| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. By Jon F. Sensbach. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. 302 pp. $22.95, ISBN 0-674-01689-0.)
Jon F. Sensbach's work is a detailed account of an extraordinary black woman, known as Rebecca, whose life experiences took her from the West Indies to Europe and finally to Africa. Born on Antigua, she was sold as a child to a Dutch-speaking planter on St. Thomas. She converted to Christianity as an adolescent, joining the pietistic denomination of Moravian Brethren, a decision that not only freed her from slavery but determined the rest of her life choices.	1
Sensbach's book, written in a way that is clear and uncluttered, is a microhistorical study of exceptionalism. Rebecca not only is an addition to the gallery of strong black women but also lays claim to being one of the most devoted and committed of eighteenth-century evangelists. It is significant that she was a Moravian. The German Pietist leader, Count Nicholas Zinzendorf, saw the West Indian slaves as potential converts, souls to be saved for Christ. Rebecca worked with the Moravian missionaries who came to St. Thomas and was eventually ordained as a deaconess. She and her German Moravian husband, Matthaus Freundlich, once spent time in prison for their refusal to swear an oath in a court case. As Sensbach points out, for Rebecca to pursue her calling, she had to move cautiously and sensitively among many cultures.	. . .

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