Faith and freedom

Aug 14, 2016 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: The Lost Gospel: Christianity and Blacks in North America
Author: Dr Jerome Teelucksingh
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

The Lost Gospel: Christianity and Blacks in North America unveils a chapter in black history that struggles for meaning. History, we know, is never dormant. Therein are lessons, counsel and guidance. In this stirring historiography, Dr Jerome Teelucksingh details the role of faith and liberation in the lives of Blacks in Canada. The anecdotes are riveting and the data is punctilious.
Slavery in Canada wasn’t marked by the brutality and dehumanization witnessed in other parts of North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Not that slave owners were magnanimous. Conditions and needs were just different. Few in number, “[slaves] were… expensive and intimately connected to the household as domestics.”
Yet, the inexorable call for freedom was never silenced. Of this struggle, Teelucksingh writes, “There were also unpleasant instances as in Montreal in 1734, [when] an enslaved girl, Marie Joseph Angelique, burned the home of her mistress while attempting to escape. The fire spread and damaged almost half of Montreal. She was found guilty and hanged in downtown Montreal.”
The lot of Canada’s freemen and fugitives was inextricably bound to slave conditions across the border. Teelucksingh effortlessly traverses these boundaries showcasing the desperation for freedom in the US and the relative sanctuary that Canada offered.
It is at this juncture that we get a cursory but incisive look at the legendary Underground Railroad that defined the revolutionary sacrifice made by Harriet Tubman, dubbed “Moses” by her people.
We learn that “railroad terms were successfully used to deceive and confuse the slave masters and the public,” and “the ‘conductors’ of the Railroad would have false compartments in carriages and wagons for escaping Blacks.”
Teelucksingh elaborates: “Cellars, farmhouses, secret passages, attics and churches were the ‘stations’ where abolitionists temporarily hid their ‘passengers’ and “terminals for the fugitives included Niagara, Owe, Sound, Dresden, Dawn,” and other towns. Remarkably, from 1815 to 1860, “an estimated 80, 000 enslaved persons escaped using the Underground Railroad with more than half fleeing to Canada.”
And while slaves plotted their freedom, the morality of slavery was debated among clergy and social activists in the United States, pitting the likes of John Wesley against the philosophy of George Armstrong, whose treatise, “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery,” argued that “slavery’s essential form did not constitute a sin or moral wrong doing.”
The old canard that slavery was biblically justifiable was challenged by a parallel movement within the Protestant body. For sure, there wasn’t a monolithic approach to slavery. Arguably, this inhumanity ignited a cold war within the religious movement. Although the sins of slavery weighed heavily on the conscience of many, few were willing to abrogate the economic stature that the cotton industry afforded.
In Canada, fugitives availed themselves of an environment that, while not openly welcoming, posed little in the way of an existential threat. Blacks thrived in communities established by theologians and progressive leaders. Faith served as the moral compass of a once shackled people. Benevolent societies assisted the needy. Religious leaders encouraged secular education and desegregated schools.
Preachers, many influenced by their unique spiritual journey in America, gained influence in Canada, even shepherding a handful of whites. The Buxton Mission proved exemplary with Rev. William King at the helm. He advanced the philosophy that “the bible would be read every day as a text book,” and “the school would be conducted on religious principles.”
Notably, black worship wasn’t supervised by whites nor vilified as a mongrelized, cultic form of Christianity. Rather, its tenor and spirit were encouraged and viewed as an organic expression of faith, and a liberating phenomenon.
Teelucksingh elaborates: “[A] cadre of zealous, upright and open-minded leaders promoted assimilation in society and simultaneously emphasized the value of education among their folk. Education empowered the Black leaders to comprehend the bible and be effective leaders in mission schools.”
Faith and education spurred self-reliance, as evident in the acquisition of land and a reluctance to rely on white paternalism.
Still, Canada wasn’t idyllic. Discrimination persisted even in death as evident in segregated pews and burial grounds. We learn that “[w]hites derogatorily referred to the separate pews as “Nigger Heaven,” and there were also special galleries for Blacks. This led to the emergence of pronouncedly black churches and a desire by some to emigrate. Many Blacks returned to the United States at the end of the Civil War, and more interestingly, in January 1792, 1,192 Blacks “departed Halifax Harbor for Sierra Leone.”
Notwithstanding Canada’s checkered, paradoxical past, Teelucksingh argues that spirituality served as a social and spiritual balm. “For many blacks,” he pens, “religion served as a moral blueprint to mold their lives into worthy subjects….Religion did not merely diminish the possibility of social disorder but created a cadre of morally upright Black citizens; it not only ensured their assimilation into society and led the eventual sharing of the mantle of church leadership.”
He presents a case for the constructive role that some Whites played in assisting Blacks to adjust and assimilate in this new environment. Later, he adds that “the refusal of Blacks to violently respond to racism suggested that some were willing to act as Christians and forgive the injustices of Whites in Canada.”
Undoubtedly, The Lost Gospel will advance the discourse on the role of Christianity in the lives of an enslaved people.  Pan Africanism has long rejected the magnanimous side of western religions and has encouraged the dismantling of its doctrines and practices in Afro-Caribbean religious expressions. It has also assailed assimilation and has warned against racial suicide or miscegenation. The introduction of Garveyism in schools throughout Jamaica, and the new thrust toward Africa by many in the Diaspora have ratcheted up the debate. A line has been drawn in the sand.
Notwithstanding the sharp philosophical divide, the instrumental role of abolitionists in the manumission of slaves cannot be ignored, neither should the educational directives of Mission schools that ably integrated blacks in their adopted homes.
Although dealt a bad hand by Providence, Blacks somehow surmounted the most egregious challenges. With unswerving faith they garnered strength to open another chapter in a bristling historical journey that has only just begun.
Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com of follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
The Lost Gospel: Christianity and Blacks in North America by Jerome Teelucksingh
Publishers: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK
ISBN: 13: 978-1-4438-1635-9
Available at Amazon
Rating: Highly recommended

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