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Is it hypocritical for people whose ancestors were slaves to believe in God?

  • 14-10-2019 12:56am
    #1
    mr_fegelien
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,483 ✭✭✭


    I'm not an African American but an African and in my country 95% of people believe in Christianity. The United States also has a high amount of religiosity among black people as well.

    The thing is, I've always found this perplexing to strongly believe in Christianity when it was passed down as a "slave religion". Black people were definitely not the only ones to be colonized or enslaved but how can someone condemn other religions as been "works of satan" even their ancestors religions simply because of an accident of birth or colonization?

    My aunt is a great example of this. She strongly believes in Christianity and says that her ancestors were misled in their tribal religions yet if she was born 100 years previously when the British were colonizing East Africa, her and the people around her would have been rubbishing Christianity with just as much conviction!

    My point is, the vast majority of people believe because of an accident of birth, not because there is anything "special" about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc... How can religious people sort this out?


Comments

  • #2
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,703 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    My point is, the vast majority of people believe because of an accident of birth, not because there is anything "special" about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc... How can religious people sort this out?
    This isn't a problem just for Christians or for religious people (or for people whose ancestors were slaves, for that matter). Your beliefs and values are inherited. Part of growing up is scrutinising and accepting or rejecting the beliefs and values inculcated in you by parents, family, school, society and culture. Most people affirm the vast majority of those beliefs and values.


  • #3
    ytpe2r5bxkn0c1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ytpe2r5bxkn0c1


    I'm not sure how your opening piece comes together. Many peoples of many religions, and none, were involved in the slave trade. Muslims were the greatest slave traders in history as were the Mongols, Greeks etc. as well as Christians.
    The people enslaved were also of all religions and none.
    Religion is of course mostly an accident of birth but is also a representation of the beliefs and values we take in to everyday life.

    Are you saying those enslaved shouldn't believe in a God simply because their ancestors were once slaves? I don't get the connection.


  • #4
    mr_fegelien
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,483 ✭✭✭mr_fegelien


    Levi Weak Farmer wrote: »
    I'm not sure how your opening piece comes together. Many peoples of many religions, and none, were involved in the slave trade. Muslims were the greatest slave traders in history as were the Mongols, Greeks etc. as well as Christians.
    The people enslaved were also of all religions and none.
    Religion is of course mostly an accident of birth but is also a representation of the beliefs and values we take in to everyday life.

    Are you saying those enslaved shouldn't believe in a God simply because their ancestors were once slaves? I don't get the connection.

    What I mean is that Africans once had their own tribal religions. Some were forcefully brought over during the Atlantic Slave Trade and forced to assimilate into the new world. Their slave masters either made them Catholics in South America or Christians in North America.

    I find it a bit odd that people don't question the legitimacy of their religion when it was passed down through slavery.


  • #5
    smacl
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,778 Mod ✭✭✭✭smacl


    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    I find it a bit odd that people don't question the legitimacy of their religion when it was passed down through slavery.

    Probably worth remembering that African Americans and coloured people throughout America and Europe were subject to large scale discrimination long after the abolition of slavery, and to an extent arguably still are. Holding to the local Christian tradition, as opposed to African tribal ones, was no doubt the safer and easier option in this situation. Once this happens for more than one generation it becomes a difficult tradition to shake off.


  • #6
    Sagats_knee
    Closed Accounts Posts: 91 ✭✭Sagats_knee


    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    What I mean is that Africans once had their own tribal religions. Some were forcefully brought over during the Atlantic Slave Trade and forced to assimilate into the new world. Their slave masters either made them Catholics in South America or Christians in North America.

    I find it a bit odd that people don't question the legitimacy of their religion when it was passed down through slavery.

    Christianity arrived in Africa long before colonial times. Some of the oldest Christian groups in the world are found in Ethiopia and Egypt for example. However you would be correct in that many who were taken from Africa and sold as slaves would have been tribal. They lost their names, their history, their culture and their beliefs. That’s just it though, they’re lost, gone. Can’t let the past drag you back especially when it didn’t happen to you personally.

    I’m Irish, but that doesn’t mean I should go and pretend to be a Druid as some sort of statement about our Norman/British/Vatican oppressors of the past. That would be a stupid approach. Identity politics leads nowhere good.

    In fact it was Christ’s message about there being ‘Neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor free, Male nor Female. We are all one before God’ that ultimately led to the abolishment of slavery. The leaders of the day were no longer able to justify it based on their Christian beliefs.


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  • #7
    Sagats_knee
    Closed Accounts Posts: 91 ✭✭Sagats_knee


    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    My point is, the vast majority of people believe because of an accident of birth, not because there is anything "special" about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc... How can religious people sort this out?

    I strongly disagree with this. People may be raised in a particular religion, but Christianity is the truth and the gospel has power. When someone hears it, they can find it leads them to Christ regardless of what local religion they were raised in.

    Most Orthodox/traditional Christians believe Christianity is the truth, and that all other religions are either lies of demons, lies of men, or corruptions/rejections of the truth such as Islam and modern Judaism. There is only one truth, and it’s not localised.

    People have the truth inside them, most recognise what is right and wrong innately. Because it comes from God, when they hear the gospel, they are drawn to it because they recognise it as the truth speaking directly to that divine message already inside themselves. Of course not all are called or have ears to hear, and those people will never understand because their hearts are like stones. It’s not that they cannot be saved, it is that they refuse to be.

    I myself grew up in a very non religious home. My dads always professed athiesm, and my mother has always been privately spiritual and a believer, but not practicing or involved in the church in any way.

    I chose of my own volition to come back to God after spending my youth as essentially an atheist hedonist. I spent a long time discerning and reading the history of the church until I finally came to the conclusion that Orthodox Christianity was for me.

    I would find great resistance to this in my circle of friends and most family members. So it’s definitely not a comfort thing, or something I was raised in. If anything I’ve had to lose friends and family to follow my faith.

    I’ve considered trying to become a deacon and even a priest, and you can be guaranteed that a lot of people would shun me for it. People I love and care about, friends and family. The fact is that atheism is in vogue, it’s the safe and easy option. It’s a cowards way out of facing up to the deeper questions of life.


  • #8
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,703 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    I'm not an African American but an African and in my country 95% of people believe in Christianity. The United States also has a high amount of religiosity among black people as well.

    The thing is, I've always found this perplexing to strongly believe in Christianity when it was passed down as a "slave religion" . . .
    mr_fegelien wrote: »
    . . . I find it a bit odd that people don't question the legitimacy of their religion when it was passed down through slavery.
    Couple of thoughts, in no particular order:

    1. Your own African country is 95% Christian, but Christianity wasn't "passed down through slavery" there. Propagated through colonialism, possibly - you don't say which country this is - but hardly passed down through slavery.

    2. But there's a much older link between slavery and Chrisitianity; in the earliest days of the church, a high proportion of Christians were slaves, and they were attracted to it precisely because it preached a gospel of liberation and of radical equality.

    3. Given that, it's not impossible that later generations of slaves would have found the same appeal in Christianity, despite the appalling example of their Christian slavemasters.

    4. And of course the role played by Christianity in the African-American slave experience, and the role still being played by Christianity in efforts for Africa-American liberation, is the subject of much notice and comment.


  • #9
    Quantum Erasure
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,776 ✭✭✭Quantum Erasure


    Shure wasn't Saint Patrick himself a slave....


  • #10
    Kaybaykwah
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,263 ✭✭✭Kaybaykwah


    Quantum Erasure wrote: »
    Shure wasn't Saint Patrick himself a slave....

    Yes, and a good one too!


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