Embracing Protestantism

In Embracing Protestantism, John W. Catron demonstrates how people of color participated in and contributed to the spread of Protestantism within the British Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. He argues that Protestants of African descent “became agents of cultural exchange and in the process created a new circum-Atlantic Afro-Christian culture” (4). He emphasizes the importance of the continued movement of Afro-Protestants throughout the Atlantic world. Focusing primarily on Afro-Moravians, Catron traces missionary activities in Africa, the Caribbean, and North America to reveal previously overlooked elements of African Atlantic religion and offer fresh perspectives on well-known historical figures, such as Denmark Vesey, and events like the American Revolution. Through his focus on Afro-Protestants, Catron seeks to revise historian Ira Berlin’s concept of Atlantic creoles. Instead of trying to assimilate into white culture, Catron shows how “blacks were not simply accommodating white culture and the social realities of a brutal system of coerced labor.” He examines specific Atlantic port cities to reveal how people of color attempted “what became resistance within accommodation” by forming and reaching out to international religious communities “for help in their continuing struggle for freedom” (5). Therefore, instead of Atlantic creoles, Catron refers to the people of color in his book as Atlantic Africans.

African descent · Ancient history · Atlantic slave trade · Atlantic World · Ethnology · Protestantism · White (mutation) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies