----- Original Message ----- From: Trum Simmons <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 7:12 AM Subject: Fw: Re: Bible and slavery Have I recommended The Good Book by Peter Gomes? He's the gay chaplain at Harvard. Bright, articulate. He writes about how to read the Bible in light of its problems with slavery, gays, women, etc. I love this book! >>> "Wesley Britton" <[log in to unmask]> 03/19/00 09:33PM >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Williams <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2000 3:48 PM Subject: Re: Bible and slavery In _Twelve Years a Slave_ by Solomon Northup, a free black who was captured and sold to a plantation in Louisiana, Northup details several occasions where owners/other people he was lent out to would quote the Bible supporting the institution of slavery. One verse which I recollect can be found in Luke 12, verse 47-48: "The servant who knows what his master wants him to do, but does not get himself ready to do it, will be punished with a heavy whipping. But the servant who does not know what his master wants, and does something for which he deserves a whipping, will be punished with a light whipping. ..." I'm starting up my Huck Finn unit next week, and I try to make sure my students realize what whites thought of blacks during that time period. Whites in the South would never see/hear anything which promoted the idea of blacks as human, much less deserving of the same rights whites enjoyed. And only part of this societal blindness was the role the church played in it. After discussing southern society of the time, and emphasizing the horrors slaves continually endured, Huck's decision to free his friend becomes that much more amazing/inspiring. Here's an uneducated white trash kid who has been taught that abolitionists go to hell to burn deciding to suffer that rather than let a slave remain in his "proper" place. When my kids understand this, Mark Twain's "radicalness" becomes clear and a seemingly aimless novel (once Huck and Jim go past Cairo) becomes the anti-slavery narrative I've been telling them it is ...