5 page paper

"SOMEBODY D O N E HOODOO'D THE H O O D O O M A N " : LANGUAGE, POWER, RESISTANCE, AND THE EFFECTIVE

HISTORY OF PAULINE TEXTS IN AMERICAN SLAVERY

Clarice J. Martin Colgate University

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the strategic hermeneutical uses, function, and effects of Pauline texts about slavery within the American slave system of the sev- enteenth through the nineteenth centuries. This overview of the effective history of Pauline texts is centrally focused on the uses of language and dis- courses to "create worlds" and encode reality with either emancipatory or death-dealing effects. Three central rubrics are explored: (1) "Hoodooing the Hoodoo Man: Discourses Enabling Transformations of Identity, Space, and Place"; (2) "Pauline Statements in American Slavery: Discourses of Domina- tion, Social Control, and Social Death"; and (3) "Say It's Not So! Discourses of Resistance, Empowerment, and Liberation."

I. "HOODOOING THE HOODOO M A N : " DISCOURSES ENABLING

TRANSFORMATIONS OF IDENTITY, SPACE, AND PLACE

The police hear so much about Marie Leveau that they come to her house in St. Anne Street to put her in jail. First one come, she stretch out her left hand and he turn round and round and never stop until someone come lead him away. Then two come together—she put them to running and barking like dogs. Four come and she put them to beating each other with night sticks. The whole station force come She did her work at the altar and they all went to sleep on her steps. (Hurston: 193)

Acclaimed anthropologist, folklorist, and novelist Zora Neale Hurston includes the fictional account of Marie Leveau in her book, Mules and Men, a collection of stories, songs, "hoodoo" and voodoo customs, and humor and wisdom (193). Hurston's narration of the triumph of Marie Leveau's ability to "put to confusion" the police w h o were resolved to arrest her for being a renowned "hoodoo doctor" in nineteenth-century N e w Orleans ("The City of N e w Orleans had a law against fortune tellers, hoodoo doctors, and the like . . . and people come from the ends of America to get help from her" [192]) represents one of her many fictive narrations of the importance of

- 2 0 3 -

2 0 4 SEMEIA

conjure traditions in the African diasporic community. Leveau's rout of the police force is an example of turning intended "bad will" or "evil intent" back u p o n those w h o intended to extend or inflict "bad will" or "evil" u p o n others.

While the police were not themselves literal "conjurers," they could be viewed as those w h o contributed to the exploitative conditions of a dominat- ing society through the "sorcery of white America" (Baker: 95). Leveau was able to thwart this sorcery, in effect, outwitting her opponent, or "hoodooing the hoodoo man." The ability to "turn the trick back u p o n the one w h o set it" in hoodoo practice, or to "change things a r o u n d " through the wisdom of words demonstrates the poetics, efficacy and vitality of conjure in African diasporic communities.

The Leveau story is reminiscent of traditions about "High John the Con- queror," a fictional, h u m a n character in the stories of black folk culture during slavery in the American South. High John helped the slaves to endure, often providing nearly divine assistance to the slaves by helping to trick or over- come the machinations and brutality of slave masters. The effect of his appearance among the slaves was a radical transformation of the slave's iden- tity and place: "No longer were they b o u n d e d by Old Massa's plantation. In the mighty battle between oppression and justice, John realized a n e w kingdom, a n e w realm where marginalized people could name themselves and determine their own direction . . . and struggle on toward the future" (D. Hopkins: 112-13).

It is important to distinguish between Hurston's terminology of "hoodoo" and practices called "conjure" conjuring, and "voodoo." The terms "hoodoo" and "conjure" (conjuration), the preferred vernacular terms, refer to North American religious traditions that had definable African antecedents; that is, they were a variant of African religious "retentions" or "survivals" found in the New World. "Voodoo" is usually traced to practices of the Yoruba peoples on the West Coast of Africa, and refers more broadly to traditional West African religions and (or) Caribbean and South American developments. Hoodoo and conjure practitioners are less likely to engage in the worship or summoning of spirits or deities than their Haitian, Caribbean, and South American counterparts w h o use voodoo. What the conjure of the United States and the voodoo of Haiti have in common is their common African ori- gin, enduring appeal, and their relationship to "workings of the spirit" and the spiritual, including the limitless cultural repertoire of efficacious, life-sus- taining, and liberatory practices (T. Smith: 48-49; Baker: 76-77,80-81).

Theophus Smith has shown that "conjure" is a metaphor for describing black people's ritual, figurative, and therapeutic transformations of culture (T. Smith: 4). But more than a mere metaphor, it is a magical means of trans- forming reality, a way in which humanity maps and manages the world. As a primordial, yet enduring, system of communication in all cultures (and not

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 205

merely a so-called "irrational" or "marginal" phenomenon in some, nor as sy- n o n y m o u s with the unorthodox or the occult), it is, in fact, a form of language. As language which employs ritual speech, "it also evinces a performative aspect, with actions performing w h a t is expressed" (T. Smith: 4).

As a normatively constructive part of the religious folk traditions of black North Americans, conjure practices within African-American contexts are usually distinguished from English or European conjure traditions. While Eu- rocentric conjure traditions a n d assimilations tend to focus on conjuration and sorcery or witchcraft, conjure figures in the African diasporic communi- ties advanced the work and efforts of enslaved Africans to build a culture, to resist acculturation, domination, and oppression against the "black magic" of white oppression (T. Smith: 5; Wilmore: 26).

A n analysis of Marie Leveau's conjure work reveals that it is consistent with that of other "hoodoo doctors": enemies are repaid with punishment (retributive justice), grievances are remedied, faith yields the fruit of good luck and "found" love, the ailing are renewed, communal disharmony is me- diated and replaced with restored h a r m o n y (Baker: 9). The thaumaturgical component of the conjure doctor's work is effective (the use of conventional and unconventional substances to effect medicinal healing, health, or other benefits) for both body and spirit.

The phrase "Somebody Done Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man" is taken from the title of one of the acclaimed writer Al Young's essays featuring that title (59-63). Young, a celebrated novelist, poet, screenwriter, and educator, uses "Somebody Done Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo M a n " to expose the roots of his life- long love affair with the mystery and power of words, syllables, and lan- guage. Recalling family "verbal jam sessions" where the old folks enjoyed "marbling the fat of our utterance with lean strips of proverbial w i s d o m " (59), Young bears witness to the mystery and power of language, including its function as "actualized speech." According to Young, words and language as actualized speech can bring a created order and world into being ("And God said, 'Let there b e light'; and there w a s light" [Gen 1:3, the Priestly account of creation]), solidify family cohesion, effect profound curative effects, and transmute perception, consciousness, and empirical reality (as with hoodoo or conjure traditions).

In "Somebody Done Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man," Young recalls a child- hood memory of age seven or eight where his grandmother, called affection- ately, "Mama," uses the term "hoodoo"—a term whose precise meaning had long been shrouded in mystery for Young.

Coming in fresh from her garden "with an apronful of fresh cut okra, snapbeans, and tomatoes" one day, Mama encountered a smiling, tattered hobo w h o had just approached their home. Claude, the sleek black farm dog w h o would normally have reacted with fervid and vigorous protec- tionism " d i d n ' t stir," and, moreover, "didn't let out so much as a low growl"

2θ6 SEMEIA

(Young: 60). Declaring of the h o b o / ' t h a t old rascal m u s t have h o o d o o ' d that

d o g / ' Mama launched into a brief overview of the h o w ' s a n d w h y ' s of hoo­

doo to her young, inquisitive grandson. Young concludes: "This was the same

w o m a n w h o moaned a n d h u m m e d a n d sang spirituals all day long while she

worked, a n d w h o taught m e table blessings a n d the beautiful Twenty-third

Psalm" (61).

The comfortable alliance between the Hebrew Bible, Christian Scriptures,

a n d conjure discourses uttered by " M a m a " has long and historic roots within

African diasporic communities. In fact, the religion of black slaves, a n d the

distinctive African-American form of Christianity that evolved from this rich

synthesis of traditions, attest to the slaves' very gradual appropriation of

Christianity into their existing African cosmological framework. The African

cultural past not only remained efficacious in reinforcing their devotion to the

supreme transcendent being in w h o m they believed before their forced advent

to American soil during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Paris, 1995; Wilmore);

as we shall see, elements of the African cultural past also provided t h e m with

the ideological a n d moral resources a n d determination to reject the Chris­

tianity of their white slave masters a n d to resist the profound injustices to

which this particular expression of the Christian faith gave rise.

