What was Fredrick Douglas's analysis about shareholders' views about religion....?

Question

What was his analysis about slaveholders' views about religion and the justification they found in the bible for slavery?

Answer 1

To say the Douglass found it hypocritical would be like saying the Titanic was sunk by an ice cube.

Douglass made note of the disparity between the supposed and the way it was treated. God made all men on the same day, and priests used the same water to baptise a white man and a black man, yet for many white people the sameness ended there.

He noted that priests would sometimes rationalize slavery by saying that God made everything in the universe, but He made them with a PLACE... so for a black man to deny his so-called 'purpose' as a slave was to deny God Himself. Douglass found this argument lacking - black men could think as well as white men, yet there were not supposed to use their minds?

Instead it seemed as if most of their oppression was due to slave-holders, not nature or God. To quote him, "You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded - you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don't speak - you close our colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask why we don't know more."

He also found it discordant that God was hailed as the being who provides aid to the weak and freedom to the captured, yet also who supposedly sanctioned brutal beatings and slavery of black people.

There's a good speech by Douglass in the link below. Read it - you'll get an idea. Hope that helps!