Faithful bodies : performing religion and race in the Puritan Atlantic / Heather Miyano Kopelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kopelson, Heather Miyano, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Series:

Early American places

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History.

Ethnicity.

Protestantism.

Social aspects.

Puritans.

Race relations.

Massachusetts--Race relations--Religious aspects--History--17th century.

Massachusetts.

Rhode Island--Race relations--Religious aspects--History--17th century.

Rhode Island.

Bermuda Islands--Race relations--Religious aspects--History--17th century.

Bermuda Islands.

Great Britain--Colonies--America--History--17th century.

Great Britain.

Colonies.

America.

Puritans--America--History--17th century.

Protestantism--Social aspects--America--History.

Ethnicity--America--Religious aspects--History--17th century.

Massachusetts--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Rhode Island--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Bermuda Islands--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

xiii, 371 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2014]

Summary:

"In the seventeenth-century English Atlantic, religious beliefs and practices played a central role in creating racial identity. English Protestantism provided a vocabulary and structure to describe and maintain boundaries between insider and outsider. In this path-breaking study, Heather Miyano Kopelson peels back the layers of conflicting definitions of bodies and competing practices of faith in the Puritan Atlantic, demonstrating how the categories of 'white,' 'black,' and 'Indian' developed alongside religious boundaries between 'Christian' and 'heathen' and between 'Catholic' and 'Protestant.' Faithful Bodies focuses on three communities of Protestant dissent in the Atlantic World: Bermuda, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In this 'Puritan Atlantic,' religion determined insider and outsider status: at times Africans and Natives could belong as long as they embraced the Protestant faith, while Irish Catholics and English Quakers remained suspect. Colonists' interactions with indigenous peoples of the Americas and with West Central Africans shaped their understandings of human difference and its acceptable boundaries. Prayer, religious instruction, sexual behavior, and other public and private acts became markers of whether or not Blacks and Indians were sinning Christians or godless heathens. As slavery became law, transgressing people of color counted less and less as sinners in English Puritans' eyes, even as some of them made Christianity an integral part of their communities. As Kopelson shows, this transformation proceeded unevenly but inexorably during the long seventeenth century"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part I. Defining

"One Indian and a Negroe, the first thes Islands ever had"

"Joyne interchangeably in a laborious bodily service"

"Ye are of one Body and members one of another"

Part II. Performing

"Extravasat Blood"

"Makinge a tumult in the congregation"

"Those bloody people who did use most horrible crueltie"

"To bee among the praying Indians"

"In consideration for his raising her in the Christian faith"

Part III. Disciplining

"Abominable mixture and spurious issue"

"Sensured to be whipped uppon a Lecture daie"

"If any white woman shall have a child by any Negroe or other slave"

Epilogue.

Notes:

"Also available as an ebook"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781479805006

1479805009

OCLC:

863200711

Online:

Cover image