Frederick Douglass : America's prophet

Frederick Douglass America's prophet

D. H. Dilbeck

Book - 2018

"From his enslavement to freedom, Frederick Douglass was one of America's most extraordinary champions of liberty and equality. Throughout his long life, Douglass was also a man of profound religious conviction. In this concise and original biography, D. H. Dilbeck offers a provocative interpretation of Douglass's life through the lens of his faith. In an era when the role of religion in public life is as contentious as ever, Dilbeck provides essential new perspective on Douglass's place in American history. Douglass came to faith as a teenager among African American Methodists in Baltimore. For the rest of his life, he adhered to a distinctly prophetic Christianity. Imitating the ancient Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ..., Douglass boldly condemned evil and oppression, especially when committed by the powerful. Dilbeck shows how Douglass's prophetic Christianity provided purpose and unity to his wide-ranging work as an author, editor, orator, and reformer. As "America's Prophet," Douglass exposed his nation's moral failures and hypocrisies in the hopes of creating a more just society. He admonished his fellow Americans to truly abide by the political and religious ideals they professed to hold most dear. Two hundred years after his birth, Douglass's prophetic voice remains as timely as ever." -- Publisher's description

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this

2nd Floor Show me where

BIOGRAPHY/Douglass, Frederick
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor BIOGRAPHY/Douglass, Frederick Checked In
Subjects
Douglass, Frederick, > 1818-1895.
Douglass, Frederick, > 1818-1895 > Religion.
African American abolitionists > Biography.
African American orators > United States > Biography.
African Americans > Biography.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
D. H. Dilbeck (author)
Physical Description
191 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781469636184
  • A voice crying in the wilderness of Christian slaveholding America
  • The seeking slave, 1818-1838
  • God and slavery on the Eastern Shore
  • Religious awakenings in Baltimore
  • From the valley of shadows to freedom
  • The zealous orator, 1839-1852
  • The young abolitionist orator
  • Bearing witness in Great Britain
  • An antislavery constitution and a righteous violence
  • The hopeful prophet, 1853-1895
  • The crisis of the union
  • Reconstruction battles over racial and gender equality
  • At the dark dawn of Jim Crow
  • Unraveling the mysteries of God's providence and progress
  • Frederick Douglass is not dead!
Review by Choice Review

Abolitionist, orator, and activist Douglass rooted his own sense of mission in his devotion to the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule. These touchstones of Americanness and Christianity, especially the latter, provided his prophetic grounding to advocate for African American liberty and citizenship, even as he called on white America to live out its humanistic and religious creeds in embracing the rights of immigrants, Native Americans, and women to full democracy. Dilbeck succeeds in foregrounding religion as the North Star to Douglass's prophetic mission, in which he harnessed the power of language to expose the hypocrisies of practices such as slaveholding and racism and the corruption of institutions such as churches and governing bodies, which prevented the US from exemplifying its lofty claims. Relying on Douglass's speeches, autobiographies, and essays, Dilbeck has produced a religious biography that sheds light on the sacred sources of a well-known public career. Ten chronologically arranged chapters reveal Douglass as an uncompromising champion for equality and justice rooted in divine law but left to imperfect human beings to fulfill. Despite the discouraging contours of history, Douglass believed such a more perfect union to be possible. Summing Up: Recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Edward R. Crowther, Adams State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review

There are countless biographies and considerations of Frederick Douglass, and with the upcoming bicentennial of his birth, many more are on the way. What separates Dilbeck's from the others is his focus on Douglass' faith and how this characterized his life as a champion of liberty and equality. Born into slavery, Douglass spent his childhood wondering why God made him a slave and soon decided that God was not responsible for his slavery man was. This led him into a lifelong battle for slave emancipation and African American civil rights. Douglass was unafraid to denounce a false Christianity that supported, even praised, slave ownership, and he found similar inconsistencies in a Constitution that praised freedom and liberty but placed a portion of its citizens in bondage and constraint. Dilbeck investigates Douglass' legacy as America's moral voice and conscience, from his teenage conversion to Christianity to his search for a church that strongly opposed slavery as stridently as he did. The result is a biography that offers an insightful new understanding of an extraordinary man.--Essien, Enobong Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Dilbeck's (A More Civil War) compelling religious biography maintains that the work of Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was the perfect example of the evangelical drive to bring to bear the Christian gospel on a society and thereby transform it. Still, he demonstrates that his subject's relationship to organized Christianity was sometimes strained. For Douglass, far too many American Christians appealed to the Bible to justify slavery and bigotry. This situation alienated him from white Christian congregations in both North and South. This -biography touches on Douglass's harsh childhood as a slave, conversion to Methodism, brief employment at a Baltimore shipyard, 1838 escape to New Bedford, MA, and the onset of his career as an antislavery orator. Also explored is Douglass's antislavery tour of Ireland, Scotland, and England; his praise of John Brown's ill-fated attack on the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, VA; his support of black regiments in the Union Army; his campaigns for Chinese immigrant and women's rights; and his early celebration of Lincoln's September 1862 preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. VERDICT A superb account of one man's 50-year fight for human rights and freedom in America. Recommended for those interested in the U.S. Middle Period, Civil War, African American history, and all readers.-John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Similar Items