Religion & Faith Helped Slaves Through It All

Religion is having faith and believing in something bigger then you. It’s something you

believe, agree with and follow physically, mentally and spiritually. It is also one of the main

reason African Americans were able to survive the institute of slavery. Through song and dance,

praise and worship, and faith and belief that God will make everything better one day. When

they had nothing but their faith to make it through (beatings, floggings, rapes, working in

unbearable weather, starving, being taken away from their family, watching family or spouses

being beaten or raped) they trusted and believed in God. The slave’s faith in his God was deep

and abiding. He was no abstraction, but a Being who took an interest in the lowly slave and

interceded in his behalf. He was the God of freedom to whom slaves prayed for deliverance from

bondage.1

One of the primary reasons the slaves were able to survive the cruelty they faced was that

their behavior was not totally dependent on their masters.2 The Supreme Being, the creator and

ruler of the universe, the alpha and omega better known as God was put before any slave owner

or master. No matter what could be done to them physically they believed spiritually what

mattered most and no matter what they would not let their spirits be broken. Religious faith often

conquered the slave’s fear of his master. The more pious slaves persisted in attending religious

services contrary to the order of their masters and in spite of floggings. In this test of wills the

slave asserted that his master could inflict on his body, but could not harm his Soul.3 Religious

faith gave an ultimate purpose to his life, a sense of communal fellowship and personal worth,

and reduced suffering from fear and anxiety … religion helped him to preserve his mental health.

1
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press,
1979), 74.
2
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 206.
3
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 75.
Trust in God was conducive to psychic health insofar as it excluded all anxiety-producing

preoccupations by the recognition of loving Providence.4

Slave children grew up on the plantations with the owner’s children, in some occasions

being treated cruelly by them and other occasions treated as their friends and not a slave. Those

who befriended the slave owner children had a rude awakening the first time they were beaten,

watched a beating and were put to work. Parents taught their children early not to do and say

certain thing and to trust and believe in God when those situations occurred. Many of slave

parents tried to inculcate a sense of morality in their children. The children were taught to be

honest and to lead Christian lives.5 William Webb asserted that his mother “taught me there was

a Supreme Being, that would take care of me in all my trials; she taught me not to rebel against

the men that were treating me like some dumb brute, making me work and refusing to let me

learn.”6 After being beaten or flogged for the first time a lot of young slaves often insisted on

fighting back or rebelling the next time but their parents helped them believe that fighting back

will not make it better, God will make it better. Having faith that the pain was only temporary

because one day they will be free or their children will be free. After receiving his first flogging

Jacob Stroyer vowed to fight the next time he was attacked. His father argued against such

action, saying: “’the best thing for us to do is to pray much over it, for I believe that the time will

come when this boy with the rest of the children will be free, though we may not live to see it.’”

His father’s comments on freedom, according to Stroyer, “were of great comfort to me, and my

heart swells with the hope of the future, which made every moment seem an hour to me.”7

4
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 206.
5
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 98.
6
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 99.
7
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 102.
 Some masters insisted on theirs slaves believing in religion because they thought it could

be another way to control them. They wanted to use God’s words of obedience as a way to make

them believe that they will go to hell if they did not do as they said. Henry Box Brown asserted

that in the South “The great end to which religion in there made to minister, is to keep the slaves

in docile and submissive frame of mind, by instilling into them the idea that if they do not obey

their masters, they will infallibly go to hell.”8 White ministers also taught that slaves did not

deserve freedom.9 Slaves did not let that defer them from their beliefs. William Wedd stated …

“As soon as I felt in my heart, that God was the Divine Being that I must call on in all my

troubles, I heard a voice speak to me, and from that time I lost all fear of men on this earth.”10

Slaves also used their time of worship as a way to release their anger, depression, frustration and

want for freedom by shouting, singing and preaching. Often singing songs about freedom, their

masters and the harsh conditions.

To believe that one day slaves will be free, to believe that one day segregation will end,

to believe in being delivered from all hurt harm and danger is what slaves started and has

continued still today. Their belief in God and faith in religion helped them survive any and

everything they were put through. No matter what their faith was not broken.

Bibliography

Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. Oxford

University Press, 1979

8
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 62.
9
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 62.
10
Blassingame, The Slave Community, 75.