Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
37 - Religion and Race
from SECTION VI - THEMATIC ESSAYS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
Summary
There are no “red,” “white,” or “black” people as such. The specific ways in which we understand these terms have some roots in antiquity, but as full-blown categories they are relatively recent inventions. Once the categories emerged, however, they took on lives of their own, so much so that “race” became deeply inscribed in Western thought, permeating its religious beliefs, fables, and mythologies. Historically, Christianity in England, Europe, and America mythically grounded, and later frequently regrounded and revised, modern notions of race. This essay explores the lengthy history of how religion helped to create and later to deconstruct race through the colonial, antebellum, post–Civil War, and civil rights eras. In addition, the essay suggests how groups who were seen as ethnic rather than racial groupings – especially Jews – or who came late to the history of American religio-racial history – namely, Asians and Asian Americans – encountered ideas and practices of race that were foreign to their own histories. Some of these groups were thought of in racial categories because of their presumed religions, namely, Asians; others, namely Jews, usually were not. Finally, the essay examines how a more contemporary project of pluralism claims to efface this historic confluence of religion and race, even as race still fundamentally informs how religious groupings conceptualize and organize themselves.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Religions in America , pp. 781 - 803Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000