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tv   Lectures in History  CSPAN  May 3, 2015 12:00am-1:06am EDT

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t enough to cover these big spend growths. >> at c-span, kind of turning the page, our book tv focuses on nonfiction books, and we are here in topeka focusing on nonfiction authors also are there any nonfiction books or authors who have had an impact on you? sam brownback: a lot, i'm reading one now that i have reread several times. a guy by the name of watchmen knee. he was a chinese writer that wrote a series of books, the one i am reading is called the " normal christian life." he ended the last 20 years of his life in prison in china. for his faith. it is a beautiful one. i'm just starting coral sandberg's book, the one on his
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story of lincoln. i am looking forward to finishing it. lincoln is a particularly revered figure. he is revered in kansas in that we came into the union in the same time he is coming up. the kansas people were passionate abolitionists and for lincoln. he said, once famously, if i were a young man now, i would go to kansas. so, we came in with lincoln, and we have stayed with him. >> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring topeka, kansas. our staff recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. to learn more, visit c-span.org. you are watching american history tv, all weekend and
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every weekend -- on c-span3. >> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes every saturday evening here at 8:00 and midnight eastern. next, mercer university professor douglas thompson talks about religion and its impact on the relationship between slaves and their owners during the antebellum period. he cites nat turner's 1831 slave rebellion and frederick douglass' 1845 memoir as recounting his early life as a slave, examples of how whites and blacks interpreted biblical passages on slavery. this class is about an hour. professor thompson: ok, remember we spent the last couple of days talking about proslavery views. but especially talking about how they use the bible.
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we talked about these texts already. i'm going through them again, to highlight what i mattered. but also, picking up on the last one as a way to talk about something that is going to happen in the african-american experience, especially as they read the bible themselves. the genesis chapter nine account is what is generally occurred -- placed on canaan. the mark of cain, the curse of ham. we did not talk about, because the reader does not pull those text together -- the tower of babel is often used to talk about what you have different races of people. the great dispersal. so, i am adding that one in. the genesis chapter 11 account. it is an example of a way you can understand difference, the
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different races that exist. the ephesians text is a whole code for households, women and children, but included in that is slaves. included in that, slaves being obedient to their masters. the first timothy passage is similar. how to be a good slave. then the exodus chapter 21 sets out an entire code for how to treat slaves. in the argument, if slavery is being talked about, it is clearly being defended, right? if god did not want slavery to exist, slavery would have been removed or condemned. abolitionists were arguing it was morally reprehensible.
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they would use the layman as an example. we talked about this in a thin way on monday. i wanted to come back for what we are doing next. in this letter, paul has a slave who has come to him, run away from his master. in fact, it is a great letter in a lot of ways cussed the slave is taking stuff from the master. the slave has run away, has come to paul. paul writes a letter back and sends it with him back to the slaveholder. often the way this letter is used is to say paul had seen slavery as morally reprehensible -- if the slave runs to you, just keep him, right? don't send them back to the slave owner. what happens in the text is interesting. that is why i wanted you to turn to it. why we're starting here. if you go to verse 15, i want
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you to hear this. paul writes, perhaps this is the reason he separated from you for a while -- the idea of running away. so that you might have him back forever. verse 16 says, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, that how much more to you? both in the flesh and in the lower. the reason i want you to pay attention to those two versus, how you read the text has to do with how you are experiencing this issue of slavery. so if you are a slaveholder, you , might put more emphasis on, so that you may have him back forever. but if you are a slave, what you might hear is this part -- no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother. see how that one passage can actually work in two different
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directions, except the person -- two different directions, except the person doing the interpreting things the other direction is not right. the slave owner says this clearly says that slavery should exist. paul does not get rid of it. in fact he sends the slave back to the slaveholder. clearly slavery is not morally reprehensible. generally speaking, slaves will not use this text as a defense right? for why slavery should disappear. but i wanted you to hear that -- not as a slave. more than a slave. a beloved brother, right? this passage, this text has the ability to work in two different directions. i am highlighting this point. you read it for class on monday. but i want to go back to it. i am not going to read the whole thing. what i want you to pay attention to are the highlights. the bold part.
