America’s Persecuted Christians
Posted on Friday, February 27, 2015 by
Black slaves who were forced to worship Christ in secret represent the earliest members of the persecuted church in America. Although some slave owners permitted slaves to worship on Sunday mornings, many did not, and absolutely none of them would permit a slave to pray for freedom or lament their suffering as human property. The underground slave church developed unique ways to communicate in code, encourage each other with hope, worship in secret camp meetings, and to institute forbidden religious celebrations like marriage.
As the majority of the whites in the south believed that Bible fully supported slavery, and so many ridiculously abusive slaveowners professed Christ, it’s a miraculous sign of the Holy Spirit that any black could see Jesus through the hateful fog of Christian slavery that their owners practiced. Stories like that of Frederick Douglass are remarkable in his ability to intensely love Jesus and to distinguish Christ’s teachings from the injustice he was subjected to in the name of Christ.
Frederick once said, “Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”
Interesting tidbit, as a teenage slave, Frederick Douglass would get other slaves to come to Sunday church gathering early to secretly teach them to read and write. The unknowing slave owners allowed it thinking that it was part of their religious worship. Douglass called it “Sunday School.” #BlackHistoryMonth