LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013 research post 2

Amanda Newell

The Dark Side of Religion

            Religion has been a powerful tool to change and control people, cultures and societies for centuries.  It has been used as a pathway for immigrants to assimilate and be more quickly accepted into a new society. It has also been used to force people to fit into a society they did not want to or ask to join.

            Religion was used as a weapon to destroy traditional Native American culture. The main avenue for spreading Anglo-American religion was the schools that were built to “save” the Native American from their savage upbringing. The schools’ goals were to replace Native American children’s traditional religion and culture with the new American culture. “Many of the schools were founded by religious missionaries and white philanthropists distressed over the misery of American Indians and committed to improving their future, which they could imagine only in terms of assimilation" (Dr.White, LITR 4332). Many of these schools were called “laboratories of domestication, the primary means by which Native languages, cultures, and identities were to be pounded out and reshaped" (Bess). The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was one of the most infamous of these schools whose goal was to "Kill the Indian and save the man," said the founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Dr.White).

            Americans also used religion to save or “Americanize” slaves from Africa. Many African slaves had their own religion they practiced in their homelands, but these religions were seen as pagan to Europeans and they felt it was their obligation to save the souls of the Africans.

And finally, if indigenous people refused to forsake the god of their religion and resisted entrusting their lives to the conqueror in the name of Christ, it was not only legal but also an act of faith, a religious duty sanctioned by God, for Christian imperialists to use whatever force was necessary—murder, starvation, rape, disease, physical exhaustion, and slavery in perpetuity—in order to rescue inferior benighted brethren, identified as heathens, savages, infidels, pagans, and enemies of Christ. Such self-serving racist myths trapped millions of Africans and their descendants in a lifetime of chattel slavery and unmitigated poverty. (Cannon)

It was not enough that Europeans and Americans had to take their freedom from the Africans but they had to take away one of the things that connects them to their homeland and the one thing they could lean on for support, as many Christians do. To put salt in the wound of the African slaves was that the Americans used the Christianity they were focusing on the Africans to justify their rights for enslaving them.

Equally important is the theologic of racialized normativity, a concept that has its own unique history inside of Christianity. as a theoethical idea, it refers to the constellation of structured white supremacy ideology, wherein Caucasian people of European descent proclaim themselves ordained by God as the superior, natural masters, hereditarily pure, glorious, free citizens, while crafting subordinate status justifications for people of African descent as natural slaves, inherently defective, depraved, and inferior. Culturally appalling essentialized stereotypes of inferiorization served as boundary markers, labeling Africans and their descendants as beasts of burden, liabilities to civilization, infectious progenitors of sin, and carriers of the corruptive powers like the snake in the Garden of Eden. (Cannon)

Africans not only lost their freedom when Europeans and Americans decided to exploit them but lost their humanity.

            After slavery was abolished in the United States in the year 1865, many African Americans decided to stay with the Christian religion but move to a more accepting denomination or create some of their own, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Besides taking obvious sociopolitical stances (especially against slavery and in favor of the advancement of blacks) and establishing schools, the AME church promoted the general literacy and education of blacks by founding various outlets for literary expression and development. Among those initiatives was its launching of the AME Book Concem, a publishing organ that issued books, pamphlets, song books, and broadsides that generally promoted a black religious agenda. (Carter)

It is surprising to me that many African Americans would stay with a religion that repressed them and their ancestors for so long. It seems that many have looked to what is generally seen as the true nature of Christianity, the nature of forgiveness and acceptance.

In conclusion, religion can drastically alter a person’s life or a whole social group’s life. Generations of Native Americans had their traditions stolen from them. These stolen generation were stuck between two worlds; one the traditional world they did not understand and the new world who did not want them, Christian or not. Who knows how strong or weak the Native Americans would have been if the new “Americans” did not decide to save them?  Many African generations were stolen too. The first slaves who could still remember their native tongue and religion were separated from anyone who could understand them and slowly lost their past and were not able to pass on the stories of their homeland to younger generations. The stories and ways of Africa were slowly lost through the generations.  Religion can be a safe haven that some people turn to for protection but can also be a weapon of mass social destruction for others. 

Citations:

1.      Bess, Jennifer. "Casting A Spell: Acts Of Cultural Continuity In Carlisle Indian Industrial School's The Red Man And Helper." Wicazo Sa Review 26.2 (2011): 13-38. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

2.      Cannon, Katie Geneva. “Cutting Edge: Christian Imperialism And The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Journal of Feminist Studies In Religion, 24.1 (2008): 127-134. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 19 Apr. 2013

3.      Carter, Tomeiko Ashford. “The Sentiment of The Christian Serial Novel: The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride and the AME Christian Recorder.” African American Review 40.4 (2006): MLA International Bibliography. Web. 21 Apr. 2013

4.      Dr. White, LITR 4332: http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/texts/Amerind/ZitkalaSaAIS/ZitSaNDX.html