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the reasoning would be perfectly fair if the bible taught nothing about the subject of slavery. abolitionists were arguing that the bible called it morally reprehensible, but they argued it not from a "biblical perspective." the anonymous writer says the bible does have some to say about slavery. and the part that is interesting is this idea of production from general principle is an important interpretive move. if the book is true. so, here's how you would do this. if you are making a general argument about morally -- slavery might be morally reprehensible -- more than a slave in the text. make sense? what you're pointing to is it does not say slavery says you
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should get rid of it. but what you would argue is that paul makes an argument bigger, right? no longer as a slave. he is a brother. he is an equal. that is a general principle. so, by the way, slave's will -- slaveholder's will argue, no, that is not what is stated. you are playing with scripture. the reason that is important is slaves became part of a process within the evangelical movement for why reading matter. so, we are when to talk about it. some of it you already know. i'm pulling us forward a little bit. so, early on in the 18th century, slave owners have an uncomfortable relationship with evangelical christianity. it is fine if you want to say you somehow christen them as
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babies. generally, talk about them as having a born again experience. and for us, our purposes it , means that you have a social standing. you are given equality with your slave masters. if you have souls. so, they would have a hard time with christianity, or at least the idea that their slaves could participate in the evangelical movement. in that way, evangelicalism puts a strain on christianity. i have given you examples of this. in: never virginia culpeper, virginia, you have slaves being able to bring their slave masters up on charges. they had violated them, done harm to them, asked them to work on the sabbath, which would be a
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good charge to bring forward being asked to work on the sabbath, the sabbath is the dale of -- day of rest. evangelicalism allows them to stand on either -- equal footing. that is the direct link. the indirect one is coming. mostly in the 19th century and it is about the power of reading. lots of focus on literacy. if a book matters, you've got to be able to read it. if the word is inspired, the word is of god, it's important work and you have to be able to read it. ok. the reason i use inspired, the holy spirit is actually helping the reader understand. what happens in the evangelical move, who has control over what the bible says? the reader. because the reader is being inspired by god through the holy spirit.
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and so this use of literacy, the ability to read matter. it caused great strain for southerners, in particular when slaves were able to read the text and interpret it for themselves, which is why during the 19th century you are going to see a whole series of laws forbidding slaves from learning how to read. right? that is connected. the reason you want to keep slaves from being able to read is they might be able to, one, understand the idea of freedom but also in this particular case, they could interpret the bible. we talked about this before. exodus becomes a prime example of this. slave owners in the 19th century become uncomfortable with the book.
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exodus 21 except slaves saw a much bigger picture. the bigger picture is that a group of slaves, people anointed by god, called out by god, aren slaved by an oppressive master. god calls out a leader. the leader comes to the master requiring that the slave be set free, and the slaves are instructed to take from their egyptian neighbors -- remember the golden calf? out in the wilderness? they are taking it. right? and so, they end up out in the wilderness and god apparently has chosen slaves to side with.
