 |
| From Christianity Today |
The role of religion in slavery remains a challenging topic. Many view the introduction of Christianity as primarily a tool of pacification. However, most enslavers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries feared the introduction of Christianity to the enslaved because they believed that the Christian gospel would instill a sense of equality and freedom among their enslaved captives. But, the impact of Christianity on the enslaved and African American society throughout American history is impossible to deny. The question remains of how much African culture and religious ideas remained as captive Africans adopted Christianity. Some scholars write that Slavery cut the enslaved off from African culture and ideas. In contrast, others insist on the persistence of African ideas, culture, and religion remaining within the Christianity of African Americans. The following paper explores the historical and sociological debate of the influences of the Christianity practiced by the enslaved.
 |
| Illustration of freed black George Liele preaching. Liele was an influential preacher in Georgia during the late 18th & early 19th centuries. Illustration from The Christian Index. |
Historians have long debated religion
within African American society. Many scholars claimed that the suffering and
shock that enslaved Africans faced stripped them of their culture and memories
of African practices and religion. Others insist that African culture and
spiritual beliefs persisted and impacted the religious beliefs and practices of
the enslaved. However, the centrality of faith within the history of African
American society and the Christian religion in particular is difficult to deny.
During his time as a young schoolteacher, W.E.B. DuBois reflected on the impact
of African American religion within America after visiting a revival within a
black church in the South in his classic work The Souls of Black Folk,
Those who have
not thus witnessed the frenzy of a Negro revival in the untouched backwoods of
the South can but dimly realize the religious feeling of the enslaved person; as
described, such scenes appear grotesque and funny, but as seen, they are awful.
Three things characterized this religion of the slave, —the Preacher, the
Music, and the Frenzy.[1]
Later,
Dubois takes exception to how the practice of the Black church became distorted
and skewed by churches outside the tradition of black Southern churches.
However, DuBois also maintains the centrality of black religious history to
American history.
Moreover, the
religious growth of millions of men, even though they be slaves, cannot be
without potent influence upon their contemporaries. The Methodists and
Baptists of America owe much of their condition to the silent but potent
influence of their millions of Negro converts. Especially is this
noticeable in the South, where theology and religious philosophy are on this
account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites
is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods. The mass of “gospel” hymns
which has swept through American churches and well-nigh ruined our sense of
song consists largely of debased imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that
caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee
songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not only a
vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part of
American history.[2]
The
debate over the religion practiced by the enslaved remains an essential
discussion within a broader study of slavery. At the heart of the discussion on
religion is the debate over the persistence of African culture and traditions
during slavery and after emancipation. This paper will study the historiography of enslaved religion and examine the
historical debates regarding the origin of religion among the enslaved community.
There is a great deal of overlap between religion and culture, and much of the
discussion regarding religion also includes cultural differences.
 |
| W.E.B. Du Bois by James E. Purdy, 1907 From Wikipedia |
One of the earliest scholars to
examine the place of religion among the enslaved was G. Carter Woodson. Often
credited as the father of Black history, Woodson wrote a pioneering history of
African American religious life in his pioneering book, The History of the Negro Church, where he traces the history of
African American church life from the colonial period until the twentieth
century. Woodson spends no time discussing connections between African
spiritual connections but instead traces the beginning of Christianity among the
enslaved through the efforts of missionaries. Worship and church became central
to African Americans, according to Woodson, largely because blacks were
isolated from social centers that were available only to whites.[3]
However, in Woodson’s book The African background outlined; or, Handbook for the study of the Negro, Woodson makes
a connection between the culture and religious practices of Africa to the spiritual
practices of African Americans. While blacks became assimilated through
"Europeanization," they were reluctant to give up all things African.
Woodson claimed that the “Christianization” of the enslaved was much easier
than for the “European pagans” because Africans shared ideas of creation and
the dualism of good and evil with Hebrews. In addition, the attraction to
Baptists and Methodists, according to Woodson, may stem from overlapping modes
of worship between those in Africa and those practiced by Baptists and
Methodists.[4]
,_Carter_G._Woodson_Home_National_Historic_Site,_1915._(18f7565bf62142c0ad7fff83701ca5f6).jpg) |
| Carter G Woodson from Wikipedia |
John Blassingame makes a similar
argument regarding the religious practices of the enslaved in his book, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in theAntebellum South. While Blassingame spends little time in a discussion of
religion, he does contend that similarities between European and African
cultural elements allowed the enslaved to create a “synthesis of European and
African cultures.” The African belief in an all-powerful Creator God who could
be addressed through prayer and rituals made it natural for Africans to
incorporate into their beliefs and practices. Africans kept many of their
sacred ceremonies by observing Christian rituals and ceremonies.[5]
While Woodson and Blassingame acknowledge that African practices continued
during slavery, their description of African religious theology and rituals
remains very broad. It fails to recognize the diversity found in West Africa.
