Monday, June 24, 2013
slave religion
I enjoyed reading about the religion of slaves and how the white slave owners tried to control it to avoid rebellion. The beliefs that the slave owners tried to impose on the slaves was often ineffective. I was left unsure why slaves didn't use religion to unite and try to rebel against the system. Did anyone catch what Genovese says about this?
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Purav: I was interested to some degree with the central place of Christianity in the book also. For me, I understood Genovese as showing that just as Christianity provided emotional and spiritual support to the slaves' humanity and their collective identity, Christianity also provided a moderation of their impulses to revolution against the oppressive slave system. One way it did this was by directing their hopes to an afterlife where they would be free of their domination. After I did a little online search on the Negro spiritual of the book's title and read the scripture verses in the Old Testament book of Joshua which narrates the former Hebrew slaves preparing to cross the river Jordan into the promised land of freedom did I begin to understand what the title of the Negro spiritual, "Roll, Jordan, Roll" might have meant to the slaves in their singing.
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