Phyllis Wheatley :: essays research papers

Televangelists like Jimmy Swaggert and Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker ensure the Christian faith tomillions everyday. For the right price, anybody can energize something- a.k.a. Christianity, God, andfaith- in their lives. On these shows, there is no need to have believed in religion before, as longas there is a need for it now. &9 ghostlike telecasts asking for money in exchange for faith attract ab come out five million pileeach year. Fifty-five percent of these people atomic number 18 elderly woman Thirty-five percent are from thedesperation pool, the poorest and neediest members of society The remaining ten percent arethose who might be classified as upper-middle class, who want spiritual justification for their greed.Most of us know that the religion professed on these telecasts is not about trusting in God orhaving a deep belief in his teachings, ideas that amount of money Christianity in society. Instead, the old,the poor, and the rich are buying something to have as their a vouch when they have nothing else,whether it be in the material, social, or emotional sense. supposed faith gives them possession, yetplaces responsibility in the hands of a higher(prenominal) force. And in that, they are hoping to find freedom inknowing that their lives are less empty and without direction.&9It may seem that we can scarcely relate the televangelist audience of the 20th Century topoetic views on Christianity of the eighteenth Century, but surprisingly, there lies many homogeneousitiesbetween the two.. Both Anne Bradstreet and Phyllis Wheatley appeal to Christianity by and by theirown personal tragedies. These women, like the many viewers who watch Church-TV everyday, havelost everything and are left with nothing. In an attempt to fill the idle words in their lives, left byBradstreets burnt house and Wheatleys treatment as a slave, they turn to the Christian faith that attimes seems as empty as the faith that can be commercialized and sold by dramatists on televi sion. &9In analyzing " present Follows Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House" and "On BeingBrought from Africa to America," I provide consider Christian faith as means of coping with nothingness, kind of than a pious way of life. While making references to Anne Bradstreets similar developmentof faith, I will contend that Phyllis Wheatleys Christianity seen is sought out for her own purposesin times of feeling nullity rather than a confident belief or trust in God and the word sense ofGods will.&9Phyllis Wheatleys first appeals to Christianity emerge as she is transported on a slave shipfrom West Africa to Boston in July 1761, which begins the poem under analysis.