II. PAULINE STATEMENTS I N A M E R I C A N SLAVERY: DISCOURSES OF

D O M I N A T I O N , SOCIAL C O N T R O L , AND SOCIAL D E A T H

Prolegomenon: Λ Genealogy of the Metalanguage

of Racial Domination in Western Culture

To speak at all of the "effective history" of Pauline texts in American slav­ ery is to acknowledge the fundamental veracity of observations b y philoso­ p h e r Hans-Georg G a d a m e r a n d religion scholar Daniel Patte that: " ' U n d e r ­ standing is never subjective behaviour toward a given "object," b u t towards its effective history/ a n d thus, a classic text such as the Bible is always inter­ preted in terms of the history of its effects" (Patte: 55, quoting Gadamer: xix; italics mine). An assessment of the effects of the usage of Pauline texts in the legitimation a n d perpetuation of American slavery, one of the most brutal slave systems in h u m a n history, bears witness, anew, to the power of the performative aspects of language as actualized speech to "bring into being a created order," a n d to legitimate a n e w or existing created order w i t h the intention of transmuting perception, consciousness, a n d empirical reality (Young: 63). In this instance, the language of "sacred texts," the Pauline texts, were pressed into service of the protocols of domination, social control, social inequality, and social death.

Theologian Robert Farrar Capon describes the language of theology as a "pack of foxhounds," with the theologian as the "master of the h u n t in search of the Divine Fox" (for Capon, the Divine Fox is God). His more "masculinist

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 0 7

imagery" of hunting is nonetheless relevant here for the light it sheds on the effective use of Pauline texts in the legitimation and perpetuation of Ameri- can slavery. Capon observes:

I mean only to suggest that every word—and, particularly, every image— used in theology be examined with the greatest care and handled with as much judiciousness as we can manage. The language of theology is a pack of foxhounds, and the theologian is the master of the hunt. His [sic] job is to feed, water and exercise his dogs so that they will be in peak condition for the hunting of the Divine Fox—and to keep them, if possible, from biting de- fenseless Christians (164)

A review of the effective use of Pauline texts in American slavery reveals that the "foxhounds of theological language" in proslavery discourse are any- thing but benign. In fact, Pauline texts were used in service of a larger "metalanguage" of domination endorsing the enslavement of black peoples in America. It is appropriate to first review very briefly the existential anxiety that gave rise to the white supremacist rationalism about the inferiority and sub-humanity of black peoples, an anxiety which contributed to an ideologi- cal climate in which the dogmatic use of Pauline texts in slavery could wield their greatest and most pernicious effects.

In his discussion and overview of American civil religion, Charles H. Long, a renowned historian of religion, has observed that while the Ameri- can national community offers salvation to all in its ideals and history, takes pride in itself as a community that includes people from all over the world, and proffers a history in which religious meanings and sacred symbols are in- trinsically rooted in the founding documents of the American Republic—The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (with civil religion consti- tuting a parallel structure alongside the revealed religion of Christianity)— American religion, and writings on American religion, have been decidedly myopic with reference to the religious experiences of non-Europeans (Long: 148-49).

According to Long, writers of the American religious experience have tended to mean by the term "American" primarily European immigrants and their progeny—overlooking Native Americans and African Americans (among others). Hence, many of the writings about, and discussions on "American religion" have been "ideological" (consciously or unconsciously), serving to enhance, justify, and "render sacred" the history of European im- migrants to America (149).

A notable corollary to the traditional modes of orientation of American civil and religious history is "American cultural language." The American cultural language is not a recent creation:

It is a cosmogonie language, a language of beginnings: it structures the American myth of the beginnings and has continued to express the synchronic

2θ8 SEMEIA

dimensions of American cultural life since that time. It is a language forged by the Puritans and the Jeffersonians and carried on by succeeding genera­ tions. (Long: 150; italics mine)

The "American cultural l a n g u a g e " of which Long speaks, while often

resonating with strains of the possibilities of creating a truly free society in the

United States, h a s retained those characteristics which reveal it to be a lan­

guage rooted in the physical conquest of space (to the detriment of Native

Americans), a n d a language resonant with the strains of conquest, marginali-

zation, a n d oppression (for b o t h Native Americans a n d peoples of African

descent). It is an insidiously hegemonic discourse which reifies the deeds and

accomplishments of persons of European descent above all others. Its para­

doxical dimensions are evident in that the American cultural language is

used, on the one h a n d , to render black peoples invisible or marginal w h e n it

comes to such matters as equitable access to power, civil rights, a n d even re­

spect for the intellectual contributions, knowledge claims, a n d knowledge

production of peoples of African descent. O n the other h a n d , the hegemonic

discourses of white supremacy a n d racism in American cultural language

have rendered black peoples quite visible w h e n advancing the m y t h of the so-

called sub-humanity of the darker races of the world. This discourse, which

portrays (and seeks to actualize) black peoples as " n a t u r a l hewers of wood

a n d drawers of w a t e r " entrenches and reinforces the structural mechanisms

of racism.

As texts which were "pressed into service" of a larger a n d continu­

ing m y t h of American beginnings in which peoples of African descent

were deemed to be ontologically inferior b u t functionally utilitarian, the

Pauline texts functioned as the linguistic, ideological, and religiously sanctioned

lynchpins in the stolid and death-dealing institution of American slavery. To use

Capon's foxhunting metaphor, proslavery apologists fed, watered, a n d ex­

ercised the " d o g s " or words a n d language of Pauline texts about slavery

not only to " b i t e " defenseless Christians; the " d o g g e d l y " aggressive archi­

tects of the "peculiar institution" of American slavery used the religious lan­

guage a n d imagery of Pauline texts about slavery to entrench the colonial­

ist empire-building of the southern plantation economy, to undergird the

ideology a n d m y t h of white supremacy, a n d to provide steady hermeneuti-

cal grist for a seemingly inexhaustible theological mill which ratified slave­

holders a n d proponents as the divinely appointed, solely legitimate, a n d

authoritative gate-keepers and interpreters of the Hebrew Bible and Christian

Scriptures.

It is important to remember that the incubator for white suprema­

cist thinking in Western culture predated the horrors of the full scale Trans­

atlantic Slave Trade with its woeful a n d torturous sale a n d bartering of

h u m a n cargo in the seventeenth century (of the more t h a n 11.5 million Afri-

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 0 9

cans transported to the Americas from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, however, the vast majority came during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries [Patterson, 1982:118]). "Ethnocentrism," the tendency to valo- rize one's cultural or ethnic group above others, h a s been documented in an- tiquity, with Aristotle arguing that "barbarians"—any group of persons w h o were not Greek—were "natural slaves." The Hellenistic Greeks deemed them- selves privileged donors of enlightenment to "lesser breeds," (Davies: 14).

While Greco-Roman culture was generally relatively less preoccupied with color prejudice (Snowden), it is interesting to note that intermarriage be- tween white and black peoples was rare, and especially in Greek and Roman u p p e r classes. The classicist Grace Beardsley (119) has traced the earliest neg- ative attack on black peoples in Roman literature to Cicero (106-43 CE), w h o calls Ethiopians stupid ("cum hoc homine an cum stipite Aethiope"). This generic designation may have been uttered of other peoples w h o m the Romans deemed to outside the pale of their ethnocentric identity. But Juvenal's barb about Ethiopians exhibits greater contempt: "Let the straight-legged m a n laugh at the club-footed, the white m a n at the Ethiopian (derideat Aethiopem albus)" The reference to the Ethiopian's color is unmistakable here (Hood: 40; see also Martin, 1993).

