This volume examines the influence of African Catholics on the historical development of Black Christianity in America during the seventeenth century.
Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of seventeenth-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity. With homelands in parts of Africa with historically strong Portuguese influence, such as the Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome, and Kongo, these Africans embraced variants of early modern Portuguese Catholicism that they would take with them to the Americas as part of the forced migration that was the transatlantic slave trade. Their impact upon the development of Black religious, social, and political activity in North America would be felt from the southern states as far north as what would become New York.
Dewulf's analysis focuses on the historical documentation of Afro-Atlantic Catholic rituals, devotions, and social structures. Of particular importance are brotherhood practices, which were critical in the dissemination of Afro-Atlantic Catholic culture among Black communities, a culture that was pre-Tridentine in nature and wary of external influences. These fraternal Black mutual-aid and burial society structures were critically important to the development and resilience of Black Christianity in America through periods of changing social conditions. Afro-Atlantic Catholics shows how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today. This book will appeal to scholars in the history of Christianity, African American and African diaspora studies, and Iberian studies.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Portugal
2. Africa
3. The Americas
4. The Catholic Roots of African American Christianity
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author :
Jeroen Dewulf is director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and professor in the Department of German and Dutch Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of a number of books, including The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo: The Forgotten History of America's Dutch-Owned Slaves and From the Kingdom of Kongo to Congo Square: Kongo Dances and the Origins of the Mardi Gras Indians.
Review :
"This superb, exhaustively researched, well-written, and eloquently argued analysis is an important start for looking at this neglected root of Black Christianity in the Protestant Americas." —New West Indian Guide
"By marshalling a wealth of historical data and a good amount of anthropological and linguistic material, Afro-Atlantic Catholics delivers on its promise to outline the origin, character, and influence of America's first Black Christians. ...Dewulf has made this text both effective and rewarding. Scholars interested in Black Atlantic religious cultures and the historical roots of Black Catholicism will find this book illuminating and more than worth their while." —The Americas
Afro-Atlantic Catholics shows how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today. This book will appeal to scholars in the history of Christianity, African American and African diaspora studies, and Iberian studies. —Church History, Book of the Month feature
"Afro-Atlantic Catholics, a fascinating new book from a Belgian scholar at the University of California Berkeley, undertakes a starkly important, yet underserved task: tracing the history of Christianity in the New World through the lens of its African adherents—whom the author rightly calls 'America's first Black Christians.'" —Black Catholic Messenger
"Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of 17th-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity." —American Catholic Studies Newsletter
"Jeroen Dewulf revolutionizes our understanding of the development of African American Christianity. Based on an extraordinary range of historical documents, the resulting narrative restores justice and dignity to countless generations of enslaved Africans who responded to harsh living conditions by organizing their own mutual-aid organizations focused on solidarity, care, comfort, and pride." —Hein Vanhee, curator and historian at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium
"Atlantic history at its finest, Jeroen Dewulf's Afro-Atlantic Catholics convincingly shows us why any study of social life in early modern Europe, Africa, or the Americas must take African Catholicism seriously. Dewulf not only shows us the ample reach and diversity of Catholic institutions but also offers a methodological lesson in studying the Atlantic world as an interconnected web, a single constellation. As comprehensive as it is insightful, this persuasive book is a welcome reminder that one of the most enduring legacies of Africa in the Americas might very well be Catholicism." —Michael Iyanaga, College of William & Mary
"A useful guide for recognizing evidence of Afro-Atlantic culture in original research."—African Studies Quarterly
"Afro-Atlantic Catholics is its own pioneering work, timely and essential. Dewulf's book is paradigm shifting, eschewing the outmoded Protestant bias in Black Christian studies and being the first of its kind to intimately connect, in a transatlantic manner, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, emphasizing the importance of Africans' Catholicism and agency in the development of their religious traditions. I recommend this book to any historian interested in Black Catholicism and Christianity, early modern colonial Africa and Portugal, and the transatlantic world." —Reading Religion
