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Logos
Explanation and Analysis—Critique of Christianity:
In the Appendix, Douglass uses logos to clarify his position on Christianity and coax readers into reflection on their own hypocrisy:
What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference — so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
Douglass lays out a rubric that may be familiar to readers today: there is a difference between Christianity as itself and Christianity as an organized religion. This distinction was especially important to Black Americans in the 19th century (as it still is for many Black American Christians and other marginalized peoples practicing Christianity). A vast number of Black people were kidnapped by enslavers and forced to convert Christianity. Their descendants, too, were often raised Christian, both because these descendants' enslavers were Christian and because that was the religious tradition their family now had to pass down to them.
Christianity became a double-edged weapon in the battle between slavery and abolition. Douglass discusses a short-lived Sabbath school established by Mr. Wilson, where enslaved people were to be taught to read the New Testament. This school does not last long because other religious leaders throw sticks at the enslaved people to break up their meetings. This resistance to the Sabbath school seems to be because religious leaders on plantations were paid to pitch a version of Christianity that propped up the institution of slavery. For instance, they claimed that Black people were cursed by God to serve white people in perpetuity. Learning to read the Bible would allow enslaved people to practice their own Christianity, closer to the scriptural teachings, and question what religious leaders were telling them.
In this passage in the Appendix, Douglass offers readers new vocabulary to describe the perverted version of Christianity sold on plantations: "slaveholding religion," as opposed to "Christianity proper." By giving readers these new terms to think with, he allows readers to see the "slaveholding religion" not as a valid version of Christianity, but rather as its own separate "improper" system. People who see themselves as "good Christians" can thus not only agree with Douglass's critique without perceiving themselves to be blaspheming, but they can also reject as "unchristian" ideas that would align them with the "improper" system.
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