While their conclusions remain possible, examining African religious ideas requires a deeper dive into the various beliefs found among African
ethnicities.
 |
| E. Franklin Frazier, 1922 from Wikipedia |
E. Franklin Frazier contended that
the experience of slavery created a complete break with African culture and
traditions, including religious beliefs and rituals. Frazier studied under
influential sociologist Robert E Park at the University of Chicago. Park was a
prominent proponent of the idea that the enslaved arrived in America as an
almost blank cultural slate.
My own
impression is that the amount of African tradition which the Negro brought to
the United States was very small. In fact, there is every reason to believe, it
seems to me, that the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind
him almost everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament. It
is very difficult to find in the South today anything that can be traced
directly back to Africa. [6]
Like his mentor Park, Frazier believed every unique aspect of African American culture and religion developed within
an American environment. As a sociologist, Frazier traced the history and
environment that impacted the black family from slavery until the 1930s.
Frazier argued that because the enslaved arrived in smaller numbers over a
lengthy period of time, over the course of capture, middle passage transport,
and enslavement, Africans lost every remnant of African culture.
The first fact which should be made clear about the Negro family as it exists in America today is that it has developed out of the American environment. It is phantastic to seek explanations for the deviations in the American Negro family from American standards in African customs. When the Negro was introduced into America, the break with African culture was well nigh complete.[7]
Frazier
believed that because the captured Africans arrived from different areas of
Africa speaking a variety of languages, the memories of Africa faded away
completely. Arguing that slavery destroyed traditional forms of kinship,
Frazier the detachment from African culture continued as the ability of
enslaved families to prosper faced obstacles from the lack of legal marriage
for the enslaved and the relationship of husband to wife and parents to
children existed at the capricious decision of white masters.[8]
With the loss of “clan and kinship” ties, religious myths and traditions lost their importance to the enslaved. Christianity provided the “social
cohesion” that united enslaved Africans into a community. According to Frazier, one must examine the impact of Christianity on the enslaved if one desires to understand the solidarity religion provided for African Americans.[9]
While the Church of England began evangelistic efforts among blacks, the
enslaved became attracted to the revivals conducted by the Methodists and
Baptists during the Awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
After the American Revolution, most African Americans found themselves
attracted by the religious emotionalism and worship of the Baptists and
Methodists. The emphasis that the revival preachers placed on conversion found
an enthusiastic audience from the enslaved, "who were repressed in so many
ways." Frazier contends that religious conversion served to break down
walls between the enslaved and master and allowed the enslaved to participate
in the “religious life of their masters.”[10]
Frazier's argument that African American culture developed from a relationship
with the majority white culture became the ruling view for much of the first
half of the twentieth century.
 |
| Melville J. Herskovits from the Evanston History Center |
Frazier received a direct challenge
for his views from anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, who argued that
African American cultures were formed by the persistence of West African cultural
practices, or "Africanisms." The son of Jewish immigrants from
Central Europe, Herskovits originally planned to enter rabbinical studies at
Hebrew Union College, but after World War I, he began to study history and then
received a PhD in anthropology at Columbia. His anthropological studies of
Africa led to further research into African Americans when many believed blacks
were inferior to whites. Field studies convinced that blacks were not inferior
in any way to whites.[11]
Herskovits believed that Africanisms persisted through the early years of
slavery, even through the oppression of slavery, and that traces of African
traditions continued into the twentieth century. For many white enslavers, the
presence of song, dance, and folk tales was trivial, provided agricultural work
proceeded without interruption.[12]
He agreed with Frazier regarding the damage slavery inflicted upon kinship and
family ties, but Herskovits maintained that on plantations where families were
able to live out their entire lives, some African aspects of family life persisted.
