February 19, 2025

Wednesday Word . . . Black History Month:  Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in either 1817 or 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland.  Having an unspecified birthdate, he chose February 14 as his birthday because his mother called him her “Little Valentine.”

At the age of six he was separated from his family, eventually being sent to serve a white family in Baltimore.  The Mistress of the house began teaching him to read, but then, influenced by her husband, stopped the lessons and hid all reading materials.  Frederick realized that knowledge was the pathway to freedom and taught himself to read and write in secret.  He was eventually given to another owner who had a reputation for cruelty, and he whipped Frederick often.  On September 3, 1838, he escaped to freedom dressed as a sailor and carrying the identification and protection papers of a free black sailor, arriving in Philadelphia with a final destination of New York City the next day.

He was religiously active and spoke out often against the church’s complicity in slavery and their hypocrisy.  Douglass accused slaveholders of wickedness, a lack of morality, and a failure to follow the Golden Rule.  He made distinctions between the “Christianity of Christ” and the “Christianity of America,” considering religious slaveholders and clergy who defended slavery as the most brutal, sinful, and cynical of all.

In What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? he sharply criticized the attitude of religious people who kept silent about slavery due to political expediency or not wanting to offend anyone, and he charged that ministers committed a blasphemy when they taught it as sanctioned by religion.  He considered that a law passed to support slavery was "one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty" and said that pro-slavery clergymen within the American Church "stripped the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form", and "an abomination in the sight of God."

Frederick Douglass became a great orator and writer, and he reminds us that the Church cannot sit idly by in silence when any of God’s children are mistreated, abused, and/or neglected.

Open our eyes, O Lord, to the injustices committed on our behalf.  Awaken us to the unpleasant truths that a whitewashed history tries to cover up.  Free us from the bonds of prejudice and fear.  Allow us to see the value and contributions of those who are different.  And give us the strength and courage to work for justice, freedom, and peace in the face of opposition, while respecting the dignity of every human being.  Amen.