What role did family and religion play in the lives of enslaved African Americans?

Answer 1

A:We see in the New Testament epistles that the Church required of slaves that they submit to their masters. Also, slaves were not permitted to become Christians without the permission of their Christian owners, because the owners would be required not to work them on Sundays, thus reducing their economic value.

Answer 2

Whenever people are treated badly and unfair, family and religion are often more important. People in slavery in America turned to these bedrock social benefits to live better and more fulfilling lives.

Answer 3

Well, in terms of family, they had their children often ripped away to be sold, or killed if they were scrawny. The men could expect their wives to be forced to be sex slaves and breeders, and they themselves would be too busy with working to death to hold on to any semplance of religion.

Answer 4

If you are asking about American slaves, religion served a dual purpose. On the one hand, the white slaveowners, who were for the most part members of the Protestant religion, forced the slaves to accept Christianity. But since the slaves were kept illiterate, they had no way of knowing what the Bible said about slavery. Slaveowners wanted them to believe that blacks were inferior, and that this was according to the Bible (this is a myth-- slavery is indeed mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament, but it was not decided by race. A person became a slave if he or she were captured in a war, and in some cases, the word "slave" was closer to an indentured servant, someone too poor and too unskilled to survive, who had entered into a relationship with a "master" that would, theoretically, end one day).

So, the version of Christianity promoted to the slaves was one that encouraged acceptance of their servitude and their inferiority, with the promise that God and Jesus would reward their faithfulness after they died. Slaves were also encouraged to accept being beaten and to see their suffering as punishment for their sinful nature. Again, the reward would come in Heaven after death. This version of religion actually seems to have proved somewhat comforting to the slaves-- they felt that God did see their suffering, and that He would one day set them free to live in His kingdom; many so-called "Negro spirituals," songs written and sung by the slaves, included this view.

But there was also another version of religion-- the religion practiced by many of the abolitionists. As they saw it, Christianity (and Judaism, since there were some Jewish abolitionists too, although most were from the Quaker denomination of Christianity) called upon believers to free the captive, and demanded that believers bring justice to the world, which meant putting an end to the brutal conditions under which the slaves lived. Many former slaves also embraced this activist version of Christianity, where they worked to bring an end to slavery and promote equality, since the Bible says that we are all equal in the sight of God. It cannot be overstated how deeply these abolitionists believed in that version of religion-- a version that does not allow for standing idly by when someone is being mistreated.