Robert Hood and others have traced the encroaching development of blackness as synonymous with evil in early Christian thought. In fact, vi- sual metaphors equating whiteness with "good" and blackness with "evil" abounded in Christian literature (Snowden). The Patristic literature quite frequently records the sentiment that Christ makes "black" bodies "white" in the regenerative process of salvation and sanctification. The Devil is per- sonified as the "Black O n e " in the Epistle of Barnabas 4:9 (written between 70-117 CE). The Acts of Peter, written in approximately 180-200 CE, describes Satan as black and an enemy of Christ (Lake: 14; Hennecke and Schnee- melcher: 291). Jerome, the "First Theological Critic of Blackness," equated blackness to sin and evil, a n d is one of the first theologians to link blackness to carnal lust and sexual prowess (Hood: 82-84). Of the equation of blackness with sin, Jerome comments:

People of the Ethiopians means those who are black, being covered with the stain of sin. In the past we were Ethiopians, being made so by our sins and vices. How? Because sin has made us black. But then we heeded Isaiah (1:16)—"Wash yourselves, be clean"—and we said, "Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow" (Ps 50[51]:9). Thus we, Ethiopians that we were, transformed ourselves and became white. (Courtes: 27)

The Middle Ages witnessed the rise of a largely white European Chris- tendom imagining itself encircled by "menacing pagan realms" both liter- ally and figuratively darker. As religious historian Alan Davies has observed: "In one sense, colonial expansion at the end of the medieval period was a

2 1 0 SEMEIA

kind of final crusade against the children of darkness—an outburst of the European cultural, racial, political and social 'superiority-complex'" (14).

Medieval Christian beliefs about blacks and blackness were influenced by attitudes toward the Muslims and the Turks," dark-skinned" heathen in- fidels, and the Moorish occupation of parts of Christian Europe such as Spain, Sicily, southern Italy, and Rhodes (Brooke and Brooke: 46-62,146-55; Hood: 92). The Medieval Antichrist figure was often depicted as black, with Negroid features. A twelfth-century painting shows John the Baptist being beheaded by an executioner with Negroid features and black skin. Even torturers of Christ were depicted as black with African or Negroid features (Hood: 94).

In time, whiteness was assumed to be the "normative" h u m a n condition, and darker skin colors were attributed to sickness, degeneracy, environmen- tal factors, or religious causes (the Hamitic hypothesis, which attributed the racial subordination of black people to Gen 9:20-27, was advocated here). The retention and tenacity of the tendency to denigrate and trivialize black peoples would gain intellectual legitimacy and momentum, and both philo- sophical and scientific sanction, by the early eighteenth century. Philosopher and historian David H u m e (1711-76), one of the leading neo-skeptics of the early modern period, reveals an ethnocentric and white supremacist bias that continued to set the ideological stage, context, and climate for the full flower- ing of proslavery ideologues in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries w h e n he observed:

I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general, all other species of men [sic] (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences

In Jamaica indeed they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly. (Quoted in West: 62)

Social Control and Social Death

A critical and comprehensive analysis of the use of Pauline texts in American slavery should not only situate the discussion within the larger epistemological and conceptual framework of the genealogy and evolution of the metalanguage of white (Eurocentric) supremacy and domination (with the countervailing discourses of the dehumanization and denigration of black peoples), on the one hand; it is also essential to address the ideological s u p - position that the institutions of ancient and m o d e r n slavery were relatively benign, for the presumably " h a p p y slave," on the other hand.

I have argued elsewhere that the pervasive perception of ancient slavery as only moderately or sporadically stressful for the slave is historically naive

MARTIN: "SOMEBODY D O N E HOODOO'D THE HOODOO M A N " 211

and ideologically presumptive (Martin, 1990); and yet, the promulgation of this view by American proslavery apologists would be advanced as philo­ sophically—if polemically—defensible.

In his book The Social Context of the New Testament, Derek Ήdball says the following about Paul's posture toward slavery:

In the first place, the institution of slavery was such an integral part of the social fabric in Paul's day that it would have been difficult for Paul or others to conceive of social organization without it By the time of Paul it was not a severe and cruel institution. Of course there were exceptions . . . but the experience of most slaves was different. In Carcopino's memorable phrase, "with few exceptions slavery in Rome was neither eternal, nor, while it lasted, intol­ erable " There was no widespread discontent about slavery. So, to the early church the question of the abolition of slavery was probably insignificant What Paul offers to Christian slaves is a totally new appreciation of their value as persons. They are no longer "things" but people who have standing and status before God (1 Cor 7:20). In Christ the slave is a free man. . . . If only, Paul argues, they grasp this greater fact, slavery becomes inconsequen­ tial. A slave can remain happily a slave and still serve the Lord in spite of his social limitations. (114-16; italics mine)

In order to adequately address TidbalTs idyllic notion of the "happy slave" in the first century of the Common Era it is necessary and appropriate to document the fact that the institution of slavery was not, in fact, as innocu­ ous as he wants to portray it. Such a task is easily undertaken, and there is no dearth of literature on the subject (Bellen; Finley; Patterson; Watson). While a full-scale discussion of Greco-Roman slavery is not possible here, I would make a few brief observations about Greco-Roman slavery pertinent to the present discussion.

First, that slavery was an integral part of the social fabric of Paul's day is not in dispute, but the thesis that it was not a "severe and cruel institution" has been challenged in recent years. In Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire, Keith R. Bradley argues that while harmonious relationships may have ex­ isted between masters and slaves, one must be cautious about concluding that such intimacy was necessarily characteristic of the master-slave relation­ ship. While "simple, constant animosity between slave and slave master is too naive a concept to have had universal applicability or meaning," the less human side of Roman slavery should not be romanticized:

But although the harmonious relations attested between some slaves and their masters should not be lost sight of, they were not in all likelihood char­ acteristic of the Roman slave system as a whole The essential brutality of the slave experience in the Roman world and especially the kind of harsh pressures in which slaves were constantly exposed as a normal part of their

2 1 2 SEMEIA

everyday lives . . . must be understood. . . . it is vital to understand some- thing of the less elevated, less humane side of Roman social relations, of which the depressed conditions under which most slaves lived provide abundant illustration. (13-14)

Roman slave owners m a y have treated their slaves generously, b u t gen- erosity alone did not, in Bradley's words, "secure the elite ideal of servile fides and obsequium that is to guarantee social stability.... Generosity had to be tem- pered with either force or the threat of force in order for control to be maintained, and a climate of fear over those of subordinate social position had to be created... 'Fear in the slaves produced greater loyalty/ so it was said" (113). Slaves were subjected to a n u m b e r of indignities: capricious sexual abuse (slaves could be used as or sold for prostitutes, and they could be sexually exploited for as long as the master wished); flogging was a "widespread" punishment for which little justification was required; agricultural and mining slaves, domestic slaves and children were all subject to the same violence: "servile distinctions of status, function, age or sex gave no protection against arbitrary punishment" (123; italics mine; cf. 116-19).

Second, even if some slaves in Greco-Roman society were treated with less severity than others, and could, indeed, become freedmen or freed- women, psychosocial aspects of the institution itself were less than salutary. In his groundbreaking book, Slavery and Social Death, the distinguished so- ciologist Orlando Patterson analyzes the structure and dynamics of slavery based on a study of tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern slavery in sixty- six societies (including Greece, Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South). He describes three distinctive constituent elements of slavery that typify master-slave relationships in all of these societies. Aspects of these three elements have been shown to be present within American slave systems (Grant, Harding, Lincoln, Parker, Raboteau, Williams, Wilmore). Patterson argues that in anatomies of power in h u m a n relationships of inequality or domination, slavery is distinc- tive as a relation of domination in three ways.

1. Slavery is unusual in the extremity of power involved. That the master exer- cised total domination over the slave was normative, and a constituent fea- ture of the relationship was the use of some forms of coercion. Force, violence and might both maintained and perpetuated slavery. When slaves were manumitted or died, it became necessary to "repeat the original, violent act of transforming the free m a n into s l a v e . . . . Whipping was not only a method of punishment. It was a conscious device to impress u p o n the slaves that they were slaves; it was a crucial form of social control particularly if we remember that it was very difficult for slaves to run away successfully." (Patterson, 1982:2-3).

2. The slave relation is characterized by what Patterson calls the slave's "natal alienation. " The slave, however recruited, is a socially dead person. "Alien-

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 213

ated from all 'rights' or claims of birth, he ceased to belong in his o w n right to any legitimate social order. All slaves experienced, at the very least, a secular excommunication" (Patterson 1982:5).

