World View

1
World View

• The means by which the potential chaos of the
  world is ordered and evaluated.
• Francis Luckman notes that there is an inner core
  to every world view, a Sacred Cosmos, which is an
  evaluation of an a response to the mysterious or
  inexplicable. The symbols which represent the
  reality of the sacred cosmos perform, in a
  specific and concentrated way, the broad
  religious function of the world view as a whole.

2
West African Sacred Cosmos

• Belief in a transcendent, benevolent High God
  (Creator).
• Belief in a number of lesser, secondary gods.
• Ancestors.
• Spirits.
• Life Force (Ashe, Da, Nyam)
• No clear demarcation between sacred and secular.

3
Anthropocentric

• Man is at the center of the religious drama.
• Man has the power to manipulate and channel the
  various persons, beings and forces as well as be
  used by them.
• No clear demarcation between the sacred and
  secular world.
• Power is morally neutral.

4
Causality

• Nothing Bad happens by chance.
• Lesser gods can be benevolent or malevolent on
  the personal, communal, environmental, and cosmic
  level.
• Balance is the goal.
• Wrongness is that which is in opposition to
  traditional, communal, or the established order.
• There are no individuals all are linked to kin
  groups (past and present).

5
Priests

• Professionals who deal with the spirit world
  through carefully enacted rituals.
• Diviniation.
• Cleansing ceremonies.
• Sacrificial offerings.
• Identification of source of malevolent energy.

6
Cults

• Various gods and dieties have cults.
• Novitiates die during lengthy initiation period
  involving fasting and the persons removal from
  society.
• Learns a secret language and knowledge.
• Resurrected in a public ceremony.
• Initiates serve as mediums of the gods through
  spirit possession.

7
Spirit Possession

• Ritual creation of sacred space and time which
  enables a conjoining of the sacred and the
  secular realms in the body of the initiated.
• Often referred to as mounting or being ridden
  by the divinity.

8
Language Model for Development of Sacred Cosmos

• First generation world views coalesce creole
  speakers
• Second generation contradiction to European
  world view native born English speakers
• Third generation difficulty maintaining both
  world views little contact with Africans
  English receptive to creation of an
  Afro-Christian world view

9
Haiti

• 894,000 slaves imported into French colony.
• 480,000 at time of Revolution in 179.
• African Sacred Cosmos was reinvigorated with the
  continuous importation of slaves.

10
Voodou

• Animal Sacrifice to Ougou Feray, God of War and
  Iron

11
Voodou

• Imported from Haiti following Revolution
• Complete religious system of beliefs and
  practices.
• Syncretic with Catholicism.
• Found home in Catholic (French Spanish) New
  Orleans.
• Large Free Black urban rural population.
• Covert White toleration

12
Maria Laveau
13
Congo Square
This square located across Rampart Street on the
back side of the French Quarter was in use as a
gathering place for the residents of New Orleans
almost since the city began. It had been an area
outside of the fortified walls of the original
city where Native Americans and later slaves had
sold their wares in an open market by the Bayou
St. John, the major avenue for transportation of
goods into the city.
14
Elizabeth Catlett
15
Hoodoo/Conjure

• Dependent upon the practitioner
• Not an independent system of beliefs/practices
• European and African origins (mutually
  interactive)

16
Gris Gris Bag
17
Slave Burial
18
Whos the Thief?
Richard Bridgens, West India Scenery...from
sketches taken during a voyage to, and residence
of seven years in ... Trinidad (London, 1836),
plate 21.
19
Salem Witch Trial 1692
20
A quasi-African world view in America

• West African people did not have one Sacred
  CosmosHowever for the study of American blacks,
  one of the significant questions is to what
  extent blacks shared values and understandings
  prior to their forced removal from Africa. This
  brief overview of African world views suggests
  that there was the potential for the creation of
  a quasi-African world view in America.

21
Important Dates

• 1664, Durante vita drawn up by the lower house
  of Maryland. Act declared baptism would not
  alter the civil status of Christian slaves. By
  early 18th c six colonial legislatures pass
  similar acts
• 1693 Cotton Mather establishes the Society of
  Negroes in Boston (one of the first efforts to
  convert Africans in America.

22
1701, Cotton Mather The Negro Christianized

• Oh that our neighbors would consider the
  incomparable benefits that would follow upon your
  endevours to Christianize your Negroes, Oh the
  consolation that would belong to you. Your
  Negroes are immediately raised unto an
  astonishing felicity. They are become amiable
  spectacles such as Angles of God would repair to
  the windows to look down upon. Tho they remain
  your servants, yet are they become the children
  of God. Tho they enjoy no earthly goods, but
  the small allowance that your justice and bounty
  shall seem proper for them. Oh what you have
  done for them! Happy Masters! It will not be
  long before you and they come together in the
  heavenly city and you hear them forever blessing
  the gracious God for the day when he first made
  them our servants.

23
Phyllis Wheatley
24
Oloduah Equiano orGustav Vasa
Royal Albert Museum, Exeter, Devon, England
25
Oloudah Equiano
The Board of Trustees of the National Museums
Galleries on Merseyside, Merseyside Maritime
Museum
26
Lemuel Hayes
27
Anglicanism

• Religious System reinforced the social boundaries
  of planter, worker and slave
• No rebirth in Holy Spirit.
• Reduction of sacred ritual to symbolic acts.
• Emphasis upon education (literacy).
• Limited missionary work among slaves.
• Tenuous socio-economic status of priest.

