Monday, June 24, 2013
Will
Cocks left Manila this month for reassignment in Beijing. I will always
remember him for the special programs we worked on, one of them the Edward P.
Jones Roadshow (Manila, Dumaguete, Makati, Pasay, Pasig). It feels like, only
yesterday, Will himself brought Ed to the airport at the end of a hectic but
fulfilling week. The International Book Fair in Manila is once again looming on
the horizon, and so I am inundated with these memories.
Will
was a young, entry-level officer when he came to the Philippines. Manila was
his first post. Yet, he diligently prepared for this extremely complex program.
He maintained communication with Ed via e-mail—no easy task because Ed hardly
uses e-mail and is for the most part unreachable. He read most of Ed’s books, which
National Book Store ordered from the U.S.A., the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Known World in particular. He
obtained Ed’s multiple signatures not as autographs but on tedious, official
forms that were necessary for Ed’s arrival and stay. He was always there for Ed—at
the workshop in Writers’ Village and the lecture-discussion at the American
Corner in Dumaguete City; at the PAO’s dinner reception in honor of Ed at Barbara’s in
Intramuros; at the luncheon to meet local artists on Albert Avellana’s
compound; at the dialogue-discussion with Philippine literary luminaries at
National Artist for Literature Frankie Sionil Jose’s La Solidaridad, in partnership
with Philippine P.E.N. International; at the lecture-discussion sessions with
senior students at De La Salle University and University of Asia & the
Pacific; at the tea with board members of the American Studies Association of
the Philippines at the Fort; at the book-signing in National Book Store; at
media interviews; and at International Book Week in Ayala Museum with another
Pulitzer-Prize winner, Junot Diaz. It was Will who conducted a public interview
with Ed at a National Book Store branch in Makati, and people lined up to buy
books and have them signed by Ed afterwards.
Time
has a way of plodding on while bringing back everything. I missed Ed, and I now
miss Will.
I
hope that American literary programs will always be in Will’s portfolio.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Congratulations to Follower Ayla for winning a copy of "Lost in the City" in our October 5, 2012 raffle draw!
Please claim your prize by sending an e-mail to PerezAS@state.gov.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
“Islam and Terrorism in the 21st Century, Christianity and Slavery in the 19th Century: Moral Complexities and Christian Contexts in E.P. Jones’s 'The Known World'”
“Islam and Terrorism in the 21st Century, Christianity and Slavery in the 19th Century: Moral Complexities and Christian Contexts in E.P. Jones’s The Known World”
by Raymond G Falgui
Paper presented during the Annual Assembly of the 2011 American Studies Association of the Philippines held at University of the East, December 3, 2011
Introduction
One seemingly inevitable consequence of the September 11 attacks has been to spark a debate about the role and responsibility of religion in said attacks. It has been noted that “the attacks of September 11 prompted a blizzard of speculation in the media on the nature and scale of the “Islamic” threat” (Hefner). In the soul-searching or finger-pointing that followed the attacks, a common theme that emerged dealt with the allegedly violent nature of Islam. 9/11 seemingly solidified in the minds of many people an inherent link between Islam and violence, as well as Islam and terrorism. In various media, it is not uncommon at the present time to encounter sentiments such as the following:
"Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the very core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslims’ holy book, the Quran, in many suras…" (Imani)
For Muslims and non-Muslims who disagree with such sentiments, the challenge has been to present a counter-perspective at odds with the highly-publicized examples of Islamic extremism. The alleged links between Islam and violence have become so pervasive that even an imam must acknowledge that the question of whether Islam is a violent religion “is a question often asked these days … [it] remains a valid question that every Muslim should be able to answer for himself or herself and for others” (Hlyalhel).
This appropriation, or hijacking, of Islam in the name of extremist violence and terrorism in the 21st century mirrors a disturbingly similar 19th century reality in E.P. Jones’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The Known World. In the “known world” of the characters in the novel, it is expressly clear that religion – in this case, Christianity – is used to condone and justify the defining characteristic of their world: slavery. The reality of slavery shapes and constricts the outlook and perspectives of the different characters, white or black, slave or free; it spreads like a stain across the fabric of society, politics, economics, and family relationships, and not even religion is left untouched. Then, as today, religion seemingly serves as a convenient tool to legitimize controversial or divisive issues or ideologies.
