Complaining about Christians who land way off the Jesus-mark is a historical tradition that's gotten its share of pop culture limelight.

Sure, it's not always an on-the-nose portrayal, but you can see the problem. On the one hand, you've got Jesus, preaching nonviolence and love for your neighbor; and on the other hand, you've got lots of Christians in history, trying to figure out a way to get around all that loving-your-neighbor stuff and, uh, still get to heaven.

In the 19th century, whether or not women and people of color actually had souls to save was still up for debate. (Nauseating, we know.) After all, if God had wanted these people to be perfect—the argument went—God would have made them more like white men, who were obviously (in their own minds), the pinnacle of creation.

Excuse us while we vom.

But then along came a massive religious revival called the Second Great Awakening, and people started to think maybe the color of your skin didn't matter so much to God. Of course, even if skin color was NBD to God, it was still a big deal to people on Earth. And when the Second Great Awakening collided with the abolition movement, Frederick Douglass was born.

Okay, not exactly. But that's right when his speech, "The Church and Prejudice"—one of his first anti-slavery speeches—came to be. Douglass delivered the speech on November 4th, 1841 to a meeting of the Plymouth County (Massachusetts) Anti-Slavery Society.

Quick life recap:

Douglass was born a slave in Maryland. He escaped slavery in 1838 and moved to the North—where slavery was outlawed—but Douglass found racial prejudice alive and well, including in the churches he attended.

He expected better.

In "The Church and Prejudice," Douglass talks about—you guessed it—the prejudice he experienced in those churches because of his race.

He uses those examples as a springboard to talk about how much worse slavery is than any prejudice he's experienced, and how Southern churches use the Bible to support slavery. He closes with a stirring example of a very religious man who quotes scripture while beating his slaves bloody—Exhibit A in religious hypocrisy.

Bottom line: It's a powerful indictment of how Christians were falling way short of their moral ideals and even mining scripture for passages to support their inhumanity. It's one of Douglass' earlier speeches, and while it doesn't quite reach the fiery poetic heights of his later ones, that classic Douglass side-eye and #sarcasmfont are still there.

Why should you care? Because, sadly, the issues Douglass discusses are still around.

For as long as there have been religions, misguided people have used religion to deny others basic rights by claiming that, uh, God told them to.

At its best, religion is a force for good, a force that inspires people to love their neighbors and work for peace and justice. At its worst, religion is the perfect cover for human prejudices. If people can say, "It's not me, it's God," then reasoned debate won't get opponents anywhere. It's hard to argue with God—or with people who believe they know what God wants.

But we at Shmoop find it extremely suspicious that, throughout history, God seems to favor the same people who already hold a lot of the power and privilege in the world.

According to those who claim religious liberty to cover up their own desire to deny others their basic rights, God's had a problem with women (they need to submit), people of color (ditto and worse), immigrants (they want to kill us), people of other religions (their prayers aren't heard), the LGBT+ community (where to begin?)…the list goes on.

Douglass calls these religious folks out, giving an example of a man quoting scripture to justify all kinds of appalling acts. Sound familiar? Probably because you've watched the news recently.

Example? A pastor at a North Carolina church—a descendant of Robert E. Lee, no less—resigned his pulpit in September 2017 over indignant backlash from many of his congregants after a talk he gave on MTV. The offensive message? Check it out:

As a pastor it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin. Today, I call on all of us with privilege and power to answer God's call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on. We can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement, the women who marched in the Women's March in January and especially Heather Heyer who died fighting for her beliefs in Charlottesville. (Source)

That's what Douglass was talking about.