Embracing Protestantism: Black Identities in the Atlantic World by John W. Catron (review)

On the very last page of the book, John Catron's research interests are described as "early America, the Atlantic world, comparative slavery, religion, and the history of Africans and their descendants in colonial and revolutionary North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil". The broad canvas of the author's interests is reflected in the book's five chapters and in a bibliography of over 550 titles. Contemporary writings including the Moravian Archives at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania are the backdrop to a book that begins with the early history of Christianity in selected areas of the African continent, and ends with the repatriation of protestant Africans to Sierra Leone. Those returning to the African continent in the nineteenth century returned after a collective multigenerational journey which took them from Africa, to the Caribbean, to North America (including Canada) and to Britain. Over generations they had created a "transatlantic" Protestantism, a product of the interaction between the Protestantism of Europe and African ritualistic practice.

The author attempts the difficult task of linking African and New World Christian experiences. His conclusion is essentially that Christian experience in Africa was so intertwined with African religious practices and cosmology that religious expression on arrival in the Americas was dominated by African rather than Christian religious norms. On the other hand, Christian conversion across the Atlantic was facilitated by a vague familiarity with some of the precepts of Christianity. A consistent theme throughout the book is that evangelizing of the African enslaved by Protestant religious bodies did not mean the wholesale adoption of the theology of white missionaries. Black preachers ensured that African religious traditions were intertwined with Euro Christianity, in spite of the reservations of white missionaries about African spirituality. Nevertheless, the teaching of Moravians and Methodists especially after the eighteenth century "Great Awakening" had strong appeal for the enslaved. Baptism by total immersion, among other things, recalled African cosmology. The enslaved added their own emotional responses, dancing, singing, with an undertone of Myalism.

For the Caribbean historian, the location of Antigua as the seedbed of Christianization in the Caribbean is of particular interest. This observation is obviously important for the history of Antiguans, hundreds of whom were relocated over time to other areas of the Caribbean and the North American continent, taking with them their evolving version of Protestantism. It also illustrates that people exchange was as important as the exchange of goods between the Caribbean and North America. Among the hundreds of Antiguans who were transported to North America were several Christianized Antiguans.

The enslaved population of Antigua came initially under the influence of Methodist and Moravian missionaries, particularly following the major Antiguan rebellion of 1736, which was influenced by Asante religious ritual. The rebellion, which was brutally suppressed, convinced some white planters to begin Christian evangelization among the enslaved. Christianity was to be the antidote to slave insurrection. From the point of view of the enslaved, Catron believes that conversion was partly a function of the brutality of the slave system and of natural disasters as the enslaved sought some means of comfort within a brutal slave society.

A number of Antiguans, owned by Moravians, arrived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The chapter that discusses the Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, comes just short of presenting Bethlehem as a Moravian paradise—with its egalitarian assumptions and opportunities. However, Catron is careful to note that white Protestant evangelizers, including Moravians and Methodists in North America, were often direct beneficiaries of the slave system, were not without racial bigotry, compromised with the slave system, and concentrated on personal salvation.

It is generally true that slave life in Bethlehem was far more bearable than life on tobacco or rice farms. In Bethlehem, marriage of slaves was permitted once the slaves concerned became full church members; there was provision for education for most members of the community. In the Moravian mind there was a relationship between work and salvation.

Methodists, Moravians and Baptists were divided...