More than thirty years ago, historians such as Albert Raboteau and Mechal Sobel argued that enslaved Africans embraced Christianity in part due to similarities between their traditional religious practices and Christian beliefs. According to this interpretation, the Africanization of Christianity helped slaves cope with the oftentimes brutal conditions of servitude by anchoring their faith in the promises of spiritual freedom and eternal heavenly rest. Furthermore, Afro-Christianity provided social identity and cultural cohesion for slaves throughout the antebellum South.
Daniel Fountain challenges this view and posits that most slaves did not embrace Christianity until after emancipation. Developing this “speculative argument” (1) from 381 slave narratives, he found that 38.8 percent of slaves in the sample converted prior to emancipation. Based on this data, Fountain suggests that most slaves were not Christians during the antebellum era. He concedes that a “Christian core” (39) comprised primarily of women, youth, and urban dwellers gave Christianity a noticeable presence within the slave community. However, he proposes that his statistical survey should cause historians to reevaluate the extent of Christianity's influence among slaves. After providing a detailed quantitative analysis of his sample in chapter 1, Fountain reviews factors that hindered slave conversions. The dearth of missionaries and churches in the Deep South, widespread prohibitions against gaining literacy and attending church, and the blatant hypocrisy of some religious whites all made Christianity less than accessible or appealing to many slaves. In chapter 3, Fountain presents evidence for the continuation of traditional West African religious beliefs and practices such as Islam, voodoo, and conjure. In his estimation, conjure functioned more as a unifying cultural force than Christianity (91). Emancipation, he argues in the final chapter, provided the greatest impetus for drawing former slaves to Christianity. Freedom resulted in increased literacy and independent African American churches that facilitated widespread conversions during and after the Civil War.
By casting doubt on the established historiography that considers Christianity as the primary worldview embraced by a large percentage of antebellum slaves, Fountain knowingly opens himself to criticism. He therefore carefully acknowledges the limitations of his study. His sample of 381 individuals represents less than 10 percent of approximately four thousand slave narratives, and this percentage becomes even more minuscule when considered as part of four million blacks held in bondage. This heavy reliance on slave narratives necessarily limits his willingness to make definitive conclusions. The very nature of these sources—reminiscences compiled seventy years after the end of slavery, interviews conducted mainly by whites with various cultural biases and preconceived notions about blacks, and a statistical sample far from representative of slave experiences—renders his claims debatable. Church records, in contrast to slave narratives, seem to offer a firmer foundation on which to measure slaves' adherence to Christianity. For instance, in his study on Georgia Baptists, Gregory Wills (Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997]) found that slaves accounted for 35–40 percent of Baptist church members in Georgia between 1840 and 1860 (67). According to C. C. Goen (Broken Churches, Broken Nation [Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985]), only one in seven Americans were church members in 1850 (55), so this higher percentage of black Georgia Baptist church members is remarkable. To his credit, Fountain expresses hope that his broad generalizations based on slave narratives will stimulate more precise analyses of slave religion at local levels, and that church records would facilitate such endeavors.
Furthermore, church records would help distinguish the difference between genuine converts versus the majority of antebellum Americans merely influenced by the cultural prevalence of Christianity. The exclusiveness of church membership, demonstrated in the requirement of a conversion testimony for applicants to membership, reflected an ecclesiastical authority at odds with many of the democratic and egalitarian values of antebellum America, hence the smaller percentage of church members compared to regular attendance figures that averaged three to four times higher than membership. Despite this disparity between church members and attenders, historians recognize the Christian ethos that permeated and shaped antebellum America. Similarly, whether giving greater weight to the 38.8 percent of black Christians tabulated by Fountain or the 35–40 percent of slave church members calculated by Wills, both figures seem to indicate the overall strength of Christianity among slaves, in spite of some masters who barred them from attending church and other barriers to evangelism described by missionaries such as Presbyterian Charles Colcock Jones. As Fountain notes, alternatives to Christianity undoubtedly existed and may have thrived in certain areas, and total disdain for religion certainly prevailed among some slaves as it did among some southern whites. Nevertheless, Christianity, even if only the cultural variety, remained the most noticeable and vibrant religious option in the antebellum South.
Concerns notwithstanding, this slim volume deserves to be read by historians interested in slavery and nineteenth-century religion. Readers will undoubtedly find varying degrees of satisfaction with Fountain's quantitative analysis and dependence on slave narratives. He hopes that whatever debate ensues will lead to a more thorough examination and deeper understanding of slave religion, and for this purpose Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation merits our close attention.