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see why this is a problem? this is a deductive argument. you read it in big terms, big story, big narrative, and you understand this. that god has sided with slaves. god has sided with me as a slave. the work can only the justified in two different directions. to make sense of the world they inhabit. the reason the production argument is going to be important is we are going to turn to galatians, the letter to the galatians, and am going to spend some time talking to you about the way in which one particular verse is going to become important for the abolition movement. remember, i told you particularly in the american south, if you want to win an argument using the bible, what have you got to be able to do? you got to be able to read it,
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but you've got to be able to line up your text. the number of text. if i have more texts to talk about slavery, and you do not, who wins the argument? i do. or whoever is talking about slavery. here is the passage i want you to take a look at. in galatians chapter three verses 27 and 28. read all of this. i want you to follow along. i will talk more about galatians broadly. as many of you were baptized into christ, and find yourself with christ, there is no longer jew or greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in christ jesus. so, here is an argument for why slavery might be morally
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reprehensible. in christ, there is no longer slave or free. it appears that paul is arguing the status that we share -- jew, greek, slave free, even more profound, male, female, all disappear under this baptism. so, if you want to work from a position of a deductive argument, you can fold into this one part of one passage. i'm going to talk a little bit more about galatians. this is what you would have done in the new testament class. you would spend more time on it. i want you to see the context for why that verse matters. in the letters to the galatians,
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you have this turned quickly to chapter 1 -- paul, an apostle sent neither by human commission nor human authority, but through jesus christ, god the father who raised him from the dead and , all the members of god's family who are with me -- by the way, in the corpus of paul letters, this is an ugly opening. he is angry with them. on the surface, you can't really tell that. if you were to read one of the other letters, particularly the church at philippi, he spends a lot of time talking about how much he loves them, right? there is this long opening. in this letter, he goes to the chase, and he says, i have been sent by no human authority. jesus and god, period. why does that matter? you will get a hint of this if you look at the beginning of the chapter i pointed you to -- chapter three.
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it begins with you foolish galatians. there is actually a cuss word right there. what he is saying is the galatians have been caught in an interesting struggle between jews who want christians to become jews, and paul, who if you look at his letter, argues that is not the case at all. no one is required to become a jew in order to become a christian. you have the struggle going on. the church at galatia apparently have some people who have come and heard from these judaizers and they question paul's authority. right? after that, how does he establish authority?
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god sent me. not a flourishing opening. letterwriting is a genre. he's going to follow the genre. he's going to open it, but he's going to open it in a very direct manner. he is opening up about the idea, the way in which faith operates. it starts to tear down the barriers people put up. why is he making this case? because people are attacking his authority using barriers. in the whole of the letter, he is pushing the idea in which faith moves us in a direction, in part holding together this idea of unity. so when you get to versus 27 and 28, he is building to this moment where he can make the
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-- claim there is no longer slave or free. slaveholder will not want that verse being repeated. or -- and this is likely the case -- he slaveholder will say, this is not the slavery he is talking about. the important part for you is, that is an interpretive move. the interpreter, the person making the interpretation is reading the text and making it make sense to the world they think they already understand. so, the slaves may read the text and say, this is an example. under christ, we are all equal. in fact early evangelicals made , that same argument. by the middle of the 19th century, that argument was no longer being made, so it was a way of changing the way the text was being understood. what you can do, this is a
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deductive move, de bow this is what's article is trying to argue again. -- this is what de bow's article is trying to argue again. slaveholders are arguing, you cannot do that. this is a perversion of the word of god. if you make an argument in general principle of something that is not being stated, then you have done harm to the text. the reason i want you to understand it, is because slaves generally had a different experience, and they are going to have a different experience suggested they were going to read the text differently from their slaveholder masters. so, i'm going to give you a brief history. it's a brief history august the about the way in which christianity and slave life has been argued about or argued
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over. for the middle of the 20th century, for the most part historians have argued that slaves simply took on the forms of european christianity they encountered. when they encounter the baptists, they took on the baptist form. when they encountered methodists, they took on the methodist form. when they encountered solecism, catholicism, they took on the catholics. slaves played no role in the faith they would develop. in the mid-20th century, a sociologist argued that slaves brought significant religious life out of africa into the slave experience, and if you pay attention you will see that they were adapting, making changes,
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in their own image, even if scholars had not noticed. so, in the middle of the 20th century, there had been a move in the direction of arguing for slave life in its full form having this religious life -- herskovitz argues this is all of the americas and the caribbean islands. for the most part, we now talk about ways in which this is a dialectic or a conversation between those experiences, the religious experiences that came out of west africa, and how they formed the slave culture where they are located. so, today, you would have people who will still argue forcibly that slaves did not take on a form of christianity at all. they just mimicked it.