Physical Abuse and Moral Corruption
This complicity between Christianity and slavery is especially striking given the novel’s explicit depiction of the physical brutality and moral corruption associated with slavery. Numerous instances in the novel highlight the well-documented historical reality of the physical abuse of slaves. Aside from whippings and beatings, slaves are also subject to mutilation, such as when part of Elias’s ear is sliced off as a punishment after he tries to escape, or through “hobbling” (the crippling of a slave by slicing the Achilles’ tendons), such as what happens to Moses near the novel’s end. For slave owners, the only sources of hesitation to the physical abuse of slaves were not humane or moral considerations, but financial: “Fern never liked to flog slaves; for every whip mark on one slave’s back, she estimated that his value came down $5” (Jones 259).
But it is the novel’s interrogation of slavery’s corrupting influence – as seen in the lives of Negro slave owners – that has earned it widespread critical attention. The white plantation owner, William Robbins, allows the inordinate power granted by slavery to overwhelm his genuine affection for Philomena, the slave with whom he has two children. When Philomena threatens to leave him, he responds as a master, not as a lover:
"The one time she threatened to flee and return to Richmond, Robbins told her he would sell her back into slavery. “You can’t,” she said. “You can’t, William. I got my free papers.” He told her that in a world where people believed in a God they could not see and pretend the wind was his voice, paper meant nothing, that it had only the power that he, Robbins, would give it." (144)
The dehumanizing power of slavery, the temptation to treat human beings as chattel or property, overwhelms social and family relationships.
But the temptation offered by this kind of power is colorblind, and affects characters of both races. Thus, Robbins’s black children, Dora and Louis, grow up to become slave owners themselves, just like their white father.
Other Negro characters exposed to this temptation become complicit in the system of slavery, dramatically turning against their own people in return for their hoped-for inclusion into the system’s hierarchy. The free Negro and teacher Fern Elston, for example, views her ownership of slaves as a sign of her social superiority over non-slave-owning white people (she initially convinces herself that, given time, white people will recognize this as well). Maude Newman secretly murders her husband with poison after she discovers his plan to free the slaves they own. Later, she takes one of her slaves, Clarke, as her lover, exulting in her power over him:
“Do you know,” Maude had said the first time she and Clarke had lain together, “that if I was a white woman, they would come in here and tear you limb from limb?” “And what they gon do with you being colored?” he asked … “I suspect that since I own you, since I have the papers on you, they might do the same thing if I up and screamed. They wouldn’t be as fast, I suppose, but they would come, Clarke.” He said nothing. (246)
The operative words for Maude here are: “if I was a white woman.” The danger that Negro males face from even casual contact is noted in the novel: “You see a white woman riding toward you, get way off the road and go stand behind a tree” (137). That Maude would use such a threat, even playfully, suggests the degree her sense of identification has shifted away from people of her own race; as a slave owner, Maude believes she is above them. “They” – the county sheriff, the patrollers who keep watch for dangerous or escaped slaves – will not come as fast because she is colored, not white, but they will come nevertheless. She is a slave owner, and they must defend her just as they must defend the system of slavery itself.
The culmination of the corrosive influence of slavery (and the power associated with it) is found in the novel’s great moral failure, the character of Henry Townsend. The son of Augustus and Mildred, Henry is freed through the efforts of his father, who worked for years to earn the purchase price for himself and his family. As a teen-ager, Henry convinces Augustus and Mildred to help Rita, one of Mr. Robbins’s slaves, escape to the North.