Slaves were "genealogical isolates." They had a past, but they were not allowed freely to integrate the experience of their ancestors into their lives, to inform their understanding of social reality with the inherited mean- ings of their natural forebears, or to anchor the living present in any con- scious community of memory. That they reached back for the past, as they reached out for the related living, there can be no doubt. Unlike other per- sons, doing so meant struggling with and penetrating the iron curtain of the master, his community, his laws, his policemen or patrollers, and his heritage. (Ibid)

The slave may have reached out to the "related living," b u t the slave's o w n community and social relations were not usually recognized as legiti- mate and binding, as the cavalier selling of children and family members, re- fusal to respect marriage bonds, and rampant disregard for ancestral, family, and communal traditions attests (6).

3. Slaves were persons who had been dishonored in a general way—their status held no honor; indignity, indebtedness, and the absence of an independent social exis- tence reinforced the sense of dishonor. The slave was without power, except through another; she or h e had become "unprintable" and "disposable," the "ultimate h u m a n tool" (7).

PROSLAVERY APOLOGISTS: TEXTS AND PRACTICES

It has never escaped the notice of serious students of history that Chris- tianity has been at once the religion of enslaved black peoples, slaveholders, a n d abolitionists. Even if the particular forms and functions of the Christian faith were nuanced through different existential prisms for each of these three groups, the first-century biblical writers w h o penned the precepts about rela- tions between slavemasters and slaves could never have imagined or envi- sioned the nefarious ways in which those narratives would be used en masse in the confraternity of religion a n d chattel slavery centuries later. Texts in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures were the southern church person's major de- fense of slavery. From 1772 until 1850 Scripture comprised the primary source of authority and legitimization for the enslavement of black peoples. Not sur- prisingly, proslavery advocates used the Christian Scriptures to emphasize the ethical mandates of slaves, with little comment about masters. Proslavery hermeneutics neither jeopardized the privileged status of the slavemaster, nor altered the social condition of the slave (H. S. Smith: 129; Faust: 1-20; Evans: 39).

As noted earlier, the so-called "Pauline texts" about slavery served as the ideological and religious "lynchpins" in the stolid and death-dealing edi- fice of American slavery. In fact, the defenders of h u m a n bondage were more

2 1 4 SEMEIA

comfortable and "at h o m e " in the letters of Paul than in any Christian Scrip- ture text (H. S. Smith: 134). The particular appeal of the Pauline texts was their specific injunctions to the duties of masters and slaves. "In fact, virtually every proslavery tract of any consequence explored the Pauline epistles far more ex- haustively than any other portion of the N e w Testament" (134).

The pantheon of premier texts regularly cited in support of slavery in- cluded primarily six Christian Scripture texts:

1. 1 Corinthians 7:20-21 2. Ephesians 6:5-9 3. Colossians 3:22,4:1 4. 1 Peter 2:18-25 5. Philemon 10-18 6. 1 Timothy 6:20-21

The roster of Pauline and other Christian Scripture texts, it was argued, supported slavery in two ways. First, Paul had admonished both masters a n d slaves to fulfill their obligations to one another without ever intimating that it was problematic that one h u m a n being owned another. Paul, it was argued, never suggested that slavery was sinful, and, like Jesus, Paul was quite aware of the cruelties of the slavery practices in the Roman Empire. Governor H a m - mond, of South Carolina, advanced this argument in " H a m m o n d ' s Letters on Slavery," presented to the Virginia legislature in 1831-32:

It is vain to look to Christ or any of his Apostles to justify such blasphe- mous perversions of the word of God. Although Slavery in its most revolting form was everywhere visible around them, no visionary notions of piety or philanthropy ever tempted them to gainsay the LAW, even to mitigate the cruel severity of the existing system. On the contrary, regarding Slavery as an established, as well as an inevitable human condition of human society, they never hinted at such a thing as its termination on earth, any more than that "the poor may cease out of the land/' which God affirms to Moses shall never be.

It is impossible, therefore, to suppose that Slavery is contrary to the will of God. It is equally absurd to say that American Slavery differs in form or principle from that of the chosen people. We accept the Bible terms as the definition of our Slavery, and its precepts as the guide of our conduct. (Elliot: 107-108).

A second argument invoking Pauline authority in support of slavery noted that slaveholders (like Philemon) were members of churches founded by Paul and other apostles, hence, neither Paul nor the early church consid- ered slavery sinful per se.

In proslavery apologia, then, Christian faith was viewed as consistent with slavery, as shown by (1) the specific biblical injunctions to slaves and

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 215

masters, and (2) the argument that the first-century church provided an en- during paradigm of not interfering with the political and economic realities of the institution of slavery. George D. Armstrong, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia, held this conviction, as recorded in his book, The Christian Doctrine of Slavery, published in 1857: "Master and slave are, alike, the creatures of God, the objects of his care, the subjects of his government: and, alike, responsible to him for the discharge of the duties to their several stations" (64).

Charles B. Hodge, a distinguished Princeton Seminary professor, echoes the sentiments of Armstrong in his treatise, "The Bible Argument On Slav- ery": "These external relations... are of little importance, for every Christian is a freeman in the highest and best sense of the word, and at the same time is under the strongest bonds to Christ" (848).

Both Armstrong and Hodge allow one concession: the apostles approved of the institution of slavery, but not its abuses.

. . . they [the apostles] did not shut their eyes to the abuses of these several institutions—civil government, marriage, the family, slavery; nor did they affect an ignorance of them, but carefully distinguishing between the institu- tions themselves and the abuses which had become attached to them, they set themselves to work with zeal and faithfulness . . . to correct the abuses (Armstrong: 57; cf. Hodge: 852; Swartley: 31-64).

The fact that some of the texts about slavery attributed to Paul were not actually Pauline (Colossians,1 Ephesians, and 1 Timothy) mattered little to proslavery rhetoricians in a time which had only just begun to see the rise of historical biblical criticism. The fact is, defenders of human bondage were "her- meneutical contortionists/' striving to make the round blocks of selected, and histori- cally conditioned first-century biblical traditions fit the square holes of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century discourses of "domination" and "subjectivity" designed to reinforce a construction of reality that rendered some "natural" lords, leaders and masters, and others the ruled, the dominated, and the enslaved. The use of Pauline, or other Christian Scripture texts to legitimate racist dogma helped immensely to frame a discourse whose power and effects would in- sure the hegemony of white supremacy, with the horrific abuses that attended it, including a slaveocracy which supported the plantation capitalists of the South, and many merchants and industrial capitalists in the North.

The Presbyterian clergyman Robert L. Dabney of Virginia argued that a biblical doctrine of slavery would effectively lead to the conversion of a sig- nificant number of northern Christians to the proslavery agenda: "Here is our policy, then, to push the Bible argument continually, drive abolitionism to the

1 In fact, the authorship of Colossians is still disputed. See Martin, 1991a:206-207, and notes 1-3).

2 l 6 SEMEIA

wall, to compel it to assume an anti-Christian position. By so doing, we compel the whole of Christianity of the North to array itself on our side" (quoted in Johnson: 129). While Dabney's assertion is overly simplistic and idealistic, it does corroborate a widely held perception that "biblical war- rant," or justification for slavery as rooted in "God's word," and especially at the helm of one of Christianity's most influential and illustrious figures, Paul the Apostle, comprised the strongest and most convincing apologetic ratio- nales for slavery. Here a thoroughgoing biblical literalism would be exploited for its full effect.

Five additional observations may be made about the texts, practices, and effects of Pauline texts (or texts attributed to Paul) during American slavery.

First, white Southern clergy were in the forefront of those w h o justified slavery, and w h o called for secession from the North to retain it. Challenging the thesis that all people have a right to an equal share of personal liberty, they argued, instead, that each government should establish those regula- tions "which promote the good of the population" (Cheseborough: 11). The household morality codes in Col 3:18-4:1, Eph 5:21-6:9, and 1 Pet 2:18-3:7, were centrally used to argue that people were placed in different social ar- rangements by God's providence: "some are rulers, some subjects; some are rich, some poor; some are fathers, some children; some are bond, some free. And if a man is justly and providentially a ruler, he has the rights of a father; and if a slave, only the rights of a slave" (Loveland: 201-202).