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or they took it on so much that they had the extreme argument. they had become much more comfortable with the scenario that it was adaptability. people take on different characteristics and they ship them to their own purposes and means. i will give you an example. this idea of and. there are examples of slaves who will mimic slaveowners. the whole thing. slaves should be good and submissive slaves. there are slaves that say that. there are narrative essays written stories that have come out. i will tell you one about john jasper. the idea that slaves embodied all of this, he did not shape any part of it. however, there is a possibility
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of the molding and you have to pay attention to the people individually and how they are doing this. and i will give you an example if you turn to revelation of how a text can be read in two different ways even if their experience is the same. here is the point. slaves do not have all of the same experiences across the board. so, john jasper. i will give you some background information on him. he is a preacher in the areas just west of richmond, virginia. he is a slave. but he becomes famous or notorious -- one or the other -- as a funeral preacher. so, in the middle of the 19th century, there is an adaptation that is going on. if you were a slave preacher,
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you were able to move between plantations fairly easily up through about 1830. you could move from one plantation to another. you might have to fill up paperwork while you are doing it, but you have that ability, you could move from place to place. jasper grows up in that sort of world and that changes when more restrictions are placed on him. jasper becomes an important funeral preacher. if you ever encounter him -- most of you won't -- he is noted because he preaches to white audiences. that is a big deal. right? so, an example of why slavery is not a bad thing is you have a slave preacher who preaches to white audiences and in good evangelical mode, he apparently had the ability to slay people. not literarylly kill them.
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he could preach and they would fall out. they were moved by the spirit. here are of that revival language we have in using? and his favorite passage was out of revelations, chapter six, verses one and two. then i saw the lamb opened one of the seven seals and i heard one of the four living creatures call out as with a voice of thunder, come. i looked and i saw there was a white horse. a writer had a bow was given to him and he came out conquering and to conquer. here, the text seems fairly straightforward. this is revelations. we talked about this. different periods used revelations in different ways. he was essentially preaching a funeral sermon based on the idea of resurrection. what happens when the kingdom comes. jasper appears to have been very
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comfortable within the slave system. here is what is interesting about him. he lived into the 20th century 1901. you can actually trace out his life into out of slavery into a pre-period and post reconstruction period. he will have a deferential response to slaveowners. often saying things like without slavery i would not have encountered the gospel of jesus christ. historians would often talk about that as a mimicking. he just takes on what the slave owner and has argued for and therefore has no role to play in the space that he is shaped by.
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if that is the dos i'ldocile slave the other one is a rebellious slave, and that is -- if that is a rebellious slave, and that is nat turner. he is a slave preacher in virginia. in the 1820's and 1830's, he has free reign in a little county in the southeast called southhampton, virginia, and he is able to move around between plantations and in this ability he pulls together a group of slaves to agree to throw off their slaveowners. they are going to rise up in rebellion. but he also is an evangelical preacher, and so, we spent the last several weeks talking about revivalism and the use of vision and why those are important, in part to get you to turner.