But as an adult, Henry falls under Mr. Robbins’s sway and becomes a slave owner himself. Henry forsakes his father’s example, a choice made dramatically clear during a dinner at Augustus’s house. Learning that Henry is building a house and has acquired “help” to do so, Augustus naturally assumes this would take the form of hiring slaves who hoped to earn enough to buy their freedom, just as he had done:
“Who you got? You hired out Charles and Millard from over Colfax’s plantation. They good men with they hands, I haveta say. Good men and worth what you gotta pay. Get your money out the backyard and do right by em. And Colfax’ll let em keep some of what they earn. That Charles could use the money with him tryin to buy hisself away from Colfax.” (136)
Instead, Henry announces that he has bought a slave – news that is met with anger and disappointment by his parents. After an enraged Augustus strikes him down with a walking stick, to remind his son what slaves feel on a daily basis, Henry takes the stick and breaks it in two; he then verbally articulates the significance of this symbolic break with his father: “Thas how a master feels”.
Henry’s choice to identify with the master rather than the slave will resonate throughout the novel, but it is a choice that emphasizes what David Ikard calls Jones’s “political motives” in the text:
Jones asserts that his chief political aim for writing the novel was not specifically to draw attention to the little-known historical fact of African-American slave owning. Rather, he wanted to explore the social variables that prompt African Americans – then and now – to turn “against their own kind” for individual gain. (65-66)
Christian Complicity in Slavery
One such social variable may be found in the moral sanction Christianity provides slavery. As a work of historical fiction, the novel reveals the unavoidable Christian context that permeates the 19th century American South. But the author also reveals the curious forms Christianity is twisted into to accommodate the physical brutality and moral corruption of slavery.
There is little doubt that such an accommodation is in place. The novel’s two preachers, the Rev. Wilbur Mann of Danville, Virginia, and Valtims Moffet, provide implicit and explicit support to the system of slavery. The Rev. Mann, a white preacher, not only owns slaves, he also promises a brutal whipping to an escaped slave who was “despoilin” his late wife’s good name (the slave adopted the wife’s maiden name as his own last name, possibly because she taught him to read). Valtims Moffet, a black preacher, earns extra income on Sundays preaching to the slaves, but his message is likely tempered by the fact that the slave owners pay him for the sermons. Like most sanctioned preachers of the time, his sermons likely included a heavy dose of “proslavery” Biblical passages, like the following passage from Ephesians:
"Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, with singleness of heart, as to Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good any one does, he will receive again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free." (Ephesians 6:5-8)
In another context, this passage may be interpreted as an argument for equality: God judges us according to what we do, whether we are slave or free. But in the context of the 19th century American South, it can be used to provide God’s sanction for the institution of slavery: if slavery is divinely-ordained, it effectively undermines discourses that call for slavery’s abolition. This self-serving interpretation allows individuals to accommodate themselves to the existence of slavery, even when their own personal beliefs suggest they should oppose it:
"Despite vowing to never own a slave, [John] Skiffington had no trouble doing his job to keep the institution of slavery going, an institution even God himself had sanctioned throughout the Bible." (43)
This belief in God’s alleged acceptance of slavery is so widespread that even a preacher like Moffet finds himself losing customers:
"The few black slaveowners had begun to believe that their own salvation would flow down to their slaves; if they themselves went to church and led exemplary lives, then God would bless them and what they owned. And one day they would go to heaven, and so would their slaves. So why pay Moffet to help do what they could manage for nothing?" (88)
An explanation for the successful use of religion to justify what is arguably unjustifiable, whether this be terrorism or slavery, may be found in the dogmatic or literal interpretation of the tenets or texts of the religion. Specific passages in the Quran may be cited in support of extremist violence, just as specific Biblical passages were used to defend slavery. Yet these passages are often tied to specific historical contexts, and literal interpretation takes them out of context for self-serving purposes.
