Ole' Dixies Church Below

“Ole Satan’s church is here below, Up to God’s free church I hope to go.”

Jacobs religious fervor was blinding through chapter XIII to XX. She does a great job at differentiating between Christianity and what she calls “religion at the south.” (84) I think she does this in a very interesting way in chapter XIII. The comparisons and contrasts between Reverend Mr. Pike and the” very different clergyman” (82) help the reader draw the line between the two ideologies. Jacobs places Mr. Pike as the representative of the “religion at the south,” and the “very different” clergyman as the representative of true Christianity. We first learn of Reverend Mr. Pike, Jacobs satirically uses words such as gentleman and pious when describing him. He preaches of the connection between a slaves master in heaven (God) and a slaves master on earth. Mr. Pike says, “If you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly master” (80). These are the beliefs that Jacobs wants us to associate with the “religion at the south.” Instead of embodying Christian morality, they are fearful, reactionary hate speeches that use the name of God in order to quell the civil unrest amongst slaves and abolitionists. The religion at the south is defined more as a tool to install fear (for whites that slaves will rise up, and for blacks that someone is always watching) and promote complacency in slavery than a doctrine of morals and religious beliefs.
When describing the different Clergyman, Jacobs actually refers to him as god or god like amongst the slaves. His wife taught her slaves to read and write, and once that was accomplished the clergyman set about helping needy slaves around him. So from the very beginning Jacobs is attaching community service and social cooperation with true forms of Christianity. I thought that the descriptions of the themes of the clergyman’s sermons were very sophisticated. I was especially happy to hear that his sermons were “adapted to their comprehension.” (82). I took this quote to mean that the clergyman understood that Christianity meant something different to slaves than to free whites. I think it shows that this preacher knew that for slaves Christianity was the word of freedom, equality lies within the lines of it. He quoted the Bible, saying that God judges a man by his heart and not the color of his skin (83). These are the characteristics that Jacobs attaches with her conception of Christianity. She calls it a “strange doctrine,” which seems ironic at a time when bible study was common in a majority of households. She wants the reader to know that if one were to use the reason behind the Bible, that one could not condone an institution such as slavery. The only thing that could justify would be “the religion at the south.”