CHRISTIAN RITUAL & THE CREATIO

Nicholas M. Beasley

ISBN 10: 0820333395 / ISBN 13: 9780820333397

Published by UNIV OF GEORGIA PR, 2009

About this Item

CHRISTIAN RITUAL & THE CREATIO | Nicholas M. Beasley | Buch | Race in the Atlantic World, 17 | Gebunden | Englisch | 2009 | UNIV OF GEORGIA PR | EAN 9780820333397 | Verantwortliche Person für die EU: preigu GmbH & Co. KG, Lengericher Landstr. 19, 49078 Osnabrück, mail[at]preigu[dot]de | Anbieter: preigu.

Seller Inventory # 131302389

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CHRISTIAN RITUAL & THE CREATIO
• Publisher: UNIV OF GEORGIA PR
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820333395
• ISBN 13: 9780820333397
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 18D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 18 millimeters depth
• Weight: 508 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Bücher

About this title

Synopsis

This study offers a new and challenging look at Christian institutions and practices in Britain’s Caribbean and southern American colonies. Focusing on the plantation societies of Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, Nicholas M. Beasley finds that the tradition of liturgical worship in these places was more vibrant and more deeply rooted in European Christianity than previously thought. In addition, Beasley argues, white colonists’ attachment to religious continuity was thoroughly racialized. Church customs, sacraments, and ceremonies were a means of regulating slavery and asserting whiteness.

Drawing on a mix of historical and anthropological methods, Beasley covers such topics as church architecture, pew seating customs, marriage, baptism, communion, and funerals. Colonists created an environment in sacred time and space that framed their rituals for maximum social impact, and they asserted privilege and power by privatizing some rituals and by meting out access to rituals to people of color. Throughout, Beasley is sensitive to how this culture of worship changed as each colony reacted to its own political, environmental, and demographic circumstances across time. Local factors influencing who partook in Christian rituals and how, when, and where these rituals took place could include the structure of the Anglican Church, which tended to be less hierarchical and centralized than at home in England; the level of tensions between Anglicans and Protestants; the persistence of African religious beliefs; and colonists’ attitudes toward free persons of color and elite slaves.

This book enriches an existing historiography that neglects the cultural power of liturgical Christianity in the early South and the British Caribbean and offers a new account of the translation of early modern English Christianity to early America.

About the Author

NICHOLAS M. BEASLEY is rector of the Church of the Resurrection in Greenwood, South Carolina.