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The most religious area of the country is the south and that is the same area where slavery was most abundant. I'm not religious, but from what I understand, being a christian is support to drive your morals, behavior, your entire cultural outlook.
How do you reconcile that with the rampant slavery and jim crow era all the way up until it was legally struck down? The whole thing doesn't make sense and makes me understand religion, or the role religion plays in peoples lives even less.
I am no theologian. But aren't many, perhaps most, religions around the world guilty of massive hypocrisy? Haven't civilizations that were guided by religions all been guilty of massive atrocities at one time or another?
Whether a crusade, jihad, slavery, or a world war, they have all been guilty of crimes against humanity at the same time they advocated love of all mankind.
At least during slavery, the North was far more religious than the South. The whole Bible Belt thing in the South didn't actually start until around the turn of the century and then grew from there primarily as Baptists. As to how Baptists were able to align the concept of Jim Crow and their religion, I have no idea. Not a Baptist and have no plans to be one.
I'm more perplexed at how the 'religious right' has merged Christianity with rampant capitalism, selfishness, and intolerance, blames poor people for their situation, and turned it's back on compassion and help thy neighbor.
The most religious area of the country is the south and that is the same area where slavery was most abundant. I'm not religious, but from what I understand, being a christian is support to drive your morals, behavior, your entire cultural outlook.
How do you reconcile that with the rampant slavery and jim crow era all the way up until it was legally struck down? The whole thing doesn't make sense and makes me understand religion, or the role religion plays in peoples lives even less.
During that time it was thought that blacks were sub-human, and to primitive a race to be able to learn.
Some effort was given to breeding as well as is done for horses and dogs. This wasn't any American thing as slavery under any idea of American rule lasted just 76 years.
This idea persisted from time of antiquity in Europe, the Middle East and any places black slave ended up. Blacks fought wars and the slaves were just the spoils of war.l So slavery began by blacks selling other blacks to the Muslims and slavery of blacks is alive and well in the Middle East today.
Of course today it is the USA that is to be blamed a country that didn't even exist at the dawn of slavery. blacks have been enslaved for more than 4,000 years. I have no idea when slavery first began, but can find evidence at 4,000 years with no problem.
Blacks were not and are not the only race to be enslaved either.
Slavery pre-dates Christianity.
My family on my dads mothers side were abolitionists and fought for the Union . They were Christians too helping others when they could your point is lost on me when so much was sacrificed to right a wrong? Remember slavery was a southern Democrat institution Republicans are the party of Lincoln liberators of oppression .
Religion period is used for keeping people, especially certain people, in bondage so that others can have power over them and others can have it easier in life. Worldwide, religion has been used to take away the rights of others, so certain people can have power and has always been that way.
The most religious area of the country is the south and that is the same area where slavery was most abundant. I'm not religious, but from what I understand, being a christian is support to drive your morals, behavior, your entire cultural outlook.
How do you reconcile that with the rampant slavery and jim crow era all the way up until it was legally struck down? The whole thing doesn't make sense and makes me understand religion, or the role religion plays in peoples lives even less.
Why did Christians create the Republican party, put Lincoln in the White House, and go to war against the South to end slavery?
Jim Crow laws were horrible, and a testament to how government intervention always ends badly. The laws had nothing to do with religion. I'm outwardly white, but if I had lived in the south (under Jim Crow), I would have been segregated.
There were actually two competing camps within American Christianity regarding how to justify slavery. It was in fact one of the great religious debates of the 18th century. The two groups were called the "Polygenists" and the "Monogenists"
The Monogenists ("one origin") claimed that blacks were being enslaved as a punishment by God resulting from the "Curse of Ham" (more correctly, the "Curse of Canaan") in Genesis 9. Monogenist Christians considered blacks to be of the race of "Ham" or "Hamites," and blamed the curse for the color of their skin and their subservient position to whites.
The Polygenists ("many origin") took a harder line and insisted that blacks were not even human beings, but instead a different species of animal... specifically beasts of the fields as created on the 6th day of Creation Week.
Neither group doubted black inferiority or the morality of slavery. They just had different Biblical rationale for the belief.
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