July 4: Frederick Douglass’s indictment of American Christianity’s links with oppression, and a call to stand for justice

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
“Many of its [the church’s] most eloquent Divines… have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system…
“For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! …[Theirs] is a religion for oppressors… a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble…
“The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in its connection with its ability to abolish slavery.
“…Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday School, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery, and slave holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.”
-Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, 196, 200-201

When we sit today, and we think about the fact that people continue to deny the reality of systemic racism; that black people are disproportionately imprisoned, stripped of the right to vote due to being deemed “felons,” and disproportionately sentenced to death; that so many feel a compulsive need to make self-declarations against “Black Lives Matter”; we must acknowledge that America’s Original Sin remains, and continues to divide us.

Let the people of Christ stand up against oppression! Let God come and break the rod of the oppressor, as in the days of old (Isaiah 9:4). Let us condemn practices that exalt the rich over the poor; and the proud above the humble. Let us confess where we have done wrong, and pray for guidance to bring justice. Let us stand up with people of color and denounce religious, political, and societal practices that work to divide us. Christianity ought to be a religion which lifts up the oppressed and downtrodden–may it ever be!