In Slave Religion*, Raboteau shows how this hypocrisy manifested itself in several specific ways. In an earlier post, I spotlighted Frederick Douglass’s Narrative* of his life, in which he highlights the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholding. Sometimes this appeared in a more syncretistic fashion, but in many other cases-especially in the US-it meant that they adopted orthodox Christian theology and belief as their own and translated it into their experience, retaining elements of African religion, particularly forms of dancing and singing.Īnother key theme of the book is the tension between slaveholding and Christianization. Factors like these (as well as others) account for different slave religious experiences in the northern and southern hemispheres.Īs he focuses on religious experience particularly in the US, Raboteau notes how slaves adapted Christianity to fit with their own African heritage. So, as Raboteau says it, “the bulk of the slave population in North America was native-born” (92), which allowed them to be influenced more by the white population, with which they had more frequent contact. So while North America imported fewer slaves proportionately than places in South America and the Caribbean, Blacks grew in larger numbers in the US and Canada (89–92). Interestingly, the US and Canada imported only 4.5 percent of slaves that traversed the Middle Passage, yet by the mid-twentieth century North America held 31.1 percent of those of African descent in the New World. Slaves in the southern hemisphere retained a greater degree of their African religious heritage than their counterparts in the northern hemisphere. This theme is echoed throughout the book and appears in different forms.Įarly in the book, for example, Raboteau observes that the religious experience of slaves differed between the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. And it still deserves attention today for its insights.Ĭhief among those insights is his tracing of the transformation of African religious practices as Africans were transported to the New World. That book became important in opening doors to a much-neglected area of American religious history.

ed., 2004), which was based on his dissertation. I recommend it as an accessible, evenhanded historical overview of the African American religious experience in the American colonies and the United States.Ī couple of decades before publishing Canaan Land, Raboteau wrote Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South* (Oxford University Press, 1978 rev.

When I’ve had the opportunity to teach the history of religion in America, I’ve regularly used Albert Raboteau’s Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans* (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Albert raboteau slave religion