Religion and Spiritual Beliefs within the Slave Quarters

Religion and Spiritual Beliefs within the Slave Quarters

Required:
 Jon Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.
 Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998), Ch. 3,4-6, 9.
 John Thornton, Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic World, Ch. 9.
Recommended:
 Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830.
 Robert Faris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (1983).
 Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (1998).

To Think About ~ What role does syncretism play in shaping people’s religious beliefs in the Caribbean? How does the material evidence gleaned from archaeology inform historians’ understanding of religious rituals and practice? What particular challenges do historians face in trying to learn about the religious beliefs and practices of enslaved persons?