"This book is a compelling study of Episcopalian Christianity in early American slave societies. Beasley displays a deep understanding of the ways that Christian ritual practice shaped English belonging in early Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, showing how religion permeated even the most brutally materialistic of human societies."
—Vincent Brown, author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

Description

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…

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