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E-book
Author Kopelson, Heather Miyano, author.

Title Faithful bodies : performing religion and race in the Puritan Atlantic / Heather Miyano Kopelson
Published New York : New York University Press, [2014]

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 371 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series Early American places
Early American places.
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
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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Puritans -- America -- History -- 17th century
Protestantism -- Social aspects -- America -- History
Ethnicity -- America -- Religious aspects -- History -- 17th century
RELIGION -- Christian Life -- General.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations.
HISTORY -- United States -- Colonial Period (1600-1775)
British colonies
Ethnicity -- Religious aspects
Puritans
Race relations -- Religious aspects
SUBJECT Massachusetts -- Race relations -- Religious aspects -- History -- 17th century
Rhode Island -- Race relations -- Religious aspects -- History -- 17th century
Bermuda Islands -- Race relations -- Religious aspects -- History -- 17th century
Great Britain -- Colonies -- America -- History -- 17th century
Massachusetts -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85081924
Rhode Island -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85113725
Bermuda Islands -- History -- 17th century
Subject America
Bermuda Islands
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781479814268
1479814261