A01=Erskine Clarke
African American religious experience
American history
American religious history
Antebellum South
Author_Erskine Clarke
Biblical interpretation in America
Biblical narratives and lived experience
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=QRM
Category=QRVS4
Christianity in the nineteenth century
Enslavement and theology
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Faith amid injustice
Faith and moral struggle
missionary work
Moral conflict and conscience
plantation pastor
Plantation religion
Religion and slavery
Religious studies
Reverand Charles Colcock
Scripture and social order
Slavery and culture
Southern Protestantism
Southern studies
Theology and ethics
White evangelical Christianity
Wrestling with faith
Product details
- ISBN 9780817310400
- Weight: 341g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 13 Dec 1999
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This classic work is an important introduction to the efforts of whites to evangelize African Americans in the antebellum South. First published in 1979, Wrestlin’ Jacob offers important insights into the intersection of black and white religious history in the South. Erskine Clarke provides two arenas—one urban and one rural—that show what happened when white ministers tried to bring black slaves into the fold of Christianity. Clarke illustrates how the good intentions—and vain illusions—of the white preachers, coupled with the degradation and cultural strength of the slaves, played a significant role in the development of black churches in the South. From 1833 to 1847, Reverend Charles Colcock Jones served as an itinerant minister to slaves on the rice and cotton plantations in Liberty County, Georgia. The aim of Jones, and of the largely Puritan-descended slave owners, was to harvest not only good Christians but also obedient and hard-working slaves. At the same time, similar efforts were under way in cosmopolitan Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston permitted blacks to worship only under the supervision of whites, and partially as a result, whites and blacks worshiped together in ways that would be unheard of later in the segregated South. Clarke examines not only the white ministers’ motivation in their missionary work but also the slaves’ reasons for becoming a part of the church. He addresses the important issue of the continuity of African traditions with the religious life of slaves and provides a significant introduction to the larger issues of slavery and religion in the South.
Erskine Clarke is Professor of U.S. Religious History at Columbia Theological Seminary. His books include Our Southern Zion: The History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Low Country, 1690-1990, also published by The University of Alabama Press.
