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ORCID
N/A
Access Type
Open Access Thesis
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
History
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2017
Month Degree Awarded
May
Abstract
Eighteenth-century Methodist evangelism supported, perpetuated, and promoted slavery as requisite for a productive economy in the colonial American South. Religious thought of the First Great Awakening emerged alongside a colonial economy increasingly reliant on chattel slavery for its prosperity. The records of well-traveled celebrity minister and provocateur of the Anglican tradition, George Whitefield, suggest how Calvinist-Methodist evangelicals viewed slavery as necessary to supporting colonial ministerial efforts. Whitefield’s absorption of and immersion into American culture is revealed in his owning a plantation, portraying a willingness to sacrifice the mobility of the disfranchised for widespread consumption of evangelical thought. A side effect of this was free and formerly enslaved individuals of African descent gained direct access to itinerancy in the post-Revolutionary Atlantic world, as evidenced by the multi-racial ministerial network of Whitefield’s proslavery benefactor, Selina Hastings. Paradoxically, southern evangelicalism appealed to the disfranchised while perpetuating slavery as a socially normative, religiously-sanctioned institution.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/10008715
First Advisor
Robert Cox
Second Advisor
Jennifer Heuer
Third Advisor
John Higginson
Recommended Citation
Carroll, Julia, "The Economy of Evangelism in the Colonial American South" (2017). Masters Theses. 497.
https://doi.org/10.7275/10008715
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/497
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Economic History Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, History of Christianity Commons, History of Religion Commons, Missions and World Christianity Commons, New Religious Movements Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Regional Economics Commons, United States History Commons