Black History Month: The Faith of the Enslaved

Austin (00:01.249) Grace and peace, friends. Welcome back to United We Pray. I’m Austin Suter joined by Jasmine Holmes. Thank you, Jasmine, for being here with us. Jasmine Holmes (00:08.374) Thank you so much for having me. Austin (00:10.205) Absolutely. Jasmine is a wife, mother, speaker, and fantastic author of some great books including World on Fire, Mother to Son, Carved in Ebony, Never Cast Out, Identity Theft, and Crowned with Glory. She also, for my money, operates the best social media accounts on these here internets, so follow her if you don’t for encouragement and edification. Jasmine, we really appreciate you coming back on the show for us. Jasmine Holmes (00:33.538) Yeah, it’s great to be back. Austin (00:35.957) We’re especially grateful that you’ve agreed to contribute to our Black History Month series, and today we wanted to talk about the spiritual life and experience of slaves in America. And before we do that, what do you think are some misconceptions folks might have about the experience of slavery in America? Jasmine Holmes (00:52.182) You know, I think when people think about specifically the religious experience of the enslaved in America, they assume that Christianity was beat into them. It’s a phrase that we hear all the time. The Christianity was beat into the enslaved. They were forced to take on the religion of their enslavers. They were forced to come to church services. They were forced to participate in American Protestantism. But actually, there’s a long history of religious persecution of the enslaved, whether they were trying to exercise the religion that they exercised you know countries and cultures in Africa or whether they were trying to adopt the Protestant religion of Their enslavers in both cases. They were not allowed to pray. They were not allowed to gather There were instances where the enslaved could go to church with their enslavers But when we look at testimonies of the enslaved by and large that was not the case Austin (01:44.737) Great answer. Pause for just a second while I hit something else on the board. I’m sorry. Austin (02:01.233) And I appreciate you starting there because the supposed spiritual good of the enslaved was often a justification for slavery. And we see that idea persisting even to the day of someone like a Richard Kipling who wrote in The White Man’s Burden about the responsibility of white folks to bring religion and our culture, which he thought was better, to other ethnicities. But as you’ve pointed out, when we read the source material on the lived experience of slaves, we don’t see a concern for their spiritual good. While we’re talking about that and source material, can you tell me about the WPA narratives and what those are? Jasmine Holmes (02:23.886) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (02:33.122) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (02:41.002) Yeah, absolutely. So anytime my husband is in a room and somebody says, can you tell me more about the WPA narratives? He always gives me this look like she’s about to go off. So I’m gonna try to keep it brief. I get very excited. And he’s so sweet because every single time I’ve talked about them, he’s like, every time I talk about them, he looks so interested. And I’m like, you love me, you do, because you’ve heard this a thousand times. But the WPA narratives were part of the New Deal in 1936 and 1937. Austin (02:55.189) Go off. Jasmine Holmes (03:13.016) Works Progress administration we think about things like national parks or buildings that were built You know roads that were paved all kinds of things But there were also white-collar workers as part of the WPA and they were The arm that went out and they did the work of folklorists. They did interviews There were musicians there were authors and one of the things that the WPA did was they interviewed what they called ex-slaves 2300, I think, ex-slave narratives in the Library of Congress. But then in the 70s, a historian named George Rawick started collecting the narratives into kind of a hardback book series so that historians could use them more easily. And when he did, he realized that there were hundreds of narratives that didn’t make it to the Library of Congress, most of those from Mississippi and Texas. And so actually the number is closer to like 3,000, 3,500 narratives. that were collected by the WPA in 1936 and 1937, which I always try to contextualize it for people by saying in 1936, a person who was being interviewed by the WPA was the same distance from the Emancipation Proclamation as they were from Obama being elected as president. So it’s just this really pivotal time in history where, for instance, in Mississippi, you have 20,000 people who had been born Austin (04:34.405) Wow. Jasmine Holmes (04:42.536) slavery who were still living in Mississippi and so what an opportunity to go and talk to them, these 70, 80, 90 and more than a few 100 year olds who are recounting their experiences of slavery. Austin (04:53.693) And what a valuable resource because I mean, when you… read about slavery and what it was and how bad it was. Even today there’s disagreement. It’s back in the news by politicians commenting on it and how bad was slavery. And we can opine or we can speculate or we can read bad history written by folks who wanna whitewash it. But what you’re telling us here is that we can go read firsthand accounts of people who experienced slavery and were interviewed to talk about it. That’s pretty remarkable. Jasmine Holmes (05:27.082) I