On particular section that caught my attention in this week’s reading was from Chapter Nine of Sernett’s book. It was written by Henry Bibb, who was an escaped slave. Henry wrote about how many slaves turned to a practice known as conjuration for religious fulfillment, rather than to the Catholic Church. He cited three or four incidents from his younger days, saying that he believed that conjuration made him powerful enough to do whatever he wanted and still avoid consequence. He found this to be false when he came back late one Monday and was whipped for his misbehavior. Not allowing this incident to dampen his belief that conjuration would make him invincible, he went to a different old slave who practiced conjuration. The slave told him to sprinkle a substance over his master’s hat and boots to stop him from ever abusing Bibb again. This method did not work either. He tried again to use conjuration after this, this time in a different situation. A conjurer told him a way to make any girl he wanted fall in love with him by scratching her with the bone of a frog. Bibb attempted to use this charm on a girl that he knew to be with another man, to no avail. Even after this third failure, Bibb simply went to a different conjurer. The fourth conjurer told him to obtain a lock of hair from the girl he desired and put it into his shoes in order to make someone fall in love with him. He tried this on a different girl, but yet again the conjuration does not work-or, rather, he never got a chance to test it because the girl would not give him a lock of her hair. His stubbornness and unflinching belief in conjuration, despite its many, many flaws-mainly the fact that it never actually worked for him-displays how desperate slaves were for anything at all that would give them even a little bit go hope.

One thing that really astounds me from this week’s readings is the utter ridiculousness of the arguments used to “rationalize” the slave trade. Raboteau begins his article by talking about how Western Christian nations justified the slave trade by claiming that one of the main reasons for bringing Africans over to be slaves was to convert them to Christianity and thus improve their lives and save their souls from eternal damnation, as they would die pagans if left to their own devices. This argument has been used throughout history to justify the conquering and mistreatment of multitudinous civilizations, and it always feels to me-even as a Catholic myself-like a thinly veiled excuse for the Western world to get what they want rather than an actual ideological mission (even if it is truly an ideological mission that the perpetrator believes in, it still does not justify taking people away from their homeland and into slavery). In this case, it’s especially obvious-the main reason that the Westerners wanted to bring people over is so they could have slaves to do work for them, not so that they could convert them. The second argument that Raboteau presented was even more ludicrous. He cited Gommes Eannes de Azurara, who was a 15th century chronicler of Christianity. Azurara claimed that the main beneficiaries of slavery were the Africans themselves, who were being taken out of bestial homes and being placed in civilized society. He says that the Africans had “no knowledge of bread or wine, and they were without the covering of clothes, or the lodgment of houses; and worse than all, they had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in a bestial sloth.” That anyone even slightly bought into this argument is utterly ridiculous. The Africans were being brought over to do intensive labor, and I very much doubt that slave owners invited the Africans inside after a day of work for some bread and wine. The people who were taking the Africans to be slaves had no intention of “civilizing” them, much less the right to pass judgment on their society.

One particular section of this week’s reading that I found especially interesting was Chapter One of Sernett’s “African American Religious History”. In this chapter, Olaudah Equiano discusses the Ibo religion. He often makes references to Judaism, pointing out similarities between these two religions. He mentions that they both practice circumcision and had similar feasts and offerings. They also choose names for their children in the same way. They have  washing and purification ceremonies on the same occasions. He states that the Ibo government is similar to the government of primitive Israelites in that they are both run by the society’s chiefs, judges, and elders.  He even cites a man who traced African lineage back to Afer and Afra, who were descendants of Abraham and his wife. One possible reason Equiano does this could be that he wishes to point out similarities between two religions that are not usually thought about as being compatible. When thinking about African American religions, one does not immediately associate a religion such as Ibo with Judaism. By drawing these parallels, Equiano de-alienates these religions that the reader may be less familiar with. He also subtly points out that every religion has some sort of connection with every other religion, whether it be Christianity and Judaism celebrating the same God, or Judaism and Ibo holding some of the same religious practices.