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what turner argued is god through the holy spirit had given him a vision about what life should be like and it wasn't slavery. in fact, the vision was take up arms, kill slave owners. in particular, his own. so when nat turner read revelations 6:1-2, he saw something different. take a look at the text again. what is he emphasizing if he is going to talk about rebellion? take a look at it. what is the emphasis on here? here the conquer orer might
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actually be him, right? you take on the order to conquer and kill. see how this can go? one passage can go in different directions depending on how you are reading the text. in fact, turner has this very large vision about the way in which an uprising will occur. it is not out of the question. haiti has already had a revolution. in 1803. there is now a black state, a former slave states of the shores of the united states, and so the idea that a slave society could rise up and throw off its slave masters was clearly a possibility right now. i am going to be careful for a moment to talk about this as rebellion. it is in fact an act of
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rebellion. they do rise up. they get roughly 75 people -- the accounts are different. it is one of the most fascinating moments in history how when he supposedly confessed it was a white man, a lawyer who wrote down the confession, so it's not clear that it is turner's confession some much is someone else right thing -- writing for him. the numbers are that about 70 people participate in the rebellion. they do in fact kill turner's slave master, his wife, and children. they go to a neighboring plantation and do the exact same thing. all told, it is under 20 people who are killed. the effect of the net turner at turner rebellion is
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long-term. the remainder of the antebellum period, this rebellion stamps the american south and i will point out why that matters. the first thing that happens is slave features have greater restrictions placed on them. what happened, if you have the ability to move from radiation to what might you be able to do -- from plantation to plantation, what might you be able to do? you could rise up. that was the first one. the second thing -- it limited the ability of slaves to move. it's not like they have a lot of freedom. but slave preacher'ss did. near the 1850's, 1855, 1856, slave preachers do start to take on more freedoms again, but it still limited in a number of ways. the second thing that happens is more than 150 slaves or free people of color are executed.
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there are people in georgia executed for the nat turner rebellion. they did not participate. ok? what was happening was fear among antebellum southern plantation holders that slaves might actually rise up and if they could pull it out here, you had to make sure everybody understood they could not do this. so, there was an oppressive response. i told you about this last week. i will reinforce it here. up through 1828 in the commonwealth of kenya there were bills being put forward. -- in the commonwealth of virginia there were bills being
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put forward. after 1831, there are no more bills. does this rebellion shape how slaves during the rest of the antebellum -- so this rebellion shapes how slaves during the rest of the antebellum period are treated. today you will have read the life of frederick douglass. there are some things i want you to understand and pick up on. slave narratives are a genre. they exist just like letterwriting exists. you all rightwrite e-mails, you are following a formula, even if you do not think you are. he has an argument for something written in his own hand. presumably a white person might have written the text and given the credit to a slave or former slave. you will see that, that genre
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had already been put in place at that time, frederick douglass has this piece published. but also slave narratives worked hard to talk about how horrible the slave experience was. these narratives were written and published almost exclusively by abolitionists and they were intended for abolitionist audiences. people who would have found slavery to be morally reprehensible. frederick douglass does interesting things in that set genre. he talks about a woman who taught him how to read. why talk about his luck, he is not lucky. slavery does not make you lucky. but he does end up in baltimore, which makes him an urban slave. in fact, he had the ability to start to make money on his own.
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these are things we will read about. he starts to make money on his own. but what he gets is this ability to read text, and the mistress the one who teaches -- and she gets in trouble by her husband for teaching him how to read -- but she teaches him how to read the bible and other texts. she allows for him to learn how to read. this is his skill. douglass will tell you, i would say it is ingenious. there are these white schoolboys and they have these grammars. he becomes friends and gets him to give him a grammar, so he starts teaching himself to read as well. you're going to get more about the narrative when you read it. but this idea about a slave who has access to reading that
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allows him to change how he sees his life. more importantly, you will think about slavery in opposition to freedom. which is something that has been defined in the western hemisphere and europe as this idea of freedom. so, i want you to pay attention when you are reading the text, see how he starts to define himself as a man of letters. what is going to be interesting for us in the course of the class is actually this appendix. it is in the first edition of the narrative it comes at the , very end. he makes a pretty important statement about slaveholding christianity. what he argues is it is immoral. in fact it is not even , christian. no matter how good a good christian slaveholder was, they
