Many slaves were Christians while they were in the bondage of slavery.
If you look at the macro you can find religion being used to further oppression, violence, and see that many of its adherents profess bigoted beliefs.
But on the micro level, if you were to ask these people their experience with their religion they’d likely point to their church as a community that accepted them, that fed and clothed them if they were needy, that contributed to the parks or schools their children go too.
Not everyone has negative experiences with religion. Religion isn’t inherently evil. Religion is flawed in that it’s practiced by humans who are flawed. Don’t take this as an excuse for the harm that people have done in the name of religion. Both the good and bad are a product of people.
Governments further oppression and violence as much as organized religion does and yet we don’t think we ought to get rid of democracy. If you think that if you removed religion that the human race would stop being shitty, I would have to say that is a naive belief.
People should be able to practice their culture and religion as so far as it doesn’t impede on others’ liberty. Asking why X group is X religion is small-minded in my opinion.
if you were to ask these people their experience with their religion they’d likely point to their church as a community that accepted them, that fed and clothed them if they were needy, that contributed to the parks or schools their children go too.
Yep, I think this is part of the answer too. I hope people of all types can learn to find community outside of harmful hierarchical religions.
Why is a YouTube video being posted in an ask thread? You have already provided an answer to your question in the form of a video. This isn't answerlemmy, and it isn't you providing any of your personal thoughts in the context of the question.
Because they identify with it. Not a lot of explaining to do there. Did MLK not teach us to judge each other for the content of our character, as opposed to something like faith?
I'm not sure that observing a subset of humanity has a particular religion is particularly judgy.
Also, faith informs character. Admittedly, I think it does less to inform character than that we can derive information about character from which parts of their faith people elect to emphasize, but it is still there.
If black people had gone back to traditional religions after emancipation I imagine the Reconstruction would have been even more filled with racist violence. Assimilating into the dominant culture is a survival strategy.
See also: The Sikh family who lives near me who had to take the symbol of their religion off their car after having it vandalized for being "Muslim."
Oh, so we’re even bringing back the full cringe, fedora variant of atheism from early reddit? Cool.
I have even more personal reasons than most to hate Christianity, but this is so reductive of Christianity, black people, and the reasons why people seek out religion.
Asking why an oppressed peoples would worship the same god that their oppressors claim made them superior and tells them how to keep slaves is not an cringe question. In fact, calling questions cringe is a great thought terminating method I’d say.
Hey, I love shitting on Christianity as much as the next person (I was raised in America, we had the absolute worst Christians there) but if white people are allowed to be delusional idiots then black people can be delusional idiots too.
To answer the dumb video question - God doesn’t hate black people because they don’t exist… and if they did it’s pretty clear they’re happy to shit on people of all races though, admittedly, not equally.
Having not watched the linked video, and I swear I’m not saying that evolution is not true because I believe it is a very solid, theory for the development of life over time, but wasn’t evolution also used to justify slavery?
Again, I haven’t watched the video so I don’t know what parts of Christianity exactly are inspiring this question, but I don’t believe the heart of Christianity encourages slavery
In some places and times, but I don’t think anywhere near the level religion/Christianity has.
I don’t know what parts of Christianity exactly are inspiring this question
For me, it’s the simple question of why would an oppressed peoples worship the god that arguably says they should be oppressed (the bible does support slavery).
Why are Baltic and Nordic peoples still Christian? Why are Berbers still Muslim? Etc…
At some point the violence of conquest, colonialism and enforced religion is forgotten. And the new social structure becomes accepted and enforced internally like it’s the only natural way to do things.
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