Description
Book SynopsisIn Plantation Church, Noel Leo Erskine investigates the history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Typically, when people talk about the Black Church they are referring to African-American churches in the U.S., but in fact, the majority of African slaves were brought to the Caribbean. It was there, Erskine argues, that the Black religious experience was born. The massive Afro-Caribbean population was able to establish a form of Christianity that preserved African Gods and practices, but fused them with Christian teachings, resulting in religions such as Cuba''s Santería. Despite their common ancestry, the Black religious experience in the U.S. was markedly different because African Americans were a political and cultural minority. The Plantation Church became a place of solace and resistance that provided its members with a sense of kinship, not only to each other but also to their ancestral past. Desp
Trade Review... it is an indispensable addition to the acreage of texts detailing Black Church history ... Noel Leo Erskine has produced a major text of great import, which will continue to stir debate for many years to come. * Anthony G. Reddie, Black Theology: An International Journal *
This book is one of those rare scholarly corrections that offers profound wisdom for academic and popular audiences. Noel Erskine mounts compelling evidence that the black religious experience began in the Caribbean and not in the United States. How refreshing that he does so with fluid storytelling and a writing style that urges the reader to pursue each page with expectations of new knowledge. * Dwight N. Hopkins, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology *
A brilliantly provocative and unprecedented book, told with both intimately personal prose and comprehensive and convincing data, with insights that will radically change the way we have conceptualized Black Atlantic religious traditions. This is the book that we have been waiting for. It is truly a tour de force, a must read for all! * Kamari M. Clarke, Professor of Anthropology and International and Area Studies, Yale University *
Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction: Remembering Ancestors ; 1. Migration, Displacement, Resistance ; 2.The Memory of Africa ; 3.Black Church Experience South of the Border ; 4. Plantation Church ; 5.The Making of the Black World ; 6.Towards A Creolized Ecclesiology ; Bibliography