The novel exposes the dangers of this approach through characters that treat Christianity’s primary religious text, the Bible, as a sort of legal document to be twisted for their benefit. Moffet justifies his adultery with his wife’s sister by noting that David and Solomon were allowed to have multiple spouses. Yet he recognizes that “God was not pleased about that, but he felt he had many years if life ahead of him, despite his ailments, and so there would be time to force his knees to bend before God and ask his forgiveness” (92). Counsel Skiffington, cousin to John, the county sheriff, goes even further. After coming down in the world following the loss of his family and plantation to a smallpox epidemic, Counsel seeks the return of what he has lost. When such an opportunity presents itself in the form of a free Negro’s gold, he kills his cousin John in cold blood. The murder is done to secure his new-found wealth, but Counsel frames himself and his actions according to the story of Job:
"Was there a prayer Job had offered to God after he put his servant back a million times better than Job had been before the devastation? Thank you, O Lord. I cannot forget what I once had, but I will not resent you so much when I think of those old days and my dead loved ones." (371)
The murder of John Skiffington is thereby of little consequence, for it is only part of the process by which God shall restore his servant Job, ahem, Counsel, back to his exalted place in the world. Counsel cites the literal similarities of his situation with Job’s, even as his attempts to bargain and broker a deal with God reveal him to be a parody of the Biblical Job, who did not ask for remuneration in return for his suffering.
Even the well-meaning John Skiffington is undone by this legalistic approach to Christianity. John constantly reads his Bible, but fails to find anything in what he reads that challenges his role as a protector of slavery (notwithstanding his family’s stand on slavery). The reason for this may be his insistence on literal interpretations, as seen by John’s discomfort over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis. John worries about the sodomy, but fails to acknowledge the larger issue of collective guilt suggested by the story – that the citizens of both cities were punished not because they all wanted to rape Lot’s guests, but because they saw evil being done and did nothing to stop it. He falls into the same trap as his cousin, bargaining away his moral position for the sake of convenience. Thus, despite his family’s vow not to own slaves, John does acquire a slave – a young girl named Minerva given to him and his wife as a wedding present. John reassures himself by believing that he and his wife see Minerva as a daughter, not as a slave. But the reality that John is not immune to his society’s perspective that Minerva is a slave may be seen in his sexual desire for his “daughter.” For all his constant reminders to himself that Minerva is his daughter, the reader is left to wonder whether John has fallen into the habit of other slaveholders: to view their slaves as objects to satisfy their lust.
In the novel, John is one of four or five characters to receive an “afterlife” scene, which may be more of a reflection of the way they lived their lives than an actual afterlife. Thus, in his “afterlife,” Henry finds himself disappointed, for what he thought was his mansion is actually just a modest home. Augustus, who had been separated from his wife after being kidnapped by slave traders, begins walking above the earth, heading north towards Canada (and freedom). But he stops instead in at Virginia, at his house, where he gives his sleeping wife a kiss on the breast. The “kiss” wakes Mildred, who suddenly realizes that her missing husband is now dead. As for Mildred herself, she finds herself returning home after her death, to find her family whole again. Meanwhile, John Skiffington is offered a choice in his afterlife, as he also finds his family waiting for him. But he runs past them, even past the outstretched arms of his wife, as he chooses to save the tottering family Bible at the end of the hall: “He got to it in time to keep it falling over, his hands reaching to prop it up, his open left hand on the o in Holy and his open right hand on the second b in Bible” (369). In death, as in life, John doggedly sticks to the letter of his religion, even as his neglect of his family suggests he has lost sight of its core values and spirit.
Conclusion
The focus on core values, and the interpretation of religious texts in light of these values, suggests a way out of the aforementioned appropriation of religion. In response to 9-11, some Muslim scholars emphasize a more tolerant form of Islam over the jihadist practice of “picking-and-choosing” passages from the Quran. Prior to the Civil War, a similar shift occurred with regards to American Christianity’s response to slavery. Radicals among the Quakers and other Christian denominations began to articulate a position against slavery that was rooted in Christian beliefs and principles:
"For slavery had come to symbolize not only sin and death, but every violation of the Christian ideal of love and brotherhood. It was a concrete model of selfishness, greed, and man’s cruelty to man." (Davis 326)
In time, this position gained wider acceptance among abolitionists determined to put an end to slavery in the United States.
A return to the recognition of these core values is clearly necessary. But the difficulty of articulating these core values is perhaps seen in the following passage, reflecting the sorrow of Mildred after discovering that her son has purchased a slave:
"But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, having been owned once your own self. Don’t go back to Egypt after God done took you outta there." (137)
It is at the end of this line of thought that Mildred returns to her religion, to a lesson that was deemed so obvious that she never bothered to say it. For without the articulation of these core values, as the novel and the September 11 attacks show, the alternative may be to leave religion in the hands of those who will use it justify everything from terrorism to slavery.
