Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith. Abridged Paperback

by Mechal Sobel

Overview

Mechal Sobel's fascinating study of the religious history of slaves and free blacks in antebellum America is presented here in a compact volume without the appendixes. Sobel's central thesis is that Africans brought their world views into North America where, eventually, under the tremendous pressures and hardships of chattel slavery, they created a coherent faith that preserved and revitalized crucial African understandings and usages regarding spirit and soul-travels, while melding them with Christian understandings of Jesus and individual salvation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691006031
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/21/1988
Series:	Andrew E. Murray, Journal of American History Series
Edition description:	REPRINT, ABRIDGED
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

What People are Saying About This

Eugene Genovese

Mechal Sobel illuminates the form and content of the religious experience of the largest group of Christian slaves. She especially argues, and is largely convincing, for the centrality of the spiritual experience generally ignored by historians. The focus on the inner aspect of religious experience is fresh and powerful.
— Eugene Genovese, University of Rochester

From the Publisher

"Mechal Sobel illuminates the form and content of the religious experience of the largest group of Christian slaves. She especially argues, and is largely convincing, for the centrality of the spiritual experience generally ignored by historians. The focus on the inner aspect of religious experience is fresh and powerful."—Eugene Genovese, University of Rochester

Editorial Reviews

"Sobel has used a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and history of religion, and has orchestrated them well to support her thesis. She has made good use of the extensive materials on black history now available, which present the views of blacks themselves on their own experience. Above all, Sobel takes seriously the religion of black people, and shows its creative power to construct a sacred cosmos. The book will not close the debate over continuity or discontinuity in the American black experience from Africa to America, but it will have to be taken seriously by all the debaters."—-Andrew E. Murray, Journal of American History

From the Publisher

Sobel has used a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and history of religion, and has orchestrated them well to support her thesis. She has made good use of the extensive materials on black history now available, which present the views of blacks themselves on their own experience. Above all, Sobel takes seriously the religion of black people, and shows its creative power to construct a sacred cosmos. The book will not close the debate over continuity or discontinuity in the American black experience from Africa to America, but it will have to be taken seriously by all the debaters.

Journal of American History - Andrew E. Murray

Sobel has used a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and history of religion, and has orchestrated them well to support her thesis. She has made good use of the extensive materials on black history now available, which present the views of blacks themselves on their own experience. Above all, Sobel takes seriously the religion of black people, and shows its creative power to construct a sacred cosmos. The book will not close the debate over continuity or discontinuity in the American black experience from Africa to America, but it will have to be taken seriously by all the debaters.
— Andrew E. Murray

Journal of American History