The Role Of Religion In African American Politics

Last updated on: April 30, 2012 at 5:26 pm by Andre E. Johnson

The Role Of Religion In African American Politics 2012-04-30T17:26:00-05:00 Andre E. Johnson

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What we today call African Americans are people who came from many parts of West Africa (folks who came from many African tribes). These people were rudely separated from their tribal moorings and left hanging in the air, rootless.

Generally, human beings seek roots in a place and in a people and its ways of life (norms, mores, rules, culture). African-Americans were abruptly yanked away from their African cultures. In the Americas to prevent them from forming a sense of community hence able to defend themselves from their white masters they were separated; those who spoke the same African language were sent to different areas. Thus, a whole bunch of strangers were gathered together and the slave master made sure that they remained strangers to each other.

Worse, the slave owner did not welcome his slaves into his world; he did not teach them his language (beyond the rudimentary vocabulary needed to hear him give them commands as to what to do). The slave master did not make a conscious attempt to socialize his slaves to his religion (what there was of it, for it can be questioned whether the white man actually is a Christian; if he were and lived by what the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ, preached, love one another, he would not have enslaved any one; it is better that the white man is seen as a predatory animal).

Well, a bunch of Africans from disparate corners of West Africa were placed together and used as work mules and otherwise left to figure out how to deal with those imponderable aspects of being that all human beings have to deal with, answer questions such as, who am I, where did I come from and where do I go to when I die, and why am I here…and in this particular case, why did this fate of slavery befall me?
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