Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650-1780 (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900)

Beasley, Nicholas M.

ISBN 10: 0820336459 / ISBN 13: 9780820336459

Editore: University of Georgia Press, 2010

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[Interesting provenance: From the private library of renowned historian, Philip D. Morgan.] Softcover. Good binding and cover. Light wear. Contemporary signature of Morgan on front end page, else unmarked. "This book is a compelling study of Episcopalian Christianity in early American slave societies. Beasley displays a deep understanding of the ways that Christian ritual practice shaped English belonging in early Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, showing how religion permeated even the most brutally materialistic of human societies." - Vincent Brown, author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery From the professional library of Dr. Philip D. Morgan, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Morgan specializes in the African-American experience, the history of slavery, the early Caribbean, and the study of the early Atlantic world. Morgan is the author of more than 14 books on Colonial America and African American history. He has won both the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for his book Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998).

Codice articolo 2504040043

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Christian Ritual and the Creation of British Slave Societies, 1650-1780 (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900)
• Editore: University of Georgia Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0820336459
• ISBN 13: 9780820336459
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: As New
• Peso: 10 once
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Religion and Theology

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

<p>This study offers a new and challenging look at Christian institutions and practices in Britain’s Caribbean and southern American colonies. Focusing on the plantation societies of Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, Nicholas M. Beasley finds that the tradition of liturgical worship in these places was more vibrant and more deeply rooted in European Christianity than previously thought. In addition, Beasley argues, white colonists’ attachment to religious continuity was thoroughly racialized. Church customs, sacraments, and ceremonies were a means of regulating slavery and asserting whiteness. </p><p>Drawing on a mix of historical and anthropological methods, Beasley covers such topics as church architecture, pew seating customs, marriage, baptism, communion, and funerals. Colonists created an environment in sacred time and space that framed their rituals for maximum social impact, and they asserted privilege and power by privatizing some rituals and by meting out access to rituals to people of color. Throughout, Beasley is sensitive to how this culture of worship changed as each colony reacted to its own political, environmental, and demographic circumstances across time. Local factors influencing who partook in Christian rituals and how, when, and where these rituals took place could include the structure of the Anglican Church, which tended to be less hierarchical and centralized than at home in England; the level of tensions between Anglicans and Protestants; the persistence of African religious beliefs; and colonists’ attitudes toward free persons of color and elite slaves.</p><p>This book enriches an existing historiography that neglects the cultural power of liturgical Christianity in the early South and the British Caribbean and offers a new account of the translation of early modern English Christianity to early America.</p>

Informazioni sull?autore

NICHOLAS M. BEASLEY is rector of the Church of the Resurrection in Greenwood, South Carolina.