The historian Donald G. Matthews, in his book, Religion in the Old South, reveals the ways in which a literalist interpretation of the household codes served the patriarchal interests of white males with reference to both women and enslaved black peoples. Matthews argues that in order to establish the doctrine of h u m a n inequality, many southern evangelical preachers

insulted and demeaned a majority of their own constituency with the same . . . insensitivity which they usually reserved for talking about black people. In tract upon tract, male writers emphasized the subordination of women as built into the very nature of human society by God himself, citing Scripture to that effect and rewarding the submissiveness of women with elaborate praise for her grace, "passive fortitude/7 and "enduring love." (169-70)

Frederick Ross, a clergyperson from Huntsville, Alabama, makes a case for honoring the biblical injunctions regarding slaves and women, as re- corded by Donald Matthews:

"Do you say," asked Ross, "the slave is held to involuntary service? So is the wife. Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for her, and not by her." He reminded the wives that they, like the slaves, were "under service," and "bound to obey their husbands." Ross continued:

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 1 7

"Do you say the slave is sold and bought? So is the wife the world over." Ross, along with many other southern clergy, spoke and wrote about the inequality of women to justify their stances on the inequality of Blacks. (Matthews: 12; see Ross: 55-58,124-25)

The religious world view of proslavery apologists was constructed upon a combination of a self-serving biblical literalism, patriarchal ideology, and conservative political theory in service to the economic interests and class structure of the American South (and in some instances, the North as well). Proslavery apologists argued that since slavery was sanctioned in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures, it represented "orthodox religion." As such, proslavery advocates perceived the abolitionist attack on slavery as moti- vated by "unorthodox religion"; hence, the argument was more than "pro- slavery versus antislavery," it was a struggle between true religion and false religion, between orthodoxy and heresy, and between a "biblically revealed" religion and a "man-made" religion. Those who opposed slavery were con- strued to be anti-God, anti-Bible, anti-Constitution, heretics, and infidels. James Henley Thornwell, an eminent South Carolina preacher, publisher, and educator, charged in one of his sermons (delivered in 1850): "The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders—they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins, on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground—Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake" (quoted in Cheseborough: 12-13).

Second, Paul's letter to Philemon (esp. w . 8-21) illustrates the tension be- tween a discourse of equality (Gal 3:26-29) and the reality of social hierarchy. This tension emerges in some Pauline traditions about women (1 Cor 11:2-16; Gal 3:26-29).

The fact is, Paul's intention in the letter to Philemon, and his general views about slavery, betray some ambiguity. Many Eurocentric scholars have favored an interpretation which suggests that Paul wanted Philemon to re- ceive Onesimus as a Christian brother who remained a slave (Meyer; Moule; Caird; Ridderbos). A majority of African-American biblical interpreters (and many others) have shown that Paul intended that Onesimus be received as a "brother in truth" who was no longer a slave, in accord with the sentiment of 1 Cor 7:21,23, and Gal 3:26-29 (Bruce; Hinks; Paris, 1982; Patterson, 1991:320; Perkins; Petersen; Schüssler Fiorenza; Thomas; Winter).

I have argued elsewhere that Paul used the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric masterfully to advocate for Philemon's full-scale emancipation, with the commercial language in verse 18 functioning figuratively and not literally (in short, there is no evidence that Onesimus had "absconded with the silver" because he was a morally bankrupt person). Further, the evidence that Onesi- mus is a runaway at all is to be questioned:

2 l 8 SEMEIA

Paul's stated readiness to share his economic resources shows the boundless character of his concern for Philemon. The commercial allusions function, then, as a quintessential illustration of the fact that Paul would utilize all re- sources at his disposal to prevent possible economic barriers, or any hin- drances from forestalling the full granting of his request, for Paul's rhetorical offer of a "promissory note," a kind of cheirographon (Col. 4.18), an auto- graphed "I.O.U.," has fully opened the door for Philemon's full cooperation. (Martin, 1991b: 335)

It is possible that Onesimus was a runaway slave, b u t that is not stated in any definitive sense. There are a n u m b e r of other reasons which could ac- count for his presence with Paul: he could have been sent to Paul by Philemon for a particular purpose, and decided to remain with Paul. John Knox ques- tions whether Philemon had sent Onesimus to Paul with some message or gift for Paul or one of Paul's companions in prison. Was he simply overdue in his absence from Colossae on Philemon's business? (Martin, 1991b:336).

It is not insignificant that this most personal of Paul's letters is addressed to a large audience: Philemon, Apphia, and "the church in your house" (v. 2), for Paul expects Philemon's response to his plea to be positive and paradig- matic for others.

Paul's passionate appeal on behalf of Onesimus does not fully forestall the argument that Paul appears to tolerate chattel slavery (1 Cor 7:21-24), par- ticularly as he views the duration of the social order through eschatologically- tinged spectacles (7:29-31). The suggestion that enslaved persons remain in the condition in which they were called within the context of 1 Corinthians 7 may be construed as a disincentive against radical social change by some (7:24), and, moreover, a minimalist attempt to subvert aspects of the existing social order.

Third, Pauline texts were used in plantation missions as part of a formal programme of religious instruction to require enslaved black peoples to con- form to the creation of a "Christian social order" based on duty—that of slave to master.

A chief aim of plantation missions was to "show forth from the Scrip- tures that slavery is not forbidden by Divine Law." One of the leading theo- rists and proponents of plantation missions, Charles Colcock Jones, explained the reason for plantation missions in his Catechism published in 1834. Jones's Catechism enjoined slaves

to count their Masters "worthy of all honour," as those whom God has placed over them in this world; "with all fear," they are to be "subject to them" and obey them in all things, possible and lawful, with good will and endeav- our to please them well,. . . and let Servants serve their masters as faithfully behind their backs as before their faces. God is present to see, if their masters are not. (Quoted in Crum: 204-205)

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 1 9

Jones would later be surprised when a congregation of enslaved black peoples walked out upon hearing him justify slavery on the "authority of Paul." The now famous incident occurred in 1845:

I was preaching to a large congregation on the Epistle of Philemon: and when I insisted upon fidelity and obedience as Christian virtues in servants and upon the authority of Paul, condemned the practice of running away, one half of my audience deliberately rose up and walked off with themselves, and those that remained looked any thing but satisfied, either with the preacher or his doctrine. After dismission, there was no small stir among them; some solemnly declared "that there was no such an Epistle in the Bible"; others, "that they did not care if they ever heard me preach again!" . . . There were some too, who had strong objections against me as a Preacher, because I was a master, and said, "his people have to work as well as we." (Quoted in Ra- boteau: 24-25)

Fourth, the Pauline texts functioned as a central actor in the theater of proslavery drama, one which sought to reinforce the rituals of subordination which left enslaved black peoples on a daily precarious tightrope walk be- tween punishment and humiliation, Ufe and death. In an interview recorded in Canada in 1863, Mrs. Joseph Smith, formerly enslaved in Maryland, nar- rates her experience of biblical texts enjoining subordination and the con- comitant brutality of Christian slavemasters:

I was born and brought up on the Eastern shore of Maryland. I didn't have a hard time, but a pretty easy one; but I was a slave, any how. I never see none of the cutting and slashing that I have heard of. I came away because I wanted to be free. I was tired of working for somebody else, and I knew they might sell me whenever they'd a mind to. The ministers used to preach— "Obey your masters and mistresses and be good servants"; I never heard anything else. I didn't hear any thing about obeying our Maker. Those who were Christians & held slaves were the hardest masters. A card-player and drunkard wouldn't flog you half to death. Well, it is something like this—the Christians will oppress you more. For instance, the biggest dinner must be got on Sunday. Now, everybody that has got common sense knows that Sunday is a day of rest. And if you do the least thing in the world that they don't like, they will mark it down against you, and Monday you have got to take a whipping. Now, the card-player & horse racer won't be there to trouble you. They will eat their breakfast in the morning and feed their dogs, & then be off, & you won't see them again till night. I would rather be with a card-player or sportsman, by half, than a Christian. (Blassingame: 411)

Slavemasters often functioned as "acrobats without safety nets": suf- fused with the confidence of those in positions of power who have "no fear of falling," they feared no accountability for their actions. Fueled by claims of "biblical sanction" for their slaveholding prerogatives, they acted with full

2 2 0 SEMEIA

impunity toward enslaved men and women. Enslaved women and m e n often viewed the misfortunes of slave masters and slave mistresses as an act of di- vine justice or retribution, as was the case with James Curry, enslaved in Georgia in the early nineteenth century:

When my master's family were all gone away on the Sabbath, I used to go into the house and get the great Bible, and lie down in the piazza, and read, taking care, however, to put it back before they returned. There I learned that it was contrary to the revealed will of God, that one man should hold another as a slave. I had always heard it talked among the slaves, that we ought not to be held as slaves; that our forefathers and mothers were stolen from Africa, where they were free men and free women. But in the Bible I learned that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth." While I worked in the house and waited upon my mistress, she always treated me kindly, but to other slaves, who were as faithful as I was, she was very cruel. At one time, there was a comb found broken in a cup- board, which was worth about twenty-five or thirty-seven and a half cents. She suspected a little girl, 9 or 10 years old, who served in the house, of having broken it. She took her in the morning, before sunrise, into a room, and calling me to wait upon her, had all the doors shut. She tied her hands, and then took her frock up over her head, and gathered it up in her left hand, and with her right commenced beating her naked body with bunches of willow twigs. She would beat her until her arm was tired, and then thrash her on the floor, and stamp on her with her foot, and kick her, and choke her to stop her screams. Oh! it was awful! and I was obliged to stand there and see it, and go and bring her the sticks. She continued this torture until ten o'clock, the family waiting breakfast meanwhile. She then left whipping her; and that night, she herself was so lame that one of her daughters was obliged to undress her. The poor child never recovered. A white swelling came from the bruises on one of her legs, of which she died in two or three years. And my mistress was soon after called by her great Master to give her account. (Blassingame: 131)

Finally, while the range of topics which explore the full spectrum of the effects of Pauline texts in American slavery cannot be examined here, it should be noted that the nation's system of American jurisprudence was often complicit with, and reinforced, proslavery religious dogma and pre- cepts which safeguarded the institution of slavery, with its material benefits to slaveholders. Here, Pauline texts or sentiments were usually less explicit; however, the assumption that Christianity could be mined as a legal resource for a typology of attitudes supporting slavery was a given.

A. Leon Higginbotham, the esteemed jurist, advocator, and historian on race and the American legal process in the Colonial period, has observed that the causal factors for the legislated and adjudicated arguments for the le- galization of black suppression were multifaceted. Moreover, he notes many Americans still find it too traumatic to study the true story of racism as it has

M A R T I N : "SOMEBODY D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 221

existed under the "rule of law." Higginbotham comments: "Generally, neither the courts nor the legislatures seemed to have been any more sensitive about commercial transactions involving slaves than they were about sales of corn, lumber, horses, or d o g s " (12). A n advertisement for the sale of one h u n d r e d and twenty slaves illustrates the "casual" affectation of the advertisements:

One hundred and twenty Negroes for sale—The subscriber has just arrived from Petersburg, Virginia, with one hundred and twenty likely young Ne- groes of both sexes and every description, which he offers for sale on the most reasonable terms. The lot now on hand consists of plough-boys, several likely and well-qualified house servants of both sexes, several women and children, small girls suitable for nurses, and several small boys without their mothers. Planters and traders are earnestly requested to give the subscriber a call previously to making purchases elsewhere, as he is enabled to sell as cheap or cheaper than can be sold by any other person in the trade. —Ham- burg, South Carolina, Benjamin Davis. (Goodell: 54-55)

The legion of documented slave advertisements for runaway slaves like- wise corroborates Higginbotham's point regarding the "casualness" of trafficking in h u m a n lives. They also document the daily and unrelenting ef- forts of enslaved peoples to secure their freedom. In his book, Stealing A Little Freedom: Advertisements for Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1791-1840, Fred- die L. Parker compiled notices for more than 2,600 enslaved persons. One sample illustrates the cavalier attitude of slavemasters seeking to recover their "property."

635. May 3,1816 TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, living near Charlotte, N.C. night of the Z^inst. FOUR likely NEGROES, viz. TOM & THREE CHILDREN.

Tom is about 47 years of age, dark complected, stout made, grey headed, has a remarkable white spot on the side of his neck, and scars of white across his breast.

Stephen is about 20 years of age, stout made, has a scar in his under lip cut with a penknife.

Puggy is about 14 years of age. Ellick is about 12 years of age, some of his jaw teeth are rotten. They are all middling well clothed, and took with them a number of

good clothing. They also took a shot Gun and two Pistols. I purchased the above Negroes some years ago of the estate of Wallis

Alexander, Esq. deceased, of Lincoln county, N.C. I will give the above reward and pay all reasonable expences to any

person who will apprehend said Negroes, and deliver them to me in Char- lotte, or secure them in any Jail, so that I get them.

April 11,1816 ZENAS ALEXANDER (Parker: 212)

2 2 2 SEMEIA

As early as 1667, colonial jurisprudence in Virginia legislated that b a p - tism did not affect the bondage of black peoples a n d Native Americans, decreeing that "baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage of freedom" (Higginbotham: 19-40).

The notion that the conversion and baptism of slaves had n o effect on their status was echoed in South Carolina law: "it shall be, and is hereby de- clared, lawful for any negro or Indian slave, . . . to receive and profess the Christian faith, and be thereinto baptized; that n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g . . . he or they shall not thereby be manumitted or set f r e e . . . (Higginbotham: 200).

Arguments have been advanced in support of the thesis that baptism encouraged slavemasters to regard enslaved persons with greater compas- sion, as advocated in Quaker abolitionist rhetoric (Higginbotham: 201,293); however, m a n y states continued to join legal precept to religious precept in forbidding literacy, mobility, and emancipation to the enslaved. The Pauline texts so eagerly embraced and wielded to both undergird and legitimate the discourses of domination, social contra, and social death, were firmly but- tressed by formal, legal prescriptions to entrench^zdes and obsequium to slave masters, and the continuation of the American slave in perpetuity.

III. "SAY IT'S N O T S O ! " DISCOURSES OF RESISTANCE, EMPOWERMENT, AND LIBERATION

James Gronniosaw, a young African teenager sold to a Dutch trader in the 1730s, recorded one of the first five slave narratives published in England in the eighteenth century. He recalls his reaction to his first exposure to the writ- ten word:

My master used to read prayers in public to the ship's crew every Sabbath day; and when I first saw him read, I was never so surprised in my life, as when I saw the book talk to my master, for I thought it did, as I observed him to look upon it, and move his lips. I wished it would do so with me. As soon as my master had done reading, I followed him to the place where he put the book, being mightily delighted with it, and when nobody saw me, I opened it, and put my ear down close upon it, in great hope that it would say some- thing to me; but I became very sorry, and greatly disappointed, when I found it would not speak. (Cornelius: 16)

Gronniosaw was not the first enslaved African to mention the "voice in the text." Of those first five slave narratives published in England, four mentioned this notion of the "voice in the text," attesting to both the popu- larity of the story, and perhaps the frequency of the experience in the lives of some enslaved persons. Ultimately, the desire a n d ability to achieve lit- eracy, to read and write, would become a major preoccupation of m a n y en- slaved Africans. The unquenchable desire and ability to read the Bible (often by stealth and at great personal cost, since slavemasters and others for-

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 2 3

bade literacy and schooling for slaves) would function as one more in- strument of effective political resistance and liberation for black peoples (Cor- nelius: 16).

The fact is, whether literate or not, enslaved African-Americans did not hear the same "voice in the text" as their slavemasters. When, upon hear- ing Charles Colcock Jones's sermon about the Pauline endorsement of slav- ery fully one half of the congregation "rose up" and "walked off with them- selves," questioning whether such an epistle was even found in the Bible (see above), they were rejecting with "head" (intellect), heart, and "feet" alike what they believed to be a deliberate distortion of Christian doctrine. The point should escape no one that one-half of the congregation walked out, and the other half who remained disputed Jones's theological argument. Their "hermeneutics of critical suspicion" yielded a response of incredulity to the idea that God endorsed a construction of reality in which some human beings became the "property" of other human beings—a response conveying the sentiment, "Say It's Not So!" or "It Can't Be So!" Implicit in the slaves' walk- ing out of Jones's religious assembly was unqualifiable rejection of the morally bankrupt philosophy of white racist supremacy, with its twin corol- laries, racial denigration and rampant injustice.

Enslaved African peoples brought with them to North America a distinct perception of God, one who was transcendent, immanent, and impartial, the universal parent of all of humankind (Acts 17:26-28). The distinct monothe- ism at the heart of African traditional religions focused on God as the power which unites the realms of nature, history, and spirit (Paris, 1995:28).