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were not christian, because they had not understood the gospel. so, not for general discussion i wait a think about it for a second. why do they make a claim they do not understand the gospel? why would he make that kind of claim when he has a slaveholder who is presumably pious, christian, who allowed him to learn how to read? what he argues is it did not matter how good she was. she could not see the system being turned upside down. that the gospel was supposed to say there is no slave or free. do you see what he is emphasizing? that this idea about the way in which the slave holder is
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beholden to slavery dictates how they will understand. or, more importantly, their christian faith. in this particular case douglass is going to lift up something we will not spend a lot of time on in class, but if you were to take me on african-american history or history of the new south, we would spend a lot more time talking about it, the idea that white americans have not ever really understood christianity. they don't see it. they can't see it because their experience is not what african-americans have seen. or experienced. right? so, he -- in the appendix, you get a small taste of this. you are going to see the ways in which a former slave makes an
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argument for why slaveholders could never see the hypocrisy. hypocrisy is often easy to see from the outside. so, if you encounter a hypocritical situation, i.e. a professor who takes images off a website and then claims credit for them -- that is what we spend all our time doing with you guys. don't do that. that will become obviously typical. but the only way you see it is from the outsider's perspective. so it is in fact douglass's appendix is going to get us closer to the idea about the way in which slaveholding whites -- he will also argue that even abolitionist whites cannot see it. in this particular one you have
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the slaveholding whites cannot understand the gospel and they have failed to understand the gospel. does that make sense? ok. how does that work? in this particular case it works through the experience of suffering. we will slow down a little bit. this is how the reading of scripture forms most -- african-american experience. particularly, in relation to christianity. most slaves could see their story in the biblical narrative. right? the most obvious we have already talked about. exodus. if you have a people chosen by god, there is an extra burden on them, but more importantly in that particular case, god is siding with the slaves, and
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in siding with the slaves, they themselves were understood by god. the biblical narrative was you could ultimately understand the slave experience because god understood. what is interesting is the way in which that exodus text and more important the later chosenness of the nation of israel is that requires a greater burden on the chosen. they will suffer more. you will get hints of this even today, the idea that christians are persecuted, they are being persecuted, that kind of language. this is not about individuals. this is about a people. that you have to recognize that
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suffering, it is pervasive and god recognizes it and when god recognizes that pervasive suffering, god sides with it. even if we are going to get treated poorly, even if we are going to get harms, even if we are going to die, god ultimately will vindicate us. so, this idea about the way that suffering works -- they do not see an oppressor having any suffering. they can't. they can't see an oppressor having loss or some sort of suffering that happened to them, but that demand on them means they are in the position -- this is that part i was getting at with frederick douglass, that ultimately they are in a position to understand how god
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will redeem the nation, how it will make the nation better, as long as you are willing to hear it. as long as you are willing to understand it or engage it. and here is the thing. this is what frederick douglass is doing. in the narrative, it is how the textual evidence -- are whites going to see it? the answer ultimately will be no. they don't see it. they can't see the suffering as redemptive for the people of the nation as a whole. this comes later. so, what happens in this particular case, the way in which slaves take on the text, recognize within the text their own experience and try to help others see how that experience
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is being carried out. by the way, it still with us. in the 20th century, you are going to get preachers and sociologists, w.e.b. dubois is going to pick up on this as well as. there is something in the african-american community that will make it better but they have to pay attention to them. they have to pay attention to that experience. ok? let's take a step back for a moment. when you are reading the book of galatians, one of the things you are going to point out, besides this idea of neither slave nor free -- i want you to think about it and then we will talk. how does the slave owner here ear that passage? think about that.
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neither slave nor free. because we have been working on the slave owner for a wild. how does a slave owner here that particular passage? more importantly, why was the slave owner -- would they not see the exit is narrative -- exodus narrative applying to the slaves within their midst? they can see the text. they can clearly understand, how come they cannot see it from the view of the slaves? here's the part where i'm going to have you talk a little bit, or i hope you're going to talk a little bit -- why is it that the slave owner cannot see the text in the same way that the slave does?