Sensitivity to the power of the dead and the sense that ancestors are always
close and give strength to the living continued for many as an African convention.[13]
Herskovits pointed to a number of religious practices seen in black churches
connected to Africannisms. He claimed that the discourse between the preacher
and congregation, with call-and-response interactions, reflected African
practices, which Herskovits also observed in Dutch Guinea.[14]
The claim that the enslaved inherited their emotional worship practices from
white revival services also receives a challenge from Herskovits, who maintains
that the emotions displayed during revivals are more African than European,
with the Second Awakenings taking place in the border and Southern states pointing
to greater African than European influence. The popularity of the Baptist
churches among the enslaved also contains hints of African influence as Herskovits
contends that full immersion baptism to a connection with river cults and the “vitality
of this element in African religion.”[15]
In 1929, Herskovits and his wife Frances attended a black Sanctified Church,
where they observed anecdotal evidence of African practices within a religious
service, “The same dancing, the same trembling of the body, the hand-clapping,
the speaking of ‘tongues’, the fixed, vacant expression of spirit-possession.
It was astonishing.”[16]
Herskovits
based his conclusions on fieldwork conducted in Suriname, Dahomey, Haiti, and
Trinidad and performed extensive scholarly research on African Americans. He
stressed the intricacy and strength behind the development of black culture
through the interaction with African, Native American, and European influences.
Herskovits offered not only a challenge to Frazier but also liberal assimilationists
and conservative segregationists with his claim that African Americans created
their own culture through the adoption of African and European elements. Herskovits'
ideas of Africanism persisting within African American culture became a
solitary position among white social scientists.[17]
Herskovits directly challenged the idea of black inferiority and the childlike
nature of African Americans by pointing to the sophistication and complexity of
African cultural traditions and the adjustments African Americans needed to
make in the face of white bigotry and oppression. Further, Herskovits pointed
to revolts seen throughout the Western Hemisphere of the enslaved dissatisfied
with a life of slavery, demonstrating their disgust with their subjugation. The
fact that many whites remained in fear of black revolts continued to reveal the
discontent and frustration of the enslaved.[18]
Herskovits believed his ideas had many
practical implications, foremost being that African Americans did not need to
feel second-rate to white Americans. He contended that a denial of the African
connection to black Americans reinforced the idea that African American culture
was inferior to white culture. His quotation of a black scholar makes his
point,
The tradition and
culture of the American Negro have grown out of his experience in America and
have derived their meaning and significance from the same source. Through the
study of the Negro family, one is able to see the process by which these
experiences have become a part of the traditions and culture of the Negro
group. To be sure, when one undertakes the study of the Negro he discovers a
great poverty of traditions and patterns of behavior that exercise any real
influence on the formation of the Negro's personality and conduct. [19]
Herskovits
strongly believed that knowledge of the “strength and complexity” of African
culture would undercut racial discrimination. However, Frazier thought that an
emphasis on differences between black and white cultural backgrounds would
provide evidence for racial segregationists and bigotry. Frazier contended that
a stress on a separate African American culture overlapped with those claiming
African Americans lacked the ability to assimilate into American society.
Herskovits countered by pointing out the reality that culture existed as a two-way
street with black culture making great contributions to white American culture.
[20]
Many of Frazier's conclusions formed due to his personal experience in
the Deep South and his concerns that social and economic forces impacted the
daily lives of African Americans. Long an opponent of Jim Crow segregation,
Frazier reacted negatively to the ideas of Herskovits because he feared for the
future of blacks in America if whites considered blacks both racially inferior
and culturally African. As the son of Jewish immigrants, Herskovits encountered
anti-Semitism, but the danger of racial violence faced by Frazier was unknown
to Herskovits.[21] The
debates between Frazier and Herskovits were not so much over kind as over
degree. The debate was not whether there were any distinct aspects of African
American culture but rather the degree to which black culture differed from
mainstream American culture.[22]
As the battle over Jim Crow took shape in the 1950s, most within the civil
rights movement questioned the wisdom of stressing of Africanisms within black
culture, as fearing that highlighting differences only provided ammunition to
segregationists.[23]
However, by the late 1960s, Herskovits' ideas came to the forefront with the advent of the black power movement and black separatism. Black Pride and Black is Beautiful campaigns brought
attention to the distinctiveness of African American culture.[24]