mean, I will do the gigantic caveat of they are firsthand accounts, but they’ve still been edited by majority white editors. So even when you’re looking at the WPA narratives, you’re still looking at them through a certain lens of the WPA narratives. I like to describe learning from them to people as you take the breadth of them, the depth of them, like you look at the entire picture of them to get a picture of slavery. You don’t just take one and say, this is exactly what slavery was like. You take many. And when those testimonies kind of layer on top of each other, you start to see the real story come through. Austin (06:02.321) And something that just occurred to me is in 1937 you’re also only getting what a black person is comfortable saying to a white person in 1937. Which… Jasmine Holmes (06:10.922) Mm-hmm. Yes. And it’s during the Great Depression as well. And so in a lot of interviews, you’ll see when interviewers come, the interviewees are like, are you here with my money? Like with my pension? Am I getting relief? And a lot of times they’re kind of giving the impression that if I say the right thing, if I say what you want to hear, then you might give me some change. You might give me some help. I mean, these people are living in abject poverty of the Great Depression layered with the Jim Crow South. Austin (06:41.213) Wow. So, okay, when you look at these and you consider the totality of it, when we hear from folks who lived as slaves, what did they say about their spiritual lives? Jasmine Holmes (06:53.442) There are a wide range, but a lot of things start to come to the surface as you look at more and more narratives. One thing, for instance, is that a lot of the enslaved were not allowed to hold meetings. They weren’t allowed to meet together, whether for church service or for any kind of social thing. It was if a bunch of black folks were together, a white person had to be present in order to make sure that they weren’t plotting a rebellion because of Nat Turner’s rebellion. of the accounts talk about having a meeting either in a in the hollow in the woods far enough away where when you’re when you’re there you’re not heard by your enslavers or in certain people’s homes and what they would do is they would go in the homes and they over and over again they talk about turning over a pot outside the front of the house to kind of muffle the sound of them speaking praying worshiping and so over and over again and narratives all over all over the you know 17 states that were interviewed there’s this imagery of turning over a pot to muffle sound or going to the hollow to worship and to try to keep quiet so that they’re not overheard. Austin (08:01.857) Wow. So both… One thing that stands out, you sent me some of this and I read over it, and the public gatherings being prohibited is not okay, but you can kind of see a justification for it in the minds of slaveholders as, you know, wanting to, you know, prevent a rebellion. Okay. But what also stands out is folks not being allowed to pray. Like, personally. Jasmine Holmes (08:15.261) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (08:29.687) Mm-hmm. Austin (08:30.165) having slaveholders interrupt private prayer by slaves. I can’t think of any justification for that. Jasmine Holmes (08:37.622) Well, a lot of times they said, you know, we don’t want you praying for freedom. Like we know what you’re praying for. You’re praying for freedom and we can’t have that. An added part of it is the lack of literacy among the enslaved. So in places like Alabama, for instance, neither enslaved black people nor free black people were allowed to learn how to read. And so now you have all of this compounded. You can’t read the word of God. You’re not allowed to pray out loud. You’re not allowed to meet together. So there’s literal elements of the Christian faith that are being denied. Austin (09:12.149) I mean, I’m just struck by the unique wickedness of that would acknowledge the power of prayer and then withhold it because, yeah, it’s like Jonah. I know you’re merciful. I don’t want you showing mercy on those people. Jasmine Holmes (09:16.787) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (09:30.174) Yep. Austin (09:33.245) So for someone listening to this, is the kind of stuff we’re talking about typical or are we sort of picking like the worst couple examples and making that representative of the whole? Jasmine Holmes (09:46.166) So again, it’s really important to take the entire picture into account, which is why we can’t just grab one WPA narrative and be like, see, this is exactly what it was like to be enslaved everywhere. If you’re like me and you’ve read about 2000, then you kind of start to see the patterns taking place. And so this is a pattern that takes place over and over again. But then when you look at the laws as well, you look at the legislative history in these slave states, you see that there are laws in the books that say that black people cannot meet together. with free black people or free black people’s movement is limited. In states like Maryland you have free black people can’t move without restriction because there’s so many free black people and so many enslaved black people that they don’t want them to be mingling and mixing or getting confused for each other. And so if you look at the personal testimony and then you take it with the legislative, you know, history and then you take it with, you know, common sense Jasmine Holmes (10:46.1) an opportunity for rebellion, then the picture that becomes really clear is a picture of