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>> would it be because in exodus, the slaves are all white, and the slaves are all black? professor thompson: ok. hold on to that for a minute. >> it could very well be denial. simply because if that was the , case, then a lot of the things they had been doing to the slaves would weigh heavily on their conscience, which could very well do a lot of things. in terms of social issues. professor thompson: ok, good denial. abby? abby: could it be because they do not see slavery as the same way as in the bible? with the hebrews, it was oppression of another religion versus oppression of a race?
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and so it is no longer about , oppression, but they are property? like it is viewed as a different form of slavery, i guess? maybe? professor thompson: ok. similar to the comment before. anybody else? those are actually all good. yes. part of what i have been trying to get you to understand all semester -- why can't they see it relating to the slaves? because exodus is about whom? it is no longer about jews. it is about them. one of the text that is early on, is the idea that we are a new israel. if we are a new israel, where is your place in the story? you are the ones who have been let out of bondage was where? this is a narrative we continue to tell ourselves.
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the bondage was where? yeah, good. that would be the biblical story? your bondage is from where? yeah european rule. monarchs. so, the way they understand the story, of course this is not about slaves, because do slaves own slaves? no, it has to be about the chosen people. who are the chosen people? we are. and part of what i want you to spend a minute thinking about is -- that is what we are working on. people will read the text based on their own particular vantage point. i asked you about this on monday. you guys are flummoxed that slave owners used the bible for justifying slavery?
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why did that seem to baffle you? why did it bother you that they used exodus as an example ? abby: god is saying it was his will that slaves be free, so why would slave owners use it as an example for why people should we be enslaved? professor thompson: of course -- anybody else? here is the thing. they can't see this is about us. they can use the text and it makes perfect sense. but you are looking at it from which perspective? hindsight looking back. i started the class telling you a story about exodus. yeah, you got to remember way back there. four weeks ago.
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the slaves saw the story and saw themselves in it. you are already predisposed to reading exodus in one direction. ok, this is about slavery. god sides with the slaves. when you encounter the text and they use it as the fence, you say, that's not -- they can't use that. yes, they can. for the very reason that they see themselves as the chosen people. so, by seeing themselves as the chosen people, the text is not about slaves. it can't be about slaves. it's about us, me. all right. one last note. let's go back.
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after we spent the time talking about it, we going to go back to the text, talking about the way the slaves experience the text. this is not a text used to defend abolition. it continues to happen even today. people will use parts of text and leave other parts out. you have to pay attention to what they are leaving out. because when you leave it out, you are saying something. you take this verse and not that verse. why did they leave that verse out? in this case, abolitionists do not use it very often to argue for abolition -- why did they not use this letter to argue for abolition? what did paul do? he sends the slave back. you see why this works? there is a reason it is not being used. we are to spend a minute talking about it. paul, a prisoner of christ jesus, and timothy our coworker
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to the church in your house, grace to you and peace from god our father, the lord jesus christ. remember, i told you letters have genre? they have form? there it is in the introduction. dear so and so. grace to you. when i remember you in my prayers i always thank my god because i hear of your love for all of the saint in your faith for the lord jesus. i pray that the sharing of your faith may be become effective when you perceive all of the good we may do for christ. i have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love for me. because the arts have been refreshed through you, my brother. for this reason, though i am bold enough in christ to commend you to do your duty, yet i would
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rather it appeal to you on the basis of love, but i now as an old man and a prisoner of christ jesus, i appeal to you on behalf of of a child of whom i have become the father in prison. formally, he was useless. now, he is useful. i am sending him, that is my own heart, after you. i wanted to keep him with me so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel, but i prefer to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not being forced. perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might send him back, no longer as a slave but more than a slave a beloved , brother, especially to me, but
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how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the lord. if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. if he has wronged you and anyway or owes you anything, charged to my account. i, paul, and righting this with my own hand. i will repay it. i say nothing about you owing me or even your own self. yes brother, let me have this benefit from you in the lord. it would refresh my heart in christ. im am writing to you knowing you will do more even than what i say. one thing more. prepare a guest room for me. my partner and fellow prisoner in christ jesus -- grace of the lord jesus christ be with your spirit.