In his book, Black Culture and BlackConsciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Lawrence W. Levine builds upon the themes of
Herskovits and build upon them, demonstrating how African Americans assembled
their own cultural traditions from elements found in both European and African
cultures, allowing American blacks to "forge and nurture a culture."[25]
Levine concerned himself with the development of folk culture and thought
during the entire slave experience while also comparing and describing the
complex interrelationships between white and black cultures in the antebellum
South. The author shows that the culture and religion of the enslaved was
neither a derivative of the white European culture nor was it an unthinking
importation of African themes. Rather, Levine paints a picture of the enslaved
dynamically involved in constructing a worldview and religious thought
independently by adapting different elements of African and euro-Christian
traditions. Levine demonstrates the dynamic nature of African American culture
and insists that while elements of African culture continue to exist, these
African contributions do not remain unchanged in the culture. The author
insists that culture continues a process of change. “Culture is not a fixed
condition but a process: the interaction between the past and present.”[26]
 |
| Photo from American Historical Association |
Levine looks to the spirituals as a
medium to understand the enslaved's worldview and religion. The
spirituals allowed the enslaved to express themselves in a medium resembling
the "cosmology" they inherited from Africa and also allowed them to
adapt to their oppressive circumstances.[27]
At the center of the spirituals lies the sense of the sacred. Denied freedom
and autonomy, the enslaved used the spiritual to transcend their circumstances
and the oppressive atmosphere that they faced every day. The spirituals are the
testimony of a people who discovered “the status, the harmony, the values, the
order they needed to survive by internally creating an expanded universe” and
experiencing rebirth by an act of their will.[28]
The spirituals combined the call and response of African culture with the
hymnody of European culture, creating a new folk form and religious expression.
The single most common picture the enslaved employed in their spirituals was
the image of the chosen people. "We are the people of God," "I
really do believe I'm a child of God," and "I'm born of God, I know I
am," are just some of the theological expressions expressed within the
spirituals, revealing a sense of transcendence and spiritual freedom.[29]
Levine endorses the idea put forth by anthropologist Paul Radin that the
enslaved were “not converted to God, He converted God to himself. In the
Christian God he found a fixed point… both within and outside of himself.”[30]
Levine affirms the Africanisms of Herskovits but confirms that the enslaved
were active participants in fashioning their worship and religious thought.
Spirituals are central to Levine’s
thesis that African Americans shaped African and European sources into a
transformed culture. In a later essay, he confirms the usefulness of religious
music and songs in understanding the transformation of culture by the enslaved.
Scholars focus on the process of syncretism to explain the unique aspects of
black music in the United States. White enslavers tolerated or even encouraged
the musical efforts of the enslaved as blacks made use of their rich West
African musical traditions and incorporated them into their worship. The enslaved
adapted entire Anglo hymns and folk songs and transformed them by infusing the
words, musical structure, and performance with African musical styles, changing
the songs into a uniquely African American tradition.[31]
 |
| Photo from The Historical Society |
Eugene Genovese joins the religious
debate in his massive work, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made.
Genovese recognizes that African American religion developed from a number of
tributaries, including, African, European, Judeo-Christian, and Amerindian, but
acknowledges the ongoing debate between Herskovits’ claim for African
continuity and Frazier’s claim for a sharp break with African traditions,
recognizing the valued contributions of each scholar.[32]
Genovese argues that the acceptance of Christianity by the enslaved never
resulted in an abandonment of African
ideals, but rather, Africans "accepted Christianity's celebration of the
individual soul and turned it into a weapon of personal and community
survival."[33]
The enslaved constructed a Christianity of their own, drawing from African
religious models and Christian themes, fashioning a shield of protection for
"personal and community survival." According to Genovese, the
enslaved “reshaped the Christianity they had embraced; they conquered the
religion of those who had conquered them.”[34]
Enslaved blacks created a Christianity that provided a strength and ability to
persevere without the “sense of guilt and the sense of mission” that drove
Western Christianity. African religious themes provided the enslaved a sense of
owing responsibility to previous generations and providing "an
irrepressible affirmation of life" and still participating in the tears
and joys one faces in life.[35] Genovese's discussion of religion overlaps
greatly with Levine's ideas, as both historians paint a picture of the enslaved
as dynamic actors in the adoption and shaping of a Christianity that fits their
circumstances.
