Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830

by Sylvia R. Frey, Betty Wood

The conversion of African-born slaves and their descendants to Protestant Christianity marked one of the most important social and intellectual transformations in American history. Come Shouting to Zion is the first comprehensive exploration of the processes by which this remarkable transition occurred. Using an extraordinary array of archival sources, Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood chart the course of religious conversion from the transference of traditional African religions to the New World through the growth of Protestant Christianity in the American South and British Caribbean up to 1830. Come Shouting to Zion depicts religious transformation as a complex reciprocal movement involving black and white Christians. It highlights the role of African American preachers in the conversion process and demonstrates the extent to which African American women were responsible for developing distinctive ritual patterns of worship and divergent moral values within the black spiritual community. Finally, the book sheds light on the ways in which, by serving as a channel for the assimilation of Western culture into the slave quarters, Protestant Christianity helped transform Africans into African Americans.

Genres: History, Religion, Christianity

302 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A valuable update to the Raboteau and Sobel’s late 70s work on the making of African American Protestantism. The authors shift the frame to include the contributions of enslaved women in the development of Baptist and Methodist Christianity in the first quarter of the 19th century. One of their claims, in which they are very convincing, is that free and enslaved African Americans were crucial in the spread and development of evangelical Christianity in the antebellum period. Biracial partnership was crucial during the Second Great Awakening, roughly beginning with turn of the century mid-South camp meetings (1801-) and the Chesapeake revivals from which they sprung (1785-90). Those partnerships are fascinating and disheartening, as southern white evangelicals began accommodating the social, racial, and economic demands of powerful slave owning planters (who were the gate keepers for access to slaves for evangelization) with more consistency in the 1820s and 1830s, ending evangelicalism’s early window for establishing racial equality on a social and spiritual level by committing to make evangelical Christianity a bulwark of antebellum social hierarchies. The historical work of uncovering those junctures of creating and maintaining inequality reveals their lack of inevitability, which casts some hope over the current racial politics and divisions of American evangelicalism.

The book is densely researched and written in very clear, straightforward prose. Not a lot of verve. Not a lot of theory, but plenty of subtle historioigraphical maneuvering (mostly in footnotes). The direct nature of the authors’ delivery mirrors their flat treatment of religion, despite their insistence that a) evangelical Christianity was not merely a coping mechanism to deal with the horrors of slavery, b) evangelicalism was not, for the most part, foisted upon enslaved Africans, but it was rather c) consciously chosen and d) a source of actual life, strength, community formation, meaning, identity, etc. Despite the allusion to the tradition of “shouting” in the title, their analysis of African American evangelical relationships to God was somewhat lacking, or flat at the very least. Stopping short of theological explanations (though they should unpack what they mean by “millennialism” instead of using it as a stand in for all hopes of future deliverance, which is what they do), the authors and their strong work would have benefited from a deeper look at how the worlds that African Americans, free and enslaved, made together in relation to God. God, in three persons, is somewhat absent from their dialectical approach to the formation of African American Protestantism. Maybe I’m asking too much fo the source base, but the direct evangelical relationship to God is more hinted at than examined in their narrative.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent research behind the information presented in the book. However, for a book about the development of religion and religious beliefs, there seems to be little sympathy for or acceptance of anything beyond mere anthropological explanations of religious phenomena.

[Ryan Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and thought provoking. If history isn’t your cup of tea it may be a more difficult read. But Frey and Wood shine a light on an often passed over portion of early Protestantism.

[Marc Minter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting, Heart-wrenching, and Often Confusing

Wood and Frey offer the reader a perspective of the historical development of Christianity in the Americas during the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Wood and Frey provide many details, some of which are heartbreaking and infuriating, as those who claimed the name of Christ spoke and acted with such anti-Christian displays. The reader may benefit from exposure to these records, at least as an informative reminder of the terrible depths of human depravity.

More positives could be mentioned regarding the authors’ historical references, but (it seems to me that) all of these are overshadowed by their pervasive ignorance of Christian theology and their confusion of the social, cultural, and theological matters at hand. Furthermore, the authors even contradict themselves when their own biases are exposed - a bias for “traditional” African culture and religion and a bias for an egalitarian and doctrinally-nebulous form of Christianity.

The authors do not understand Christian conversion or the distinct expressions of ecclesiology among congregationalists and episcopalian models. The authors also seem completely ignorant of any notion that an individual or group might well be glad to sacrifice worldly pleasures for the reward of eternal life and glory. All historical and religious developments in this book are presented from a merely naturalistic and pragmatic perspective.

As a modern, biased, and historically documented perspective of the developments of Christianity among enslaved people in the American South and British Caribbean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this book (in my opinion) is terribly wanting. I don’t recommend it unless the reader simply wants to know how modern academics without a basic knowledge of Christian doctrine view these developments today.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read and summary of what historians are doing in the field of African American protestantism in the Atlantic world. I think that if one wants to get into the field should give this book a read. The writers have written a monograph chalk full of information, that it took me quite a while to get through, but I understand why the book was recommended to me.

[Melissa]

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[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in college and didn't really like it that much. May have been because I wasn't too into the class that it was assigned in. If you like books about early American Protestantism then this is one for you.