Structural similarities between Christianity and African cosmologies made conversion to Christianity easier for African slaves, but it never meant the wholesale exchange of their indigenous religion for a new one. "When Africans embraced the Christian God they simultaneously extended rather than transcended their own particular practice" (Paris, 1995:28-37; cf. Geno- vese: 211; Wiredu: 155).

Since religion pervaded every dimension of African life (there was no notion of the modern Western distinction between sacred and profane in African cosmological thought), the theological and moral implications of faith were always pivotal, including one's relationship to community, society, and nature. Africans who desired to be Christians sought to "Africanize" Chris- tianity, enculturating Christianity with African moral virtues such as bene- ficence, the promotion of an appreciation for the integrity of all human per- sonhood, community, and the preservation of freedom and justice (Paris, 1995:27,117,136).

The Christianity of enslaved Africans was distinct from that of proslavery apologists, with black folk religion advancing a decisive moral critique of slavery, an embrace of the legitimation of slave resistance, and a resounding affirmation of the integrity, beauty, and value of black humanity. Black slave theology was rooted in an understanding of God as one w h o hears the cries

224 SEMEIA

of those in bondage (as in the Exodus traditions in the Hebrew Bible), a God w h o is just, and compassionate, and w h o vindicates the oppressed. This God also punishes the wicked. African-American Spirituals are b u t one of m a n y cultural venues through which these themes were mediated and reinforced. The pre-Civil War h y m n below, which describes the end of slavery as God's liberating act, is but one example:

Slavery chain done broke at last, broke at last, broke at last,

Slavery chain done broke at last, Going to praise God till I die. Way down in-a dat valley, Praying on my knees; Told God about my troubles, And to help me ef-a He please.

I did tell him how I suffer, In de dungeon and de chain, And de days I went with head bowed down, And my broken flesh and pain.

I did know my Jesus heard me, 'Cause de spirit spoke to me, And said, "Rise my child, your chillun, And you shall be free.

"I done 'p'int one mighty captain For to marshall all my hosts, And to bring my bleeding ones to me, And not one shall be lost/'

Slavery chain done broke at last, broke at last, broke at least,

Slavery chain done broke at last, Going to praise God till I die. (Cone: 41-42)

If God is Just and the Divine Liberator in black folk religion, Jesus is the "Dying Lamb" w h o became the Hero, the Conquering King, and the Friend w h o not only provides salvation, b u t w h o "fights your battles and rolls away all of Satan's blocks" (D. Hopkins: 30-31). Moreover, the sig- nificance of Jesus is not his maleness, b u t his humanity. He is k n o w n as one w h o empowers the weak and frees them from bondage, w h o signifies free- dom from the sociopsychological, economic, and political oppression of black peoples (Grant: 215; Douglas).

In contradistinction to white proslavery apologists, black peoples found within the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures a "voice within the text" which recognized the reality of evil in h u m a n person and institutions, and they provided a sustained prophetic witness and unyielding, active resistance

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 225

against all that dehumanized black men and women made in the image of God (Williams: 1-33). Seeking diligently to reveal the contradictions in the life of the nation, to clarify the moral dimension of those contradictions, and to urge their reasoned and just resolution (Paris, 1982), black peoples rejected the carefully packaged interpretations of an uncritical Pauline "slavehold- ing religion" which they believe to be disconsonant with both God's divine intention for the human family, and God's justice. The voice they "heard in the text" was one which was consonant with a nonracist interpretation and appropriation of the Christian tradition and Christian faith, which was free from the racist overlays and entanglements of legal and systemic oppression, and which recognized the universal kinship of humanity. This fundamental hermeneutic perspective which recognized the universal parenthood of God and the kinship of humankind would always mandate a disavowal of any hermeneutic or interpretation of Scripture which would seek to legitimate and perpetuate racism, slavery, or any other form of human bondage (Paris, 1982:134-35).

Part I of this essay illustrated the fact that the rich synthesis of "hoodoo" and biblical traditions could be used in service of wide-ranging discourses enabling personal and (or) communal transformations of identity, space and place. These discourses could be used to transmute the "sorcery of white racism" in ways that circumvented the persistent onslaught of injustice, deni- gration, and humiliation. Language could thus be used as a stratagem of po- litical resistance against the hegemonic discourses of domination.

African-American peoples have always used language as a conveyor of religious, cultural, and moral meaning and values. One of the most power- ful and poignant examples of discourses enabling pragmatically affirma- tive, transformative, and ennobling effects during the antebellum period of American slavery is found in the celebrated novelist Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved. This fictional account of a gathering of black slaves in a clearing in the woods to engage in a ritual of the worship of God, and especially the celebration of the integrity of Black personhood, was not uncommon.

Whether in bushes, fields, cabins, or at night under the canopy of a star-stud- ded sky, enslaved African Americans took the remnants of their traditional religious structures and integrated them with their interpretation of the Bible. All of this occurred in the "Invisible Institution" of the black church far away from the watchful eyes of white peoples. Only in their own cultural idiom and political space could black slaves truly exercise some control in a world where they often lacked control over their present and future. While white masters attempted to force their Christianity onto their slaves, slaves secretly worshiped God. Their practical and sacred world view evolved into an institutional worship setting under bondage. (D. Hopkins: 18)

James C. Scott was correct when he observed in his book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, that "Most of the political life of sub-

2 2 6 SEMEIA

ordinate groups is to be found neither in overt collective defiance of power holders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory be- tween these two polar opposites" (136).

The map of that vast territory between the two opposites contains multi- ple strategies for survival and resistance against the forces of domination and oppression. Morrison's imaginative narration of the preacher Baby Suggs's sermonic discourse provides a stirring example of what Scott calls a "dis- course of dignity," a form of "Public, Declared Resistance" in a more private setting. The "discourse of dignity" is a response to ideological negation and indignity, often shared by a social circle of family, friends, neighbors, and peers, and it provides a partial refuge from the humiliations of domination. As a collective hidden discourse, a "discourse of dignity" shared with others in a concealed site provides an opportunity for the group to elaborate affir- matively a constructive hidden script in comparative safety (Scott: 113-14). Morrison narrates the drama with telling and gripping clarity:

When w a r m weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, w o m a n and child w h o could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing—a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for w h a t at the end of a path k n o w n only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clear- ing while the people waited among the trees.

After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready w h e n she p u t her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and they ran from the trees toward her.

"Let your mothers hear you laugh," she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.

"Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.

Finally she called the w o m e n to her, "Cry," she told them. "For the liv- ing and the dead. Just cry." And without covering their eyes the w o m e n let loose.

It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed u p . Women stopped crying and danced; men sat d o w n and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing d a m p and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered u p to them her great big heart.

She did not tell them to clean u p their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure.

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 2 7

"Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you\ And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too.

More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh. (Morrison: 87-89)

This "discourse of dignity" affirmed a constructive self-love of bodies too often shackled in chains, or overworked, or underfed, or undernourished, or beaten, or mutilated, or torn, or lynched—but certainly disregarded—in slav- ery. A discourse like the one uttered by Baby Suggs in the Clearing, and safely away from the ever watching eyes of slavemasters and slave mistresses, func- tioned as a discourse of celebration, resistance, empowerment, and liberation for men and women whose physical and material humanity, and very onto- logical being, were in constant jeopardy in slavery.

The rhetorical discourses of enslaved persons in sermon and song, poetry and speeches, autobiographies or as dictated reminisces, would document black peoples' refusal to accept the notion of their inhumanity and the terms of their structural subordination even when advanced under the auspices of Pauline authority.

Like Baby Suggs's sermon, many of these antebellum discourses would be rhetorically eloquent, poignant, revolutionary (e.g. Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth), life-giving, and life-sustaining, and they would often be uttered within contexts that were participatory and communal, as was that of Baby Suggs. Such discourses would "thwart," "hoodoo," or nullify the pernicious

228 SEMEIA

sorcery of white racism—temporarily at least—which sought ever to crush and destroy black minds and bodies and spirits. Such discourses of resistance would forestall evil and create those healing and empowering ideological, epistemological, and existential "safe places" which provided some reprieve from the constant onslaught and battery of the proslavery apologia which regularly trafficked in the full-scale exploitation of Pauline traditions.

