Ministers preached submission as a supplement to enslaver violence

Evidence

More and more enslavers began to listen to the arguments of missionaries that Christian submission could supplement their violence in subduing African people. Actually, the ministers focused on the submission and were mum on the violence. Minister Hugh Jones, a William & Mary professor, published his highly influential Present State of Virginia in 1724. “Christianity,” Jones wrote, “encourages and orders” African people “to become more humble and better servants.” They should not learn to read and write, though. They were “by Nature cut out for hard Labour and Fatigue.” In his stunningly popular 1722 collection of sermons, James Blair proclaimed that the Golden Rule did not suggest equality between “superiors and inferiors.” Order required hierarchy. Hierarchy required responsibility. Masters, Blair preached, were to baptize and treat their slaves kindly. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 190

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reading purpose — racist ideas (naturalized hard labor, hierarchical Golden Rule) deployed to justify slaveholding policy.