WORKS CITED
Davis, David Brion. "The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Print.
Hefner, Robert W. “September 11 and the Struggle for Islam.” 10 Years After September 11. Social Science Research Council, 8 September 2011. Web. November 2011.
Hlayhel, Anas. “Is Islam a Violent Religion?” MuslimMatters.Org: Because Muslims Matter. n.p. 21 February 2010. Web. November 2011.
Ikard, David. “White Supremacy Under Fire: The Unrewarded Perspective in Edward P. Jones’ The Known World.” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 36.3 (2011): 63–85. Project Muse. Web. 2 October 2012.
Imani, Amil. “Truth Be Told.” Amil Amani Journal. n.p. n.d. Web. November 2011.
Jones, Edward P. The Known World. 2003. New York: Amistad, 2006. Print.
by Raymond G Falgui
Paper presented during the Annual Assembly of the 2011 American Studies Association of the Philippines held at University of the East, December 3, 2011
Introduction
One seemingly inevitable consequence of the September 11 attacks has been to spark a debate about the role and responsibility of religion in said attacks. It has been noted that “the attacks of September 11 prompted a blizzard of speculation in the media on the nature and scale of the “Islamic” threat” (Hefner). In the soul-searching or finger-pointing that followed the attacks, a common theme that emerged dealt with the allegedly violent nature of Islam. 9/11 seemingly solidified in the minds of many people an inherent link between Islam and violence, as well as Islam and terrorism. In various media, it is not uncommon at the present time to encounter sentiments such as the following:
"Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the very core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslims’ holy book, the Quran, in many suras…" (Imani)
For Muslims and non-Muslims who disagree with such sentiments, the challenge has been to present a counter-perspective at odds with the highly-publicized examples of Islamic extremism. The alleged links between Islam and violence have become so pervasive that even an imam must acknowledge that the question of whether Islam is a violent religion “is a question often asked these days … [it] remains a valid question that every Muslim should be able to answer for himself or herself and for others” (Hlyalhel).
This appropriation, or hijacking, of Islam in the name of extremist violence and terrorism in the 21st century mirrors a disturbingly similar 19th century reality in E.P. Jones’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The Known World. In the “known world” of the characters in the novel, it is expressly clear that religion – in this case, Christianity – is used to condone and justify the defining characteristic of their world: slavery. The reality of slavery shapes and constricts the outlook and perspectives of the different characters, white or black, slave or free; it spreads like a stain across the fabric of society, politics, economics, and family relationships, and not even religion is left untouched. Then, as today, religion seemingly serves as a convenient tool to legitimize controversial or divisive issues or ideologies.
Physical Abuse and Moral Corruption
This complicity between Christianity and slavery is especially striking given the novel’s explicit depiction of the physical brutality and moral corruption associated with slavery. Numerous instances in the novel highlight the well-documented historical reality of the physical abuse of slaves. Aside from whippings and beatings, slaves are also subject to mutilation, such as when part of Elias’s ear is sliced off as a punishment after he tries to escape, or through “hobbling” (the crippling of a slave by slicing the Achilles’ tendons), such as what happens to Moses near the novel’s end. For slave owners, the only sources of hesitation to the physical abuse of slaves were not humane or moral considerations, but financial: “Fern never liked to flog slaves; for every whip mark on one slave’s back, she estimated that his value came down $5” (Jones 259).
But it is the novel’s interrogation of slavery’s corrupting influence – as seen in the lives of Negro slave owners – that has earned it widespread critical attention. The white plantation owner, William Robbins, allows the inordinate power granted by slavery to overwhelm his genuine affection for Philomena, the slave with whom he has two children. When Philomena threatens to leave him, he responds as a master, not as a lover:
"The one time she threatened to flee and return to Richmond, Robbins told her he would sell her back into slavery. “You can’t,” she said. “You can’t, William. I got my free papers.” He told her that in a world where people believed in a God they could not see and pretend the wind was his voice, paper meant nothing, that it had only the power that he, Robbins, would give it." (144)
The dehumanizing power of slavery, the temptation to treat human beings as chattel or property, overwhelms social and family relationships.
