SOURCE: Gibson, Donald B. “Christianity and Individualism: (Re-)Creation and Reality in Frederick Douglass's Representation of Self.” African American Review 26, no. 4 (winter 1992): 591-603.

In the following essay, Gibson examines Douglass's struggle to reconcile the existence of God with his own condition as a slave.

“O God, save me! God, deliver me, Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave?” 

(Douglass, Narrative 106-07)

“But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”

(James 1:25)

The question of religious belief prompted by Douglass's impassioned utterance regarding the relation between the existence of God and his own status as a slave was not raised by him alone. Reverend Charles Colcock Jones, a white, Southern slave missionary, wrote in 1842, “He who carries the Gospel to them … discovers deism, skepticism, universalism … all such strong opinions about the truth of God; objections which he may...