Religion

Throughout the Atlantic slave world, slaveholders often promoted Christianity among enslaved Africans believing religion would encourage obedience, humility, and submission. Plantation owners funded chapels, welcomed missionaries, and encouraged Bible teaching partly because they believed Christian instruction would make enslaved...

In 1990, the Catholic Church declared Marie-Marguerite d’Youville a saint. Canonized by Pope John Paul II, she became the first Canadian born person to receive that honor, and today her name appears on churches, schools, charities, and universities across...

In early 1861, as the United States moved toward civil war, a respected rabbi in New York shocked many Americans when he opened the Bible and argued that slavery was allowed by God. In a sermon that quickly spread...

When slavery ended in the United States in 1865, nearly four million formerly enslaved Africans faced the enormous task of building new lives in a society that had long denied them freedom, education, and economic opportunity. Freedom did not...

During the era of slavery in the Americas, many slaveholders encouraged enslaved Africans to adopt Christianity. Missionaries and pastors often preached to enslaved communities because slaveholders believed religion would make them more obedient. However, while enslaved Africans were encouraged...

When historians trace the roots of the transatlantic slave economy, they almost always point to European states, colonial planters, and mercantile networks. What is not widely acknowledged, and yet just as true, is that a major Christian institution played...

Born on September 12, 1887, in Nkamba, near Thysville, Congo, Simon Kimbangu was a Congolese religious leader who founded the Kimbanguist Church and preached a form of Christianity independent of European missionaries. His African-led ministry directly challenged colonial control...

The church was built directly above the women’s dungeon. While enslaved Africans suffered in the darkness below, European traders, soldiers, and clergy conducted worship services, read scriptures, and sang hymns in the chapel above, indifferent, to the horrors beneath. Elmina...

In the early 19th century, Richard Furman was one of the most influential Baptist leaders in the American South. Revered for his intellect and preaching, Furman left behind a legacy that is now deeply controversial: he defended slavery not...

For the millions of Africans brought to the Americas in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, the Bible occupied a paradoxical place. In the hands of enslavers, it became a tool of control, a weapon wielded to justify cruelty...