religion as something that is seen as dangerous for the enslaved to practice and believe in. When you look back before the Great Awakening, before the first or second Great Awakening, back when the 13 colonies were still the 13 colonies, there were actually proclamations made by government entities to say, hey, I know that y’all have been afraid to preach the gospel to Because if they become free you’ll have to free them if they become Christian you’ll have to free them Don’t worry about that anymore if they become Christian. It’s okay You don’t have to free them and maybe if they become a Christian they’ll even be more obedient to you, right? so you see that one that one little area in history where it’s like, okay, I Will we’re giving religion to the enslaved? But before, so even before that time of giving the religion to the enslaved in order to make them more docile, there’s an entire period of history where people are withholding Christianity from the enslaved because they think if you become my brother or sister in Christ, I’m not going to be allowed to enslave you anymore. Then you have this short period of, right, right. Then you have this really short period of time where, you know, Austin (11:56.865) Well, because they’ve read Philemon. Jasmine Holmes (12:04.526) religion is being offered to the enslaved. It’s not really making much traction though until the second great awakening when it makes a lot of traction with the enslaved and it kind of spreads like wildfire. But they realize, uh oh, the more Christianity spreads among the enslaved, the more ideas of liberty spread among the enslaved, culminating of course in Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Which is when they were like, put a lid on it, we’re done. Austin (12:26.621) It just seems… Austin (12:31.709) And despite all these efforts, Christianity spreads among the enslaved. Jasmine Holmes (12:36.342) Mm-hmm. Austin (12:37.885) Like, that’s a miracle. Not only that it was able to spread, but that… Jasmine Holmes (12:42.974) Yes, absolutely. Austin (12:48.585) that it was even attractive that the religion of the slave masters, you know, I understand it wasn’t only the religion of the slave masters and there would have been tradition and a lineage of faith among the enslaved, but that it’s just mind-blowing to think of them praying to the same God for such different ends. Jasmine Holmes (12:52.002) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (13:08.707) Yeah. One of my favorite things in, so there are two different groups of slave narratives that we talk about. We talk about the WPA narratives, which are interviews that take place in the 1930s. But then we also talk about the slave narratives written in the late 19th century by the enslaved. So think Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown. And in almost every single one of the popular slave narratives, there is this part where these folks go off Christianity the Christianity of the enslavers right the type of religion that the enslavers are practicing and almost to a man they argue that what the enslavers is practicing are practicing is a Fake form of the Christianity that the enslaved are practicing the enslaved are practicing actual Gospel-filled Christianity these slaveholders are practicing what one person called. Let me get it right. He called it slaveholding priestcraft That’s what the enslavers are practicing. And the enslaved were actually practicing the liberating Christianity of Christ. And so looking at it that way, you have this kind of flipped on its head idea of the remnant of Christians who are faithfully practicing Christianity in America being the oppressed and being the ones who are crying out for freedom. Austin (14:34.823) I’m, I’m… I’m struck by everything you’re saying. I’m just kind of taking it all in. One thing I wanted to ask is, and maybe it’s not a question we can answer, but given that we have laws on the books that we can go back and read, we have those proclamations on the record that we can go back and read, we have narratives of slaves from two periods that we can go back and read, why does so much bad history and historiography still exist? Jasmine Holmes (15:09.974) Lost Cause mythology is such an interesting conversation, especially for… So I’m from Texas and Texas is the lost cause capital of America. I don’t care what you say. So the Lost Cause is this idea that the Civil War was not about slavery, that it was about states’ rights, states’ rights to something nebulous that’s never really quite said, something about tariffs. But it’s not about slavery and slavery wasn’t that bad. it’s literally a miseducation campaign that was started in the late 1800s early 1900s by entities like the united daughters of the confederacy who literally went into schools made sure that school books touted pro-confederate sentiment and made sure that school books downplayed the severity of slavery. so you have entire generations of people who are kind of in the down line of this educational Jasmine Holmes (16:11.549) and you can definitely see the effects. And I think part of it is you have this entire half of the country that has really like committed treason and so then after the Civil War you’re trying to bring everybody together and one of the ways that you can bring everybody together is to make sure that the South doesn’t feel all that bad. for the peculiar institution of slavery. You make it something that was benign, right? You make it something that was, oh, it’s just part of the culture. It’s just the way people thought