|
|
|
Book Review
Canada and the United States
Janet Duitsman Cornelius. Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1999. Pp. x, 305. $34.95.
|
This study explores the relationship between the emerging black church during the antebellum period and white efforts to evangelize African-American slaves. The most distinguishing mark of the study is its extensive coverage of white missionary efforts across denominational and regional lines. It includes the work of clergymen such as William Capers, Richard Fuller, Charles Colcock Jones, Stephen Elliott, and Basil Manly and the efforts of pious planters such as Thomas Clay, John Hartwell Cocke, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Because the study also explores the rise of the black church in the antebellum South, the work of black preachers such as Andrew Bryan, Andrew Marshall, and the lesser-known slave preachers of the Sunbury Baptist Association is investigated. |
1 |
|
The basic theme of the study is that a complex and often contradictory relationship existed between the white missionaries and their planter allies on the one hand and African-American slaves and their black preachers and praise houses on the other hand. Out of the dynamic interaction of whites and blacks, of slaves and pious planters and missionaries, of European traditions and African cultures, a distinct African-American church emerged. At the same time, "European American Christianity" in the South was being "transformed by its interaction with the black church. The slave missions, with all their contradictions, were the vehicles through which this interaction took place when the black church became a reality in the years immediately before freedom" (p. 2). |
. . . |
There are about 537 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|