28
St. James
29
Act for Encouraging the Importation of Negro and
Slaves,Maryland 1671

• The Truth is, there is a general indifference in
  churchmen, as well as in those of other
  sentiments, to make proselytes of their slaves
  the true cause whereof is want of zeal in
  Masters, and the untoward haughty behavior of
  those Negroes who have been admitted into the
  fellowship of Christs religion.

30
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts

• Founded by Thomas Bray, former Commissioner of
  Maryland, Bishop of London in 1701.
• Main arm of Anglican missionary work in North
  America.
• Attracted well-educated, successful men.
• Baptism, but little beyond allowed in most areas.
• Some important literacy work.

31
Thomas Bray
32
Competing World Views

• Two Solutions
• White magic more powerful than African, or
• Somehow able to diffuse African magic

33
John Wesleyhomo uni libris
34
Thoughts Upon Slavery, 1774

• Perhaps you will say, "I do not buy any Negroes
  I only use those left me by my father." So far is
  well but is it enough to satisfy your own
  conscience? Had your father, have you, has any
  man living, a right to use another as a slave? It
  cannot be, even setting Revelation aside. It
  cannot be, that either war, or contract, can give
  any man such a property in another as he has in
  his sheep and oxen. Much less is it possible,
  that any child of man should ever be born a
  slave. Liberty is the right of every human
  creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air
  and no human law can deprive him of that right
  which he derives from the law of nature.
•    If, therefore, you have any regard to justice,
  (to say nothing of mercy, nor the revealed law of
  God,) render unto all their due. Give liberty to
  whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of
  man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none
  serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own
  voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all
  chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men
  and see that you invariably do unto every one as
  you would he should do unto you.

35
T.U.L.I.P.

• Total Depravity of Man
• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement
• Irresistible Grace
• Perserverance of the Saints

36
First Great Awakening

• Reintroduces the penetrating power of the Holy in
  the Protestant tradition.
• Augustinian piety
• Methodists and Arminian or General Baptists
• Reject infant baptism and open communion.
• Adult regeneration.

37
Jonathan Edwards
38
Northhampton Revival, 1743

• Ever since the great work of God that was wrought
  here about nine years ago, there has been a great
  and abiding alteration in this town in many
  respects. There has been vastly more religion
  kept up in the town, among all sorts of persons,
  in religious exercises, and in common
  conversation there has been a great alteration
  among the youth of the town, with respect to
  revelry, frolicking, profane and licentious
  conversation, and lewd songs and there has also
  been a great alteration, amongst both old and
  young, with regard to tavern-haunting. I suppose
  the town has been in no measure so free of vice
  in these respects, for any long time together,
  for sixty years, as it has been these nine years
  past. There has also been an evident alteration
  with respect to a charitable spirit to the poor
  though I think with regard to this, we in this
  town as well as the land in general, come far
  short of gospel rules. ...

39
Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God

• The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much
  as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect
  over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully
  provoked his wrath towards you burns like fire
  he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but
  to be cast into the fire he is of purer eyes
  than to bear to have you in his sight you are
  ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes,
  than the most hateful venomous serpent is in
  ours. You have offended him infinitely more than
  ever a stubborn rebel did his prince and yet it
  is nothing but his hand that holds you from
  falling into the fire every moment. It is to be
  ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to
  hell the last night that you was suffered to
  awake again in this world, after you closed your
  eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be
  given, why you have not dropped into hell since
  you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has
  held you up. There is no other reason to be given
  why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat
  here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes
  by your sinful wicked manner of attending his
  solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that
  is to be given as a reason why you do not this
  very moment drop down into hell.

40
George Whitfield
41
Outdoor Ministry

• Outdoor stand

42
The New Birth

• For three days Saul took no food, and it pleased
  God to leave him for that time without relief.
  His sins were now set in order before him he was
  in the dark concerning his own spiritual state,
  and wounded in spirit for sin. When a sinner is
  brought to a proper sense of his own state and
  conduct, he will cast himself wholly on the mercy
  of the Saviour, asking what he would have him to
  do. God will direct the humbled sinner, and
  though he does not often bring transgressors to
  joy and peace in believing, without sorrows and
  distress of conscience, under which the soul is
  deeply engaged as to eternal things, yet happy
  are those who sow in tears, for they shall reap
  in joy. Acts 91-9

43
Baptismal Font
44
River Baptism
45
Silver BluffAiken, SC
Carter Godwin Woodson, 1875-1950 The History of
the Negro Church. Washington, D. C. The
Associated Publishers, c1921. DIRECTING THE
WANDERER IN THE RIGHT WAY. THE FIRST COLORED
BAPTIST CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA. (Page 23)
46
Andrew Bryan
Savannah, Ga. The Morning News Print, 1888.
47
Sectarians Challenge

• Radical rethinking of social order
• Faith redefines in/out group
• Race/gender/class no longer key operatives
• Heart over Head
• Christian community major social arbiter
• Challenges legitimacy of slavery.

48
The Frenzy
Charles Stearns, The Black Man of the South (New
York, 1872), facing p. 371
49
Ring Shout
50
Plantation Funeral
51
Moses as Conjure Man
52
Jesus Casting Out Satan
53
Francis Asbury
54
The Conversion of John Marrant
55
Richard Allen
Carter Godwin Woodson, 1875-1950 The History of
the Negro Church. Washington, D. C. The
Associated Publishers, c1921.
56
The Circuit Rider
57
Catechism
58
The Methodist Itinerant System
59
Church Meeting
London Illustrated News, April 30, 1853, p. 276