But the temptation offered by this kind of power is colorblind, and affects characters of both races. Thus, Robbins’s black children, Dora and Louis, grow up to become slave owners themselves, just like their white father.
Other Negro characters exposed to this temptation become complicit in the system of slavery, dramatically turning against their own people in return for their hoped-for inclusion into the system’s hierarchy. The free Negro and teacher Fern Elston, for example, views her ownership of slaves as a sign of her social superiority over non-slave-owning white people (she initially convinces herself that, given time, white people will recognize this as well). Maude Newman secretly murders her husband with poison after she discovers his plan to free the slaves they own. Later, she takes one of her slaves, Clarke, as her lover, exulting in her power over him:
“Do you know,” Maude had said the first time she and Clarke had lain together, “that if I was a white woman, they would come in here and tear you limb from limb?” “And what they gon do with you being colored?” he asked … “I suspect that since I own you, since I have the papers on you, they might do the same thing if I up and screamed. They wouldn’t be as fast, I suppose, but they would come, Clarke.” He said nothing. (246)
The operative words for Maude here are: “if I was a white woman.” The danger that Negro males face from even casual contact is noted in the novel: “You see a white woman riding toward you, get way off the road and go stand behind a tree” (137). That Maude would use such a threat, even playfully, suggests the degree her sense of identification has shifted away from people of her own race; as a slave owner, Maude believes she is above them. “They” – the county sheriff, the patrollers who keep watch for dangerous or escaped slaves – will not come as fast because she is colored, not white, but they will come nevertheless. She is a slave owner, and they must defend her just as they must defend the system of slavery itself.
The culmination of the corrosive influence of slavery (and the power associated with it) is found in the novel’s great moral failure, the character of Henry Townsend. The son of Augustus and Mildred, Henry is freed through the efforts of his father, who worked for years to earn the purchase price for himself and his family. As a teen-ager, Henry convinces Augustus and Mildred to help Rita, one of Mr. Robbins’s slaves, escape to the North.
But as an adult, Henry falls under Mr. Robbins’s sway and becomes a slave owner himself. Henry forsakes his father’s example, a choice made dramatically clear during a dinner at Augustus’s house. Learning that Henry is building a house and has acquired “help” to do so, Augustus naturally assumes this would take the form of hiring slaves who hoped to earn enough to buy their freedom, just as he had done:
“Who you got? You hired out Charles and Millard from over Colfax’s plantation. They good men with they hands, I haveta say. Good men and worth what you gotta pay. Get your money out the backyard and do right by em. And Colfax’ll let em keep some of what they earn. That Charles could use the money with him tryin to buy hisself away from Colfax.” (136)
Instead, Henry announces that he has bought a slave – news that is met with anger and disappointment by his parents. After an enraged Augustus strikes him down with a walking stick, to remind his son what slaves feel on a daily basis, Henry takes the stick and breaks it in two; he then verbally articulates the significance of this symbolic break with his father: “Thas how a master feels”.
Henry’s choice to identify with the master rather than the slave will resonate throughout the novel, but it is a choice that emphasizes what David Ikard calls Jones’s “political motives” in the text:
Jones asserts that his chief political aim for writing the novel was not specifically to draw attention to the little-known historical fact of African-American slave owning. Rather, he wanted to explore the social variables that prompt African Americans – then and now – to turn “against their own kind” for individual gain. (65-66)
Christian Complicity in Slavery
One such social variable may be found in the moral sanction Christianity provides slavery. As a work of historical fiction, the novel reveals the unavoidable Christian context that permeates the 19th century American South. But the author also reveals the curious forms Christianity is twisted into to accommodate the physical brutality and moral corruption of slavery.
