Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans
Raboteau, Albert J. Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999. Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans explains the history and significance of religion to the African American hardships leading up to freedom, while magnifying the role religion plays in the lives of black people. As African Americans, religion is often overlooked in African American courses. Canaan Land, authored by Albert J. Raboteau and published by Oxford University Press, Inc., is intended to repair the negligence. Written as a textbook, Canaan Land aided further knowledge and research by the insertions of additional readings in the …show more content…
“Unit One: Foundations” explained some of the religious practices such as voduum as a spiritual way to get in touch with Gods. This book discussed the origins of African religion from voduum to voodoo and conjure, which all use spells, charms and forms now known as witchcraft. “Unit Three: Competition and Control” discussed the Atlantic Slave Trade which is the root of the African migration to the “New World” i.e. the Americas. If the middle passage and the need of slave labor did not exist, Africans would have never made it to the Atlantic as indentured servants or even slaves. This system entirely developed as mentioned previously, the plantation complex of blackness equaling inferiority. The plantation owners did not classify blacks as people hence why there were extremes to why baptism could not mean freedom, or to why in churches, black people still sat at the back and topics of freedom of slaves had to be presented as achievable only in the afterlife. A reading from unit three specifically, William Byrd’s Diary, represented these ideals. In Byrd’s journal, he would read his bible and say his nightly prayers, asking God for forgiveness, however forced a slave to drink a pint of
Raboteau, Albert J. Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999. Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans explains the history and significance of religion to the African American hardships leading up to freedom, while magnifying the role religion plays in the lives of black people. As African Americans, religion is often overlooked in African American courses. Canaan Land, authored by Albert J. Raboteau and published by Oxford University Press, Inc., is intended to repair the negligence. Written as a textbook, Canaan Land aided further knowledge and research by the insertions of additional readings in the …show more content…
“Unit One: Foundations” explained some of the religious practices such as voduum as a spiritual way to get in touch with Gods. This book discussed the origins of African religion from voduum to voodoo and conjure, which all use spells, charms and forms now known as witchcraft. “Unit Three: Competition and Control” discussed the Atlantic Slave Trade which is the root of the African migration to the “New World” i.e. the Americas. If the middle passage and the need of slave labor did not exist, Africans would have never made it to the Atlantic as indentured servants or even slaves. This system entirely developed as mentioned previously, the plantation complex of blackness equaling inferiority. The plantation owners did not classify blacks as people hence why there were extremes to why baptism could not mean freedom, or to why in churches, black people still sat at the back and topics of freedom of slaves had to be presented as achievable only in the afterlife. A reading from unit three specifically, William Byrd’s Diary, represented these ideals. In Byrd’s journal, he would read his bible and say his nightly prayers, asking God for forgiveness, however forced a slave to drink a pint of