In this Book
- The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Series: Early America: History, Context, Culture
summary
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.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- A Note on Terminology
- p. xiii
- 3 Faith in the Blood
- pp. 61-85
- 4 Baptism and the Birth of Race
- pp. 86-111
- 5 Becoming Christian, Becoming White
- pp. 112-137
- 6 The Children of Israel
- pp. 138-167
- Essay on Sources
- pp. 228-233
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421408743
Related ISBN(s)
9781421407005, 9781421419817
MARC Record
OCLC
813286361
Pages
240
Launched on MUSE
2012-10-19
Language
English
Open Access
No