Topic 5: Atlantic Faiths

Religious Freedom in the Atlantic World

            Religious freedom in the Atlantic world picked and choosed. Freemen of Europe were allowed to come and practice their faith, escaping persecution and intolerance in their old countries. Others less fortunate were in some cases forced to mask their real beliefs and practice, for the sake of meeting the standard, what they were told to believe and how to practice it.

 Commonalities between Islam and Christianity helped hide the fact that many Islamic Africans held onto their own beliefs without raising the suspicion of their keepers. Many of the Islamic Africans were well educated and respected men in their homelands, Sultana Afroz claims in her article “The Jihad of 1831-1832: The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamacia”, that 56.8 percent of the slave arrivals to Jamaica were from Muslim areas and that a large percentage of these Muslims came from the intellectual elite. (Afroz.) The Muslims were able to build networks throughout and because of these learned men, could, behind closed doors, meet and practice their own faith as well as plot jihad.

            Jews also networked and quietly distributed themselves throughout port cities in Portugal, Brazil, and the Netherlands. They worked themselves into positions of influence and were able to gain acceptance, even when private Christian citizens of the Dutch Reformed Church in Brazil attempted to have the Jews privilege of retail trade revoked. The Estates General denied it and found that the economic and military contributions of the Jews were vital. (Klooster)

            Thorton suggests a “blending of African and Christian elements” (Thorton) in creating an African Christianity. He accredits this blending and transition to earlier conversions in a great deal of Africa making it easy to comprehend, even if they had not yet been converted they most likely would have been exposed to it. Thoton also gives credit to Catholicism in these early conversions as the Protestants had little to do with the development of Christianity in Africa. (Thorton) The pairing of African gods with Christian saints made the church tolerant to the differences between the two.

            Forces and people worked both for and against religious freedom in the Atlantic world. Mixing, masking, and blending were the techniques used to retain their beliefs. The commonality shared between beliefs enabled enslaved Africans to somewhat survive as their own individuals under these circumstances.

References

1.      Sultana Afroz, “The Jihad of 1831-1832: The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica,” Journal of Muslim Minority affairs, vol. 21, no. 2, 2001, p. 228

2.      Wim Klooster, “ Communities of Port Jews and Their Contacts in the Dutch Atlantic World,” Jewish History (2006) pp.136-137

3.      John K. Thorton, “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas,” The Americas, Vol.44. No. 3, ( Jan., 1988) p. 267