then. We treated our slaves like family. That allows them to keep kind of safe face as they enter back into the union. And it’s something that was really widespread. I mean, even to the point where I remember distinctively a point in my life where I’m sitting in a college classroom, I was getting a master’s degree professor is talking to me about how the Civil War was about slavery and I’m like, no, it was about states’ rights. And he’s like, are you serious? And I’m like, yes. And I had all of this quote unquote proof to hold up my position because it’s how I had been taught and how I had been raised as somebody in the quote unquote Republic of Texas. Austin (17:20.241) Well, I’m sad to report a similar experience from Virginia. And I think we’re about the same age, but we’re not. We’re young. And I was taught the Civil War in public high school in Virginia as the War of Northern Aggression. I mean, it’s still out there. Jasmine Holmes (17:25.822) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (17:30.943) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (17:35.718) Oh, me too. Yep. I was homeschooled, but yes, we definitely called it the War of Northern Aggression. And then I live in Mississippi now, which has Confederate Heroes Day every year. So it’s very much alive and well. Austin (17:49.917) Yeah, I mean, as you say, even like codified in celebration, that it’s, you know, it’s Martin Luther King Day is Lee Jackson King Day in a lot of places, which is just bananas. Jasmine Holmes (17:55.67) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (18:01.45) Yeah, here, yep, yep. And it’s, you know, it just, it’s an attempt to kind of downplay the brutality inherent in celebrating this culture. It’s an attempt to say, hey, slavery wasn’t that bad and if slavery wasn’t that bad then we can still celebrate the parts of our culture that were involved in slavery as long as slavery wasn’t that bad as long as we make it seem more benign we don’t have to let go of parts of our heritage that we see as As parts that we just want to hold on to Austin (18:41.193) Yeah. So I was reading a book, I’m reading a book right now, and it’s by Caitlin Schess, it’s called The Liturgy of Politics, and she writes about false gospels competing for our attention and forming us politically. That’s sort of what the book is about. But one of those that she writes about is white supremacy. And she goes back, she does good history, and she recounts the… Jasmine Holmes (18:49.528) Mm-hmm. Austin (19:05.889) the liturgy for baptizing a slave. And it’s one of those instances where the slaves were allowed to be converted. But in that baptismal ceremony, the slave was required to pledge fidelity and servitude to their masters and had to vow that they weren’t becoming converted in an effort to gain freedom. And it… It seems that the slave owners feared the religious flourishing of their slaves because of what that might cost them. And I just wonder, for us today, if the resistance to acknowledging the evils of our history is because we fear the consequences of what such an acknowledgement would be. Jasmine Holmes (19:52.262) Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Austin (19:56.501) But so that’s kind of a relatable fear, even if you don’t agree with it. But then scripture calls us, Philippians, too, to consider the needs of others above our own. And if that’s supposed to be our ethic in how we do everything, that’s gotta shape how we do history as well, right? Jasmine Holmes (20:12.106) Absolutely, yes. And it’s, I think it’s especially hard as an American. Now, this is just me thinking as an American. I’ve never been anything else, but I think that it’s especially hard as an American because of the mythology that we have surrounded our country’s founding with and the fact that mythology is so connected to who we think we are as a people. Austin (20:35.945) Yeah, and who we’ve never really been. I mean, we had Thomas Kidd on a couple years ago to talk about the life of Thomas Jefferson. And just, it’s such an interesting kindness of God that the words of this, you know, hypocritical slave owner would then be used sort of in our national consciousness to convict us of our hypocrisy. And the words of Thomas Jefferson fueled the abolitionist movement. That’s, it’s wild. Jasmine Holmes (20:39.272) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (20:53.742) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (20:59.508) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (21:06.102) Yeah, for sure. For sure. Austin (21:08.637) So put us back on track here. How do we have sort of a more full understanding of our history? How do we do better history than trying to just paper over the past? What are some of the resources? We’ve already mentioned a few, but what are some other resources folks can look to? Jasmine Holmes (21:29.242) Not being afraid of primary sources is one of my favorite things to tell people. You know, to start with reading incidents in life of a slave girl, go straight to Harriet Jacobs and read about her experience in enslavement, right? Go straight to newspaper archives like the Liberator and read how they talked about slavery. And then, because the Liberator was biased, just like every newspaper outlet is biased, go to something like the Debeau Review and look at how southerners talked about slavery slavery. Honestly, looking at looking at the sources is such a huge help. As far as that specific resource goes, for the Lost Cause specifically, Ty, I think his last name is Cicciolet has a book called Robert