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Persistence and Transformation

Explore the persistence and transformation of African, Indigenous, and Christian religions from 1600-1800 in North America. Learn about syncretism, resistance, and syncretism among Native Americans, African-American religions, and African-American Christianity.

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Persistence and Transformation

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  1. Persistence and Transformation A re-enactor at Colonial Williamsburg plays Gowan Pamphlet African and Indigenous Religion encounters Christianity, 1600-1800

  2. Graveyards—relics of syncretism • Despoliation of native American and African-American graves reveal both syncretism and a determination to avoid Christian rites in burial. • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) • Disease wiped out much indigenous religion because it wiped out so many indigenous people: • Negro Burial Ground (1991)

  3. The General Service Administration Building in lower Manhattan (1991) was built on top of the old NEGRO BURIAL GROUND.

  4. Native Americans and Xianity in 17th century Br. North America • Indigenous people in Powhatan’s Confederation resisted Christianity, burned Jamestown in 1622, and persisted in their folkways until aggressive expansion and warfare by the whites reduced their numbers in Va. to 1,000 (1676) • In Massachusetts, Puritans converted many Indians and had created some 30 “praying towns” by 1674, but most Indians in those towns didn’t receive baptism. • King Philipp’s War (1675-76) reduced overall Indian population, the number of praying towns to 4, and led the Puritans to move Indians out of areas where whites settled. • Jesuits did better (ceremonial objects and learning Indian languages) in introducing Catholicism among the Hurons.

  5. John Eliot (1604-1690) produced a grammar of the Massachussett Indians and Translated the bible.

  6. Native Americans and Xianity in 18th Century Br. North America • Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779) worked with Algonkian speakers in the Connecticut River Valley, converted Samson Occum (1723-1792), and helped found Darmouth College. • Occum became a clergyman and published pamphlets in English. • Morvians had some success converting Indians in Western Pennsylvania. • Exceptions to the patter of resistance.

  7. Wheelock and Occum

  8. Syncretism among Native Americans • Use of rosary beads (object) in healing ceremony is the employment of something new to preserve something traditional. • Ned Bearskin, a Catawba—itself a syncretic Indian nation—told William Byrd about a welter of beliefs, including a judging God, but his beliefs would not be recognized as Christian, even if some ideas had been borrowed from the missionaries.

  9. Erected in 1988, this marker in southern Virginia commemorates Byrd’s conversations with Ned Bearskin.

  10. African-American Religions • Attempted to preserve pure African Forms, but these were lost over time. White authorities forbade African practices, but little effort was made to evangelize slaves. After 1750, both syncretism and African-American Christianity operated side-by-side in British North America.

  11. Late 18th century African American marriage ritual in South Carolina.

  12. Persistent Africanisms • Newly arrived slaves practiced “rites and revels”. • Conjurers and sorcerers. • African burial rituals • “Obeah men”

  13. African American Christianity • Rise of evangelicalism and directed ministry by Baptists and Methodists to enslaved persons after 1760. • Emphasis on emotion, felt religion, and lived religion attracted enslaved persons. • A few bi-racial congregations along with separate African American congregations.

  14. Ordained a Baptist in Massachusetts, Winchester converted at least 100 African Americans around Welsh Neck, S. C. He said: “The prejudices which the slaves had against Christianity, on account of the severities practiced upon them by professing Christians, both ministers and people, might be one principal reason why they could not be brought to attend to religious instruction. But they had no prejudice against me on this score, as I never had any thing to do with slavery, but on the contrary condemned it; and this being generally known, operated so upon the minds of those poor creatures, that they shewed a disposition to attend my ministry, more than they had ever shewed to any other .” Elhanan Winchester, 1751-1797, wrote (The Reigning Abominations, Especially the Slave Trade )

  15. African American Preachers • George Liele (1752-1820), First African Church, Savannah, Ga. • Gowan Pamphlet (1748-1807), founded the African Church in Williamburg that affiliated with the Dover Baptist Association in the 1780s. • Absalom Jones (1746-1818), began as a Methodist and became the first African American Episcopal minister in the United States. • Richard Allen (1760-1831) founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church

  16. Gowan Pamphlet’s manumission paper

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