Baptism of Early Virginia

How Christianity Created Race
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4214-1981-7
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 358 g

Reihe: Early America: History, Context, Culture

Christianity's role in furthering racism in early America.

In The Baptism of Early Virginia, Rebecca Anne Goetz examines the construction of race through the religious beliefs and practices of English Virginians. She finds the seventeenth century a critical time in the development and articulation of racial ideologies—ultimately in the idea of “hereditary heathenism,” the notion that Africans and Indians were incapable of genuine Christian conversion. In Virginia in particular, English settlers initially believed that native people would quickly become Christian and would form a vibrant partnership with English people. After vicious Anglo-Indian violence dashed those hopes, English Virginians used Christian rituals like marriage and baptism to exclude first Indians and then Africans from the privileges enjoyed by English Christians—including freedom.

Resistance to hereditary heathenism was not uncommon, however. Enslaved people and many Anglican ministers fought against planters’ racial ideologies, setting the stage for Christian abolitionism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using court records, letters, and pamphlets, Goetz suggests new ways of approaching and understanding the deeply entwined relationship between Christianity and race in early America.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goetz, Rebecca Anne

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
Introduction
1. English Christians among the Blackest Nations
2. The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Indian Christian Commonwealth
3. Faith in the Blood
4. Baptism and the Birth of Race
5. Becoming Christian, Becoming White
6. The Children of Israel
Epilogue
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Goetz, Rebecca Anne
Rebecca Anne Goetz is an associate professor of history at New York University.