Untitled, 2022
Within this installation at the Coordinates: Ice Pac exhibition, a question is simply being posed. If Christianity was used as a tool to acquire slaves and used to keep slaves under control while they built the United States of America on free labor from approximately 1600 - until current times;
Why were those biblical principles and guidelines abandoned and discontinued out of use?
If those same words out of the same bible are true, what makes the black people so deserving of generations and generations of being enslaved and treated like lower-class citizens?
If these words are false and manipulated to control a people, why do we still assimilate to the bible that has been in print and unchanged for these same 400 years?
Why do we not, still use the bible to control black people in slavery now, since these words and culture have been used as such an edict? And if the bible isn’t, why do we perpetuate the Christian religion in any way?
Or why did the god of the Christian religion allow slaves to go through the torturous and tumultuous times that they endured, if we are all created equal
Reviewing the work of the white churches, Frederick Douglass had this to say: “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. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I, therefore, hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity…”
Can anyone explain the difference between the two churches Frederick Douglass speaks about?
What if the history and religion you have been handed were only meant to distract you from reaching for something higher, just a few questions.