ever, ignored the New Testament teachings in order to support their patrons, the planter class. The church, though charged by the European monarchies with instructing the slaves in Christian practices, took an uninterested approach to missions work with the Africans. The planters wished to avoid the Christianization of their slaves, thus becoming guilty of abusing fellow Christians in the eyes of God. This tailoring of Christianity to fit a certain predetermined set of circumstances, and complacent attitude towards the religious responsibilities to the slaves marked the deep corruption of the Christian church.As slavery established itself in the region, a difference between Protestant and Catholic theologies developed on the religious treatment of slaves. The Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal employed priests to perform rudimentary baptisms on the slaves, usually before they departed from the African continent. This practice ensured that the Catholics had completed their responsibility of `Christianizing' their slaves. In fact, the slaves received no instruction in the Christian faith, and certainly did not understand the rituals performed by the Catholic priests. The Protestants, on the other hand, discouraged religious education of slaves because of statutes within the Protestant church forbidding the ownership and exploitation of fellow Christians. They also felt that their safety and security rested upon the ignorance of their workers. If slaves were educated and given knowledge, the slave owners worried that their justifications of slavery would fall under attack from the oppressed class, exactly what had already happened on mainland Europe during the political revolutions of the late eighteenth century. This belief ran directly against true Christian teaching, which said that the slaves, upon good Christian education would realize their position within society and would work in return for fair treatment as described above.Eve...