Genovese pictures the black preachers
through their oratory as instrumental in giving the enslaved community a sense
of autonomy and nascent nationhood. Enslaved preachers led through the use of rhythmic
spirituals, funerals, and prayer meetings, empowering the enslaved. Genovese
trace the practice of shouting and dance within worship back to Africa, where
they demonstrated "form and content" and involved the enslaved
society in communal worship.[36]
The black preachers encouraged the enslaved to see themselves as God's chosen
and as members of the Kingdom of God. They gave the enslaved a sense
of community and nationalism, undergirded by a prophetic message relevant to
their oppressive circumstances. The African religious tradition molded the
religion of the enslaved into a unique “Afro-American religion that had long
since forgotten its origins.”[37]
 |
| Albert J. Raboteau from Princton University |
The themes begun by Levine and Genovese
of the enslaved creating a uniquely African American Christianity impacted by
both African and European streams receive further exploration in Albert J.Raboteau's book, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in
the Antebellum South. Raboteau contends that religion connected the
enslaved from his oppressive situation back to his African heritage. He maintains
that the African traditions found within the religion of the enslaved were not
"preserved as a static Africanisms, but rather African mores developed and
flourished within the American soil producing "new fruits as unique
hybrids of American origin." The new religious traditions adapted in
America by the enslaved never preserved a pure form of African orthodoxy but
rather transformed African religious culture into a vital form of worship and
theology that met the needs of oppressed people. [38]
The interaction between Africans and Europeans created what Raboteau calls a
“continuity of perspective” that equipped Africans to perceive their religious
experience in “traditionally African ways.”[39]
In the debate between Frazier and
Herskovits over the survival of African traditions among African Americans, Raboteau
argues that both scholars have valid points. If one examines the debate from
different perspectives, then the evidence reveals that both Frazier and
Herskovits are right. Raboteau determines that Herskovits was right in
advancing his theory of reinterpretation as a feature and superior to the
proposal that a people's belief system, rituals, and behavior patterns
disappeared during oppressive enslavement. While Raboteau maintains that
Herskovits often overstated his case, such as the connection between African
river cults and Baptists, still the theory that elements of African culture
survived during and well after slavery was an accepted fact. However, Frazier
also had valid points. Frazier was correct in confronting the exaggerations and
excesses in Herskovits’ ideas and pointing out the significant differences
between black culture in the United States and the other black communities in
the Western hemisphere. While African culture influenced African American
religion, it is also apparent that African religious traditions endured longer
and purer within African diaspora communities in the Caribbean and Brazil.
"In the United States the gods of Africa died."[40]
However, in his book Canaan Land: AReligious History of African Americans, Raboteau clarifies
any misunderstanding of his earlier statement regarding the death of the gods
of Africa in the United States. He makes it clear that many African customs
persisted through slavery,
Thousands of
Africans from diverse cultures and religious traditions, forcibly transported
to America as slaves, retained many African customs even as they converted to
Christianity. Before and after the Civil War, African Americans drew religion
to its moral and prophetic calling, making it the center not only of
African-American culture but of challenging ethic of equality and dignity
throughout American society.[41]
The
author further explains that the worship services conducted by the enslaved
drew upon both African worship and evangelical revivalism to create worship
that resembled the "spirit-empowered ceremonies" of Africa. The
African and evangelical traditions emphasized an "observable experience of
the divine presence."[42]
Raboteau contends that many past scholars
have mistakenly assumed the impossibility of hearing the voices of the
enslaved, and he determined to recover that voice through slave narratives,
black autobiographies, folklore, conversion accounts, church records, travel
reports, missionary accounts, and journals of white observers.[43]
Using these sources, Raboteau relates the conversion of large numbers of the
enslaved into evangelical churches and the key role of the black preachers.
Numerous enslaved blacks participated in the Great Awakening and later the
frontier revival meetings of the Second Great Awakening. Evangelicals placed
great emphasis on the need for both whites and blacks to be converted. Baptists
and Methodists never required an educated ministry; rather, the only
prerequisite was a "converted heart and a gifted tongue."[44]
Black preachers fit the qualifications of an exhorter. In the latter half of
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they served as "crucial
mediators between Christian belief and the experiential world of the slaves."
These black preachers were instrumental in molding a "bicultural
synthesis," which is a fully African American religious culture.[45]
While Raboteau is apparent in his emphasis that the enslaved fashioned a
Christian faith from elements of African and European traditions, he stresses
that the enslaved possessed a genuine Christian faith.
