Janet Duitsman Cornelius

How slaves created the organized black church while still under the oppression of bondage

6 x 9, 305 pages
21 halftones, 7 line art
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-247-5, $39.95s

ABOUT THE BOOK

Slave Missions and the Black Churches in the Antebellum South examines the fascinating but perplexing interactions between white missionaries and slaves in the 1840s and 1850s, and the ways in which blacks used the missions to nurture the formation of the organized black church. Janet Cornelius uses church records, slave narratives, and autobiographies to show that black religious leaders—slave and free—took advantage of opportunities offered by missions to create a small break in the oppression of slavery: to conduct their own meetings, become literate, and build the black community. Slave missions also provided whites with a rationale for training and supporting black leaders and protecting black congregations, particularly in the visible city churches.

The close interaction made possible by the slave missions between blacks and whites and their respective religious traditions ultimately shaped the formal religious practices of the black church. Blacks re-created Christianity for themselves, using African ritual and practice while incorporating the language and rites of European Christianity, Holy Scripture, and the music of revivals.

White missionaries wrestled with the dilemmas created by their determination to work within the slave system. Inspired by the mission spirit, they believed that they could appease slaveowners by emphasizing religion's role in preserving social order while protecting slaves' religious rights and extending to them the benefits of the print culture available through Sunday schools and catechetical instruction. However, the realities of the slave system, which depended on dehumanizing the slave, undercut missionary efforts when violence and racism masked as indifference stalled their efforts. Such dilemmas led some promoters of missions to turn to colonization as an extension of the missionary impulse.

In spite of their failures and contradictions, slave missions were a vehicle through which the black church evolved. Mission expansion in the decades before the Civil War gathered hundreds of thousands of blacks into southern churches, created opportunities for black preachers, and helped promote the formation of black congregations that bridged the gap between slavery and freedom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janet Duitsman Cornelius is a professor of history at Danville Area Community College in Danville, Illinois. She is the author of When I Can Read My Title Clear: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South.

REVIEWS

"Cornelius makes a persuasive case for slave missions as a source of institutionalization of the black church."
"All told, this is a provocative account of one aspect of perhaps the central event in the history of American slavery, the conversion of African Americans to Christianity."—Choice

"Her approach adds another way to appreciate the motivations of the slaves and the contradictions faced by their Christian owners."
—Journal of Illinois History

"Cornelius successfully weaves the threads of antebellum black and white religion into an interesting and informative narrative."
—Journal of Church and State

"In this well-researched and even-handed survey of the effort by southern white Christians to extend the gospel to African Americans held as slaves, Janet Duitsman Cornelius ... traverses familiar ground but manages to do so with refreshing insight into the promise and the peril of the attempts to forge a Christian community among a people who were forced to serve two masters, their earthly one and their divine one."—Journal of American History

"We need this book..."—Church History