There is little doubt that such an accommodation is in place. The novel’s two preachers, the Rev. Wilbur Mann of Danville, Virginia, and Valtims Moffet, provide implicit and explicit support to the system of slavery. The Rev. Mann, a white preacher, not only owns slaves, he also promises a brutal whipping to an escaped slave who was “despoilin” his late wife’s good name (the slave adopted the wife’s maiden name as his own last name, possibly because she taught him to read). Valtims Moffet, a black preacher, earns extra income on Sundays preaching to the slaves, but his message is likely tempered by the fact that the slave owners pay him for the sermons. Like most sanctioned preachers of the time, his sermons likely included a heavy dose of “proslavery” Biblical passages, like the following passage from Ephesians:
"Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, with singleness of heart, as to Christ; not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatever good any one does, he will receive again from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free." (Ephesians 6:5-8)
In another context, this passage may be interpreted as an argument for equality: God judges us according to what we do, whether we are slave or free. But in the context of the 19th century American South, it can be used to provide God’s sanction for the institution of slavery: if slavery is divinely-ordained, it effectively undermines discourses that call for slavery’s abolition. This self-serving interpretation allows individuals to accommodate themselves to the existence of slavery, even when their own personal beliefs suggest they should oppose it:
"Despite vowing to never own a slave, [John] Skiffington had no trouble doing his job to keep the institution of slavery going, an institution even God himself had sanctioned throughout the Bible." (43)
This belief in God’s alleged acceptance of slavery is so widespread that even a preacher like Moffet finds himself losing customers:
"The few black slaveowners had begun to believe that their own salvation would flow down to their slaves; if they themselves went to church and led exemplary lives, then God would bless them and what they owned. And one day they would go to heaven, and so would their slaves. So why pay Moffet to help do what they could manage for nothing?" (88)
An explanation for the successful use of religion to justify what is arguably unjustifiable, whether this be terrorism or slavery, may be found in the dogmatic or literal interpretation of the tenets or texts of the religion. Specific passages in the Quran may be cited in support of extremist violence, just as specific Biblical passages were used to defend slavery. Yet these passages are often tied to specific historical contexts, and literal interpretation takes them out of context for self-serving purposes.
The novel exposes the dangers of this approach through characters that treat Christianity’s primary religious text, the Bible, as a sort of legal document to be twisted for their benefit. Moffet justifies his adultery with his wife’s sister by noting that David and Solomon were allowed to have multiple spouses. Yet he recognizes that “God was not pleased about that, but he felt he had many years if life ahead of him, despite his ailments, and so there would be time to force his knees to bend before God and ask his forgiveness” (92). Counsel Skiffington, cousin to John, the county sheriff, goes even further. After coming down in the world following the loss of his family and plantation to a smallpox epidemic, Counsel seeks the return of what he has lost. When such an opportunity presents itself in the form of a free Negro’s gold, he kills his cousin John in cold blood. The murder is done to secure his new-found wealth, but Counsel frames himself and his actions according to the story of Job:
"Was there a prayer Job had offered to God after he put his servant back a million times better than Job had been before the devastation? Thank you, O Lord. I cannot forget what I once had, but I will not resent you so much when I think of those old days and my dead loved ones." (371)
The murder of John Skiffington is thereby of little consequence, for it is only part of the process by which God shall restore his servant Job, ahem, Counsel, back to his exalted place in the world. Counsel cites the literal similarities of his situation with Job’s, even as his attempts to bargain and broker a deal with God reveal him to be a parody of the Biblical Job, who did not ask for remuneration in return for his suffering.
Even the well-meaning John Skiffington is undone by this legalistic approach to Christianity. John constantly reads his Bible, but fails to find anything in what he reads that challenges his role as a protector of slavery (notwithstanding his family’s stand on slavery). The reason for this may be his insistence on literal interpretations, as seen by John’s discomfort over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis. John worries about the sodomy, but fails to acknowledge the larger issue of collective guilt suggested by the story – that the citizens of both cities were punished not because they all wanted to rape Lot’s guests, but because they saw evil being done and did nothing to stop it. He falls into the same trap as his cousin, bargaining away his moral position for the sake of convenience. Thus, despite his family’s vow not to own slaves, John does acquire a slave – a young girl named Minerva given to him and his wife as a wedding present. John reassures himself by believing that he and his wife see Minerva as a daughter, not as a slave. But the reality that John is not immune to his society’s perspective that Minerva is a slave may be seen in his sexual desire for his “daughter.” For all his constant reminders to himself that Minerva is his daughter, the reader is left to wonder whether John has fallen into the habit of other slaveholders: to view their slaves as objects to satisfy their lust.
