Creative Intellect

A Religious Parody

         At the end of Frederick Douglass' autobiography, he included a parody of a hymn- "Heavenly Union". The parody was written when a northern Methodist preacher went to visit a slaveholder's property, before the movement to free the slaves began.
         The parody is too long to post here by itself, so today, I will choose specific passages or stanzas from the altered hymn to reflect on and analyze.
         "They'll read and sing a sacred song,
         And make a prayer both loud and long,
         And teach the right and do the wrong,
         Hailing the brother, sister throng
           With words of heavenly union." (Douglass 113)
is my first stanza of choice. I will admit I laughed at this stanza the first time I read it. My mind pictured a group of white men flocked together, reading from a hymn book and pretending to be pious. What catches my eye here is "teach the right and do the wrong". It sums up everything the whites are doing- in seven succinct words. Additionally, the parody insinuates the whites call the blacks their "brothers" and "sisters", yet they choose to do wrong by them. The whites would say one thing, then use the words, and skew their meanings so it benefited their actions. This is actually shown in my other chosen stanza.
         "A roaring, ranting sleek man-thief
         Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef
         Yet never would afford relief
         To needy, sable sons of grief
           Was big with heavenly union." (Douglass 114)
Mutton, veal, and beef, or sheep, deer, and cow, respectively, are all meat- and in those days, meat was expensive. Choosing to use the word "afford" was an interesting way to write the parody, as the word can mean both to have enough money to pay for something, or to give. The preacher here is pointing out how the white people were rich enough to afford all the different sorts of meat, yet would not help out the black people. In a way, it is like they are trying to compete to see who the worst master is. This is apparent in the last stanza:
         "All good from Jack another takes,
         And entertains their flirts and rakes,
         Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes
         And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes
           And this goes down for the union." (Douglass, 114)
As with the previous stanza I picked out, the food here is significant, because the listed edibles are what the rich people ate back then. In this stanza, the whites take from the poor to give to the rich. The "good" that Jack would get is given to the flirts and rakes- the rich ladies and gentlemen. The sleek and glossy clothes in the third line also denote high fashion- another sign of wealth. With all the surplus, the whites still do not give the slaves and African Americans enough to eat.
         In retrospect, I theorize if the reason this preacher chose to parody this particular hymn, was because of the word "union". "Union" could also represent the United States as a whole- "Heavenly Union" making it sarcasm or irony in the fact that the United States was far from "heavenly". The whites were corrupt and cruel to their black "brothers", and the blacks were simply suffering the injustices the whites piled onto them. If anything, the "heavenly" could be argued as "hellish".
         Overall, this parodied hymn was an interesting way to portray the ways of the slaveholders. Douglass used it to prove his point on how misled the slaveholders were- since a Northern preacher penned this work, readers would also know it was not fictionally made up by Douglass, bitter at his owner. The parody also serves to bolster Douglass' ethos- having the poem from an (assumed) white abolitionist raises his credibility and increases his readership.

Works Cited:
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. N.p.: Penguin Books, n.d. 113-14. Print.