W O R K S CONSULTED

Armstrong, George D. 1857 The Christian Doctrine of Slavery. Repr. 1969. York: Negro University Press.

Baker, Huston, Jr. 1991 Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writings. Chi-

cago: University of Chicago Press.

Beardsley, Grace Hadley 1929 The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization: A Study of the Ethiopian Type.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bellen, Heinz 1971 Studien zur Slavenflucht im römischen Kaiserreich. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Blassingame, John W., ed. 1977 Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Auto-

biographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Bradley, Keith R. 1987 Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Brooke, Rosalind, and Christopher Brooke 1984 Popular Religions in the Middles Ages: Western Europe 1000-1300. London:

Thames and Hudson.

Bruce, F. F. 1981 Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Callahan, Allen 1997 Embassy ofOnesimus: The Letter of Paul to Philemon. Valley Forge, Perm.:

Trinity Press International.

Capon, Robert Farrar 1974 Hunting the Divine Fox. Images and Mystery in Christian Faith. New York:

Crossroad.

Cheseborough, David B. 1996 Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865. Carbondale and Edwards-

wille: Southern Illinois University Press.

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 2 9

Cone, James H. 1991 The Spirituals and the Blues. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis.

Cornelius, Janet Duitsman 1991 When I Can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Ante-

bellum South. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press.

Courtes, Jean Marie 1979 "The Theme of Ethiopia and Ethiopians in Patristic Literature. " Images of

the Black in Western Art. Volume 2/i. N e w York: Morrow.

Crum, Mason 1940 Gullah: Negro Life in the Carolina Sea Islands. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-

sity Press.

Davies, Alan 1982 "The Ideology of Racism." In The Church and Racism. Concilium 151. Ed.

Gregory Baum and John Coleman. N e w York: Seabury.

Douglas, Kelly Brown 1994 The Black Christ. The Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Studies in North

American Black Religion 9. Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis.

Elliot, E.N., ed. 1860 Cotton is King, and Pro-slavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of

Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge,Bledsoe, and Cartwright on This Important Subject. Repr. 1969. N e w York: N e w York Universities Press.

Evans, James H. 1992 We Have Been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology. Minne-

apolis: Fortress.

Faust, Drew, ed. 1981 The Ideology of Slavery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Finley, M.I. 1983 Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. N e w York: Penguin.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1975 Truth and Method. Trans. G. Barden and J. Cumming. N e w York: Seabury.

Genovese, Eugene 1974 Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made. N e w York: Pantheon.

Goodell, William 1853 The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice. Repr. 1969. N e w York:

American Library.

Grant, Jacquelyn 1989 White Women's Christ and Black Women's Jesus: Feminist Christology and

Womanist Response. AAR Academy Series 64. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

230 SEMEIA

Harding, Vincent 1981 There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. N e w York: Har-

court Brace Jovanovich.

Hennecke, Edgar and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, eds. 1976 New Testament Apocrypha. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Higginbotham, A. Leon 1978 In The Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial

Period. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hinks, Peter P. 1997 To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Ante-

bellum Slave Resistance. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.

Hodge, Charles B. 1860 "The Bible Argument on Slavery." See E. W. Elliott, "Cotton is King and

Pro-slavery Arguments." Pp. 841-77 in 77ns Important Subject. N e w York: Negro University Press, 1969.

Hood, Robert E. 1994 Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness. Minne-

apolis: Fortress.

Hopkins, Dwight 1993 Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology. Mary-

knoll, N.Y: Orbis.

Hopkins, John Henry 1864 A Scriptural Ecclesiastical and Historical View of Slavery from the Days of the

Patriarch Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century. New York: Pooley.

Hurston, Zora Neale 1990 Mules and Men. Repr. of the 1935 ed. New York: Harper Collins.

Johnson, Thomas Cary 1903 The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney. Richmond (publisher not

stated).

Lake, Kirsopp, ed. 1959 The Apostolic Fathers. Volume 1. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lincoln, C. Eric 1984 Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma. N e w York: Hill and

Wang.

Long, Charles H. 1986 Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion.

Philadelphia: Fortress.

Loveland, Anne C. 1980 Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800-1860. Baton Rouge: Lou-

isiana State University Press.

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 2 3 1

Martin, Clarice J. 1990 "Womanist Interpretations of the N e w Testament: The Quest for Holistic

and Inclusive Translation and Interpretation." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. 6 / 2 : 4 1 - 6 1 .

1991a "The Haustafeln (Household Codes) in African American Biblical Inter- pretation: 'Free Slaves' and 'Subordinate W o m e n / " P p . 206-31 in Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. Ed. Cain Hope Felder. Philadelphia: Augsburg/Fortress.

1991b "The Rhetorical Function of Commercial Language in Paul's Letter to Philemon (Verse 18)." Pp. 321-37 in Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy. JSNTSup 50. Ed. Duane F. Watson. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

1993 "A Chamberlain's Journey and the Challenge of Interpretation for Lib- eration." Pp. 485-502 in The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Herme- neutics. Revised Ed. Ed. N o r m a n K. Gottwald and Richard A. Horsley. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis.

1999 "Womanist Biblical Interpretation." Pp. 655-58 in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 2. Ed. John H. Hayes. Nashville: Abingdon.

Matthews, Donald G. 1977 Religion in the Old South. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Morrison, Toni 1987 Beloved. N e w York: Knopf.

Paris, Peter 1982 "The Bible and the Black Churches." In The Bible and Social Reform. Ed.

Ernest R. Sandeen. Philadelphia: Fortress.

1995 The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Parker, Freddie L., ed. 1994 Stealing A Little Freedom: Advertisements for Slave Runaways in North Caro-

lina, 1791-1840. N e w York: Garland.

Parte, Daniel 1995 Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Réévaluation. Louisville: Westminster/

John Knox.

Patterson, Orlando 1982 Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-

vard University Press.

1991 Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. Vol. 1. N e w York: Harper- Collins.

Perkins, Pheme 1992 "Philemon." Pp. 362-63 in The Women's Bible Commentary. Ed. Carol H.

Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe. Louisville: Westminster / J o h n Knox.

232 SEMEIA

Petersen, Norman R. 1985 Rediscovering Paul: Philemon and the Sociology of Paul's Narrative World.

Philadelphia: Fortress.

Raboteau, Albert J. 1978 Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South. N e w

York: Oxford University Press.

Ridderbos, Herman 1975 Paul: An Outline of His Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Ross, Frederick A. 1859 Slavery Ordained of God. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth 1985 In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Early Christian

Origins. New York: Crossroads.

Scott, James C. 1990 Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. N e w Haven: Yale

University Press.

Smith, H. Shelton 1972 In His Image, But. . . : Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910. Durham,

N.C.: Duke University Press.

Smith, Theophus 1994 Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. N e w York: Oxford

University Press.

Snowden, Frank M. 1970 Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Swartley, Willard M. 1983 Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation.

Scottdale, Perm.: Herald.

Thomas, Latta R. 1976 Biblical Faith and the Black American. Valley Forge, Perm.: Judson.

Thornwell, James Henry 1850 The Rights and the Duties of Masters. Charleston, S.C.: Walker and James.

Tidball, Derek 1984 The Social Context of the New Testament: A Sociological Analysis. Grand

Rapids: Academic Books.

Watson, Allen 1987 Roman Slave Law. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

West, Cornel 1982 Prophesy Deliverance. Philadelphia: Westminster.

M A R T I N : " S O M E B O D Y D O N E H O O D O O ' D T H E H O O D O O M A N " 233

Williams, Delores S. 1993 Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Maryknoll,

N.Y.: Orbis.

Wilmore, Gayraud 1989 Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious His-

tory of Afro-American People. 2nd ed. revised and enlarged. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis.

Winter, S.C. 1994 "Philemon." Pp. 301-12 in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Commen-

tary. Vol. 2. Ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. New York: Crossroad.

Wiredu,K.(J.E.) 1984 "How Not to Compare African Thought With Western Thought." In

African Philosophy: An Introduction. Ed. Richard A. Wright. 3rd ed. Lan- ham, Md.: University Press of America.

Young, Al 1996 "Somebody Done Hoodoo'd The Hoodoo Man." In African American Lit-

erature. Ed. Al Young. New York: Harper Collins.