E. Lee and Me that is an incredibly documented book about the Lost Cause and especially helpful for me as a Texan. I think he’s also a Virginian. Jasmine Holmes (22:29.216) It’s just, I always am like, it’s delicious. And people are like, it’s delicious. And I’m like, you don’t get it. Footnotes are delicious. They’re amazing. I love them so much. But it’s so well-documented and so incredible. And for the WPA narratives, you know, there are not a lot of resources for laypeople about the WPA narratives. And so I wrote one and it’s coming out in September. Austin (22:52.353) Great. Well, if you have a link to a pre-order that, we’ll put that in the show notes. And something else I’ll just add is, what the Civil War was fought over and what the Confederacy was about is a live debate. But you can actually go read what they said they were about. And if you look at those constitutions and statements of formation, like it’s all in there. It’s the establishment of white supremacy. Jasmine Holmes (23:10.027) Mm-hmm. Jasmine Holmes (23:14.07) Guess. Jasmine Holmes (23:22.154) Mm-hmm. And I think when we talk about white supremacy, it’s so important because people are like, what does that have to do with Christianity? Like how, like, what does that have to do with, what does that have to do with the show, like United We Pray? Why are we talking about white supremacy? Why are we talking about the Confederacy? But so much of this conversation is tied into religious language, and so much of it is tied into religious iconography, that history is a part of untangling what is of the world and what is actually spiritual. And so I just wanna say that, Austin (23:23.69) All right. Jasmine Holmes (23:52.048) You know, people could be listening and be like, what does this have to do with the gospel? But honestly, the gospel has been co-opted by causes and by people who are doing, who are doing anti-Christian things and who are thinking anti-Christian thoughts and who were willing to lay down their lives for anti-Christian ideas. And it’s really important to know that and name that. Austin (24:13.309) Absolutely. And understanding how things like that affected our theology and sort of our religious culture is hugely important for understanding our own faith today. And as we’re here in Black History Month thinking about it, I mean, understanding what happened. Jasmine Holmes (24:22.514) Mm-hmm. Austin (24:34.373) and what continues to happen in our country is essential for loving our neighbors today. So realizing that, you know, after slavery ended, there has been a coordinated effort to downplay its evils and its lasting effects and subsequent actions like reconstruction and opposition to the civil rights movement, which, you know, a lot of white professing Christians participated in. I mean, it’s, it’s an ongoing discussion and understanding our history. Jasmine Holmes (24:39.702) Absolutely. Austin (25:04.153) is essential for understanding our present. So thank you for your efforts. Thank you for making this stuff available. Thank you for the new book. I look forward to getting in and reading it. And maybe when it comes out, we’ll have to have you back. Jasmine Holmes (25:07.97) Absolutely. Jasmine Holmes (25:16.459) I’d love to go back. Austin (25:18.737) Well, why don’t we do this? We’ve just talked about some hard and heavy stuff, but I just want to highlight and close with, God was faithful to work and save a bunch of people, despite coordinated efforts to keep the gospel from getting to them. And he sustained their faith to worship despite religious persecution, to pray despite religious persecution. And we should celebrate that. So as we close, why don’t we pray, I can start and you can close if that’s okay, and just thank God for being faithful despite the hypocrisy of white Christians at the time. Austin (26:04.061) Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God who hears prayer. And we thank you that you are the God who saves. And thank you for working as we’ve been able to think about and celebrate in the lives of American slaves who were not treated well, who were not treated fairly. And who slave masters and authorities tried to keep the gospel from. Thank you that you did not let that happen. Thank you for saving and providing a way for the gospel to get to people regardless of what other efforts were out there. Thank you for Thank you for hearing the prayers of your people and moving to end those unjust practices. Thank you for continuing to hear the prayers of your people and we pray that we would continue to pray and exercise the faith that we see in the lives of these slaves. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Jasmine Holmes (26:53.826) Dear Lord, thank you for the testimonies that we have of the formerly enslaved leaning upon the rock of ages, crying out to you for justice, crying out and trusting that they’d be heard, crying out and trusting that their children or their children’s lives would be different than the lives that they were leading. Thank you that our Christian heritage extends beyond ethnicity, beyond tribe, beyond… borders that anyone who calls upon your name is part of the lineage of Christ and that we can look to these people as just older brothers and sisters in the faith that we can emulate them, that we can learn from them Lord and that we can look forward to worshipping you in eternity with them. Austin (27:40.721) Amen. Well Jasmine, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for coming on with us and thank you friends for listening. Grace and peace.