Covenants Involving Moral Wrong Are Not Obligatory Upon Man: A Sermon Delivered in the Fifth Congregational Church, Hartford, on Thanksgiving Day, November 17th, 1842 (Hartford: H. T. Wells, 1842) 3f.
Pennington, Covenants Involving Moral Wrong, 10.
Josiah Priest, Slavery, as It Relates to the Negro, or African Race, Examined in the Light of Circumstances, History and the Holy Scriptures; with an Account of the Origin of the Black Man’s Color, Causes of His State of Servitude and Traces of His Character as Well in Ancient as in Modern Times: With Strictures on Abolitionism (Albany: Van Benthuysen, 1843) 146, 164, 270–280, 320f.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, in Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Philip Sheldon Foner (1782; reprint, New York: Halcyon, 1950) 145.
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Black Venus: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears, and Primitive Narratives in French (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999) 27.
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Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, “The Divine Sanction of Social Order: Religious Foundations of the Southern Slaveholders’ World View,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55 (1987) 211–233; J. Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 184–187.
Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1998); and Freedom in the Making of Western Culture (New York: Basic, 1991).
Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (Boston: Beacon, 2004) 35–45.
Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: Norton, 2006).
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’ Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1973)
Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1993
Musa Dube, Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000
Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997
Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993
See Itumeleng Mosala, “Why Apartheid Was Right About the Unliberated Bible: Race, Class, and Gender as Hermeneutical Factors in the Appropriation of Scripture,” Voices from the Third World 17 (1994) 151–159
See also Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation, tenth anniversary ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1995).
See the introduction to Vincent L. Wimbush, ed., African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2000).
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© 2010 Bernadette J. Brooten
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Johnson, S.A. (2010). The Bible, Slavery, and the Problem of Authority. In: Brooten, B.J. (eds) Beyond Slavery. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230113893_14
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