Religious persecution within the slave community sometimes occurred and occurred in different forms. The first form to address is the blatant and outright opposition of slaves engaging in anything related to Christianity. Mary Reynolds, on page 6, says, “We were so afraid of Solomon and his whip and he doesn't like to run around. He didn't like that Negroes prayed more. We never heard of a church, but the negroes prayed and sang in their cabins. We would sit on the ground and pray with our heads bowed and sing in a low voice, but if Solomon could hear, he would come and strike the wall with the butt of his whip. He would say you can't pray all night and work tomorrow, I will come in there and rip the skin off your back. » Mary Reynolds would also relate that her family even left a church service, in which she says on pages 7-8, "When we were coming back from prayer following close to the road, I stopped once in my tracks to listen . My ears were sharper than my mouth and my paw and I thought I heard black dogs and someone on horseback. I said: Maw, they're black dogs, they're going to eat us. You could hear them old dogs and bitches chattering…” This account summarizes the lengths some slave owners and overseers were willing to go to prevent slaves from engaging in Christian activity. It is important to note that not all slave owners were vehemently opposed to slaves receiving religious instruction. Another way that would qualify as persecution would be the deliberate teaching of slaves perverse doctrines of Christianity that were specifically created to promote the interests of slave owners who cared about their slaves, rather than caring about their souls. real. Some slave masters... in the middle of a paper... and said that the serpent was loosed and that Christ had laid down the yoke that he had borne for the sins of men, and that I must take it and fight against the snake... And by signs from heaven he would let me know when I would begin the great work - and until the first sign appeared, I would hide it from men - and at the appearance of the sign (the eclipse of the sun the last February), I should get up, prepare and kill my enemies with their own weapons. » So Nat Turner, in a much more extreme sense, used religion as a means to satisfy his own story of revenge against slave owners and local whites. Nat Turner is a good example of what a misunderstanding of the Christian religion could also lead to. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Print