Part 3: The African-American a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind Today

In discussing Christianity's role in slavery, I too wonder with Harrison's assertion that "it would seem that the Negroes of all Americans, would be found in the Freethought fold, since they have suffered more than any other class of Americans from the dubious blessing of Christianity". For as Harrison illustrates the "dubious blessing" of Christianity, were 1. Christianity was used to justify the enslavement of Africans by using the bible for divine sanction of this "peculiar institution", with text such as "Cursed be Canaan", "Servants obey Your Masters" and 2. Christianity stressed "servile virtues of subservience and content" and as we can see "these things have bitten deeply into the souls of black folk." In other words, the very book they call the word of god and the Christian religion the Black folk follow was the very thing used to enslave them and it still does. The Christian Slaveholder knew the Christianity was an effective tool that could be used for subjugation, for they saw how it subdued the Roman Empire and the subsequent European tribes that came into contact with it. In fact, Harrison shows us how it was used in Africa to subdue and create colonialism through missionaries. For when the African closed their eyes the African had the bible and the Europeans had the land. He shows how B. L. Putnam Weale's book the Conflict of Color, naively advised the Lords of Empire (The Imperialist) not to civilize but Christianized Africa in the caption "The Black Sampson and White Delilah", so that "Delilah's work may well be done. Here in America her work has been well done and I fear that many years must pass before the leaders of thought among my people contribute many representatives to the cause of Freethought". 97 years later and still African-American leaders of thought among my people hasn't contributed much for the cause, for example, intellectuals like Cornell West and Michael Dyson, who is a Baptist minister, they both teach or have taught at Ivy League schools and proudly calls themselves Christians. Instead, of becoming theological critics or religious dissidents using historical or higher criticism or other methods that could help deliver their people from the mental bondage of their ancestor's slave-master religion (Christianity); they advocate and proclaim it! As Harrison states " the church among the Negroes exerts a more powerful influence than anything else in the sphere of ideas. Why is this? Harrison contends and I agree that "Nietzsche's contention that the ethics of Christianity are the slave ethics... Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction. And he concludes that "Here in America the spirit of the Negro has been transformed by three centuries of subjection, physical and mental, so they have even glorified the fact of subjection and subservience. I think this "forbearance" was used during the civil rights movement that advocated "non-violence" and "is found in the fact that their spirits had been completely crushed by the system of slavery". For example, a lot of those who participated in the Civil Rights movement glorify and praise how African-Americans allow dogs to bite them and water through fire hoses to knock them down.