In the novel, John is one of four or five characters to receive an “afterlife” scene, which may be more of a reflection of the way they lived their lives than an actual afterlife. Thus, in his “afterlife,” Henry finds himself disappointed, for what he thought was his mansion is actually just a modest home. Augustus, who had been separated from his wife after being kidnapped by slave traders, begins walking above the earth, heading north towards Canada (and freedom). But he stops instead in at Virginia, at his house, where he gives his sleeping wife a kiss on the breast. The “kiss” wakes Mildred, who suddenly realizes that her missing husband is now dead. As for Mildred herself, she finds herself returning home after her death, to find her family whole again. Meanwhile, John Skiffington is offered a choice in his afterlife, as he also finds his family waiting for him. But he runs past them, even past the outstretched arms of his wife, as he chooses to save the tottering family Bible at the end of the hall: “He got to it in time to keep it falling over, his hands reaching to prop it up, his open left hand on the o in Holy and his open right hand on the second b in Bible” (369). In death, as in life, John doggedly sticks to the letter of his religion, even as his neglect of his family suggests he has lost sight of its core values and spirit.
Conclusion
The focus on core values, and the interpretation of religious texts in light of these values, suggests a way out of the aforementioned appropriation of religion. In response to 9-11, some Muslim scholars emphasize a more tolerant form of Islam over the jihadist practice of “picking-and-choosing” passages from the Quran. Prior to the Civil War, a similar shift occurred with regards to American Christianity’s response to slavery. Radicals among the Quakers and other Christian denominations began to articulate a position against slavery that was rooted in Christian beliefs and principles:
"For slavery had come to symbolize not only sin and death, but every violation of the Christian ideal of love and brotherhood. It was a concrete model of selfishness, greed, and man’s cruelty to man." (Davis 326)
In time, this position gained wider acceptance among abolitionists determined to put an end to slavery in the United States.
A return to the recognition of these core values is clearly necessary. But the difficulty of articulating these core values is perhaps seen in the following passage, reflecting the sorrow of Mildred after discovering that her son has purchased a slave:
"But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, having been owned once your own self. Don’t go back to Egypt after God done took you outta there." (137)
It is at the end of this line of thought that Mildred returns to her religion, to a lesson that was deemed so obvious that she never bothered to say it. For without the articulation of these core values, as the novel and the September 11 attacks show, the alternative may be to leave religion in the hands of those who will use it justify everything from terrorism to slavery.
WORKS CITED
Davis, David Brion. "The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Print.
Hefner, Robert W. “September 11 and the Struggle for Islam.” 10 Years After September 11. Social Science Research Council, 8 September 2011. Web. November 2011.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Monday, November 28, 2011
The Embassy of the U.S.A. in Manila and the American Studies Association of the Philippines (ASAP) invite you all to the 2011 ASAP Assembly!
This year's Assembly will be held 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM on Saturday, December 3, 2011, in the Dalupan Auditorium, University of the East, C.M. Recto Avenue, Manila. Registration will begin at 8:00 AM.
A plenary session titled "Post-9/11 Realities in Literature: Edward P. Jones in Focus" will be led by Professor Raymond Falgui of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman. An exchange alumnus of the Study of the U.S. Institutes in Contemporary American Literature, Professor Falgui will present a paper titled "Religion as Justification: Christian Contexts in E.P. Jones's The Known World."
Come and join us and sign up as a lifetime ASAP Member!
A plenary session titled "Post-9/11 Realities in Literature: Edward P. Jones in Focus" will be led by Professor Raymond Falgui of the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman. An exchange alumnus of the Study of the U.S. Institutes in Contemporary American Literature, Professor Falgui will present a paper titled "Religion as Justification: Christian Contexts in E.P. Jones's The Known World."
Come and join us and sign up as a lifetime ASAP Member!
Friday, November 18, 2011
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