What Role Did Christianity Play In The Civil Rights Movement Essay

Christianity served an important role in mobilizing and uplifting black people before and during the Civil Rights Movement. Christianity provided a means of freedom, hope, a platform for advocacy and activism since the first African slave reached the shores of what is now the United States. In slavery, Christianity was used as a method to keep slaves bonded mentally, however, slaves saw Christianity as something else. Slave believed that Christianity would bring them their freedom. Of course, under the words in the bible leaned more towards freedom than servitude of other human beings. In Paul Harvey’s Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, which dives into different eras of American History and its dealings with race and religion, Harvey states, “the 1723 letter from the slaves to the bishop made clear, slaves recognized that conversion implied that they should have the rights of free men” (Harvey 29). Slaves believe that the conversion to Christianity would bring them freedom. Would allow them to be a citizen of the world they were brought her to be slaves. Although slave masters did everything in their powers to make it impossible to be free once converting to Christianity, it did not take the Christian spirit and hope from them. This could be seen “in South Carolina, [where]
did the same in many of his speeches as well. He is known as reverend, so it would be uncommon to not here Christian rhetoric into his speeches. Particularly in the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King in a response to fellow clergymen, made it clear with biblical references that the means in which he seeks justice in a just world is not unusual amongst individuals in the Bible, especially Jesus. King shows that Christianity and Biblical stories serve as a guide and lesson for marginalized people to overcome the system of oppression. An example of this rhetoric, is his response to the clergymen calling his actions in Birmingham