We are fortunate that the former slaves were not silent about their religious faith and that they left their testimony as a legacy for their children and for any who wish to understand it. The history of slave religion is the story of the faith of a people, a people whose lives were marked by their trust in the Lord.[46]
The impact of African traditions
receives an examination from Mechal Sobel in her books The World They MadeTogether: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia and Trabelin'
On: The Slave Journey to an
Afro-Baptist Faith. In The
World They Made Together, Sobel
demonstrates that African culture persisted within an American environment and
contends that both blacks and whites drew on both African and English streams
to create a hybrid culture that overlapped considerably into both societies. The
Great Awakening within the South was the climax of racial interaction that
impacted both the perceptions and world views of blacks and whites, leading to
shared values.[47]
Often, blacks and whites shaped each other's view of the world. The basic
proposition that blacks shaped the worldview of whites led to shared
perceptions of time, space, identity, home, causality, and meaning, leading to
a shared understanding that bore fruit during the revivals of the Great
Awakening.
 |
| Mechal Sobel from The American Historical Association |
The Great
Awakening provided a common revival experience that combined the divergent
beliefs of the races. Whites began to have spiritual experiences during the
revivals and experienced ecstatic conversions in reaction to sermons on
judgment and forgiveness. Shaking and fainting attached itself to the
conversion experience. The English became more open to experiences and ecstasy.
White Virginian funerals subtly reflected African concerns regarding the
departure of loved ones. However, blacks became more individualistic as they
absorbed English ideas of personal guilt and the need for a Savior. Black
understanding of heaven and hell, while sharing some continuities with African
thought, began a change due to a Christian worldview. All Christians look for a
place in heaven. Slavery provided no impediment to one's place in Paradise.
Blacks shared spiritual experiences with whites. Church meetings, baptisms, and
funerals provided opportunities where ecstatic occurrences took place. Both
races knew that approaching Christ meant dying to self to be reborn anew. As
Baptist churches grew in prominence, the baptism experience became a time of
shouting and singing for both races.[48]
Sobel not only demonstrates the persistence of African culture in the New World
but shows through the intermingling of the races that Anglo-Americans absorbed
African traditions.
Sobel also
demonstrates the transmission of African religious culture in her book, Trabelin'
On. Sobel's argument bears some similarity to
Genovese and Levine, showing that the enslaved forged their own cultural
identity through the combination of African and Anglo cultures. Africans
achieved a connection between African and African American religious ideals.
Key to this new worldview was the black participation in the Great Awakening.
Coming from an African tradition stressing a "living mystery faith,"
enslaved Africans eagerly participated in the Christian mystery as portrayed by
the Baptists. Within the Baptist Church, blacks discovered a "Sacred
Cosmos to integrate their African values." The fruit of this integration was
an “Afro-Baptist faith.”[49] The
African belief of a spirit moving through the world that any person may seek is
correlated with the ecstatic experiences encouraged during Baptist revivals.
Union with the spirit took place during ecstatic worship, which the enslaved
described as the "little me" within the "big me."[50] The
popularity of the Baptist Church within the black community was due not only to
Baptist evangelistic efforts but also because of the ability of enslaved
Africans to integrate their African cultural and religious tradition with
Baptist beliefs—the Baptist Church's importance in synthesizing African and
Anglo traditions. William Dusinberre reports that two-thirds of Virginia
Baptists in the early nineteenth century were black. While white Baptists
worked to attract the enslaved, black preachers and exhorters were the primary vehicles
used to recruit the enslaved to the Baptist Church. The decentralized
congregationalism of the Baptists allowed blacks some independence and the
ability to integrate their Christian faith with African traditions.[51]
The impact of
African religious traditions and culture on the Christianity practiced by the
enslaved is a well-established argument. The importance of the
debate between E. Franklin Frazier and Melville J. Herskovits
still resonates as one examines the persistence of African traditions within
the African American Church. The degree to which African traditions remained
and changed within the American environment still needs further study. Many
current scholars navigate a course between Frazier and Herskovits by affirming
the strength of both and avoiding their excesses. The enslaved never abandoned
their African traditions and never wholly lost African influences.
Simultaneously, the traditions and culture of the enslaved were never
duplicates of Africa. The enslaved created a “syncretic culture" through
interactions with a diverse group of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans.[52]
Archaeological evidence offers some possibilities for further discoveries
regarding the degree of African practices among the enslaved. However, the archaeology
of slave religion is still in its infancy, but the possibilities for new
findings and scenarios remain promising. The importance of religion during
slavery and emancipation remains indisputable.
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