Olaudah Equiano's Ecclesial World

This paper argues that Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative refashions and redeploys an eighteenth-century evangelical discourse of "primitive Christianity" in order to advocate for the end of the slave trade and the creation of an inclusive community at once British, Christian, and African. While studies of the origin of early African American literature have recognized the complex role that evangelical Christianity plays in eighteenth-century transatlantic black writing, this article shifts the focus to ecclesiology specifically, highlighting the way that Equiano grounds his appeal in contemporary thinking about the nature and purpose of religious institutions. Inspired by an evangelical preoccupation with the New Testament book of Acts, Equiano points to a diasporic first-century Christian church as a model of justice, generosity, and racial harmony. In this way, he condemns the exploitation and abuse of the transatlantic slave system and posits that a spiritual kinship that transcends racial difference should serve as the foundation of reform.