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so, here is what i want you to do for our remaining time. i want you to hear the letter. if you will remember the documents from defending slavery, how did slave owners use this letter for defending slavery? do you remember? when they point to it -- they often refer to it in a way that says had paul condemned it, he would have done what? he would not have sent the slave back. he would have kept him and he would've said something about it. that is how it gets used. did you hear what is in the letter? for this reason, though i am bold enough to demand you do
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your duty, yet i would rather appeal to you on the basis of love, and i, paul, do this as an old man, now also a prisoner of christ jesus. i am appealing to you on behalf of my child, whose father i have become in imprisonment. formerly he was useful to you, that she was used by you, but now he is useful, both to you and to me. yes? >> could this be like mulatto slaves or like mixed and how you should treat them?
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that was the slave he had while in prison, but he said he was going to send him back and treat him as a equal, not as a slave. professor thompson: great. the last part is good. the first part not so much. he actually adopted him. he said what i really wanted to do was what? keep him. so, what is paul originally not going to do in this letter? not return him. by the way, it was going to take a biblical scholar almost until the end of the 20th century to start picking up on this letter and the power it might have served in abolitionist argument. when he argues he is his son, my heart, when i send him back, how should you treat him? yeah. the way you treat him is the way you would treat me.
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now do you hear that language of more than a slave? a beloved brother. right? here is the interesting thing. slave owners actually used deductive logic. right? remember that slide i put up for you about de bow's argument? if it is not condemned outright it is a deductive argument and you can't do that with scripture. what have slave owners been doing? a deductive argument. the general principle was the bible did not condemn slavery. what i really want you to get out of it, because of what we are doing as we move forward in the class, this idea about the starting point of the reader. the person doing the interpretation. they are making moves -- mostly internal, but intellectual moves -- trying to make the text makes sense. here is an example. he carries the letter.
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because we still have it. that means he must have did what? he went back. what is interesting is it becomes an argument for why slavery has not been condemned, but the letter itself actually does make the statement about slavery. by the way, this is that moment when you are all good critical thinkers. you can ask me why am i reading , it that way? because i stand on what side of the slavery question? this side. where we have already addressed it. right? if we have already addressed it and we now find slavery morally reprehensible, what part of this letter in my going to emphasize? the part that suggests slavery
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might not be what paul is advocating. not just the winner's side, because the next or the letter says what? i choose not to do this to you. i am not commanding you to leave them with me. i will let you voluntarily, do what? let him stay. see how this works? multiple places where you can come into it and interact with it. the idea that, this is how we handle history that you have an interpretive move -- one particular moment in the text, you make a judgment based on that one moment. there are all kinds of factors going into that mood. a history course is the same way. you encounter an event, i make an interpretive move -- john
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jaspers. i talk about him reaching to white audiences. i'm actually putting him in a position to suggest he is an abolitionist to slavery. while, later in life, he starts to condemn it. that little piece of information i give you affects your understanding. that is what we are doing, this is to help us move forward when you turn to the narrative life of frederick douglass -- the sections you are going to read, there is not a lot of conversation about the bible. i have been asking you to find biblical passages and how they interact. i want you to pay attention to the way he describes it in particular. he is the slave on the eastern shore of maryland.
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and, early on, as a young man the property will be divided up. he will end up in baltimore. he later gets sent back to the eastern shore to work in a pretty heavy labor environment. he ends up back in baltimore. baltimore is not a bad ofed of roses. it allows them to get to freedom. i want you to experience this environment. that is why want you to get from the book. when we get to the last day, in the narrative life, we pick up the appendix. the stuff we picked up today, we will revisit how former slaves understand it in a profoundly different way. are there any questions for me
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for today's class? anything that you might want more information on? clear as mud, pop? hug? h? go in peace.

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