The Baptism of Early Virginia
eBook - ePub

The Baptism of Early Virginia

How Christianity Created Race

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Baptism of Early Virginia

How Christianity Created Race

About this book

Christianity's role in furthering racism in early America.

In The Baptism of Early Virginia, Rebecca Anne Goetz examines the construction of race through the religious beliefs and practices of English Virginians. She finds the seventeenth century a critical time in the development and articulation of racial ideologies—ultimately in the idea of "hereditary heathenism," the notion that Africans and Indians were incapable of genuine Christian conversion. In Virginia in particular, English settlers initially believed that native people would quickly become Christian and would form a vibrant partnership with English people. After vicious Anglo-Indian violence dashed those hopes, English Virginians used Christian rituals like marriage and baptism to exclude first Indians and then Africans from the privileges enjoyed by English Christians—including freedom.

Resistance to hereditary heathenism was not uncommon, however. Enslaved people and many Anglican ministers fought against planters' racial ideologies, setting the stage for Christian abolitionism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using court records, letters, and pamphlets, Goetz suggests new ways of approaching and understanding the deeply entwined relationship between Christianity and race in early America.

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Yes, you can access The Baptism of Early Virginia by Rebecca Anne Goetz in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Early American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. HalfTitle Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. A Note on Terminology
  9. Introduction: Potential Christians and Hereditary Heathens in Virginia
  10. 1 English Christians among the Blackest Nations
  11. 2 The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Indian Christian Commonwealth
  12. 3 Faith in the Blood
  13. 4 Baptism and the Birth of Race
  14. 5 Becoming Christian, Becoming White
  15. 6 The Children of Israel
  16. Epilogue: Christian Abolitionism and Proslavery Christianity
  17. Notes
  18. Essay on Sources
  19. Index