Come Shouting to Zion

304 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 4 maps, notes, bibl., index

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4681-0
Published: March 1998
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-6158-5
Published: November 2000
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6941-8
Published: November 2000

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The conversion of African-born slaves and their descendants to Protestant Christianity marked one of the most important social and intellectual transformations in American history. Come Shouting to Zion is the first comprehensive exploration of the processes by which this remarkable transition occurred. Using an extraordinary array of archival sources, Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood chart the course of religious conversion from the transference of traditional African religions to the New World through the growth of Protestant Christianity in the American South and British Caribbean up to 1830.

Come Shouting to Zion depicts religious transformation as a complex reciprocal movement involving black and white Christians. It highlights the role of African American preachers in the conversion process and demonstrates the extent to which African American women were responsible for developing distinctive ritual patterns of worship and divergent moral values within the black spiritual community. Finally, the book sheds light on the ways in which, by serving as a channel for the assimilation of Western culture into the slave quarters, Protestant Christianity helped transform Africans into African Americans.

About the Authors

Sylvia R. Frey is professor of history at Tulane University.
For more information about Sylvia R. Frey, visit the Author Page.

Betty Wood is lecturer in history at Girton College, Cambridge University.
For more information about Betty Wood, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"The best and most fully informed survey of the rise of black religion in the American south and the West Indies."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"The richness of the source material on which Frey and Wood draw makes this a particularly enjoyable book to read."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Imaginatively conceived and exhaustively researched, Come Shouting to Zion is an important new contribution to African American religious history."--Journal of American History

"A remarkable achievement. Through their clearly written, yet marvelously nuanced argument, Frey and Wood convey the dialectical process by which slave societies gave birth to a new religion."--Georgia Historical Quarterly

"In this engrossing, well-researched book, [the authors] offer a sweeping overview of African American religion in the South and the Caribbean in the years before 1830. . . . Future scholars . . . will appreciate their clarity, their breadth of vision, and their passionate commitment to presenting the enslaved as historical actors in their own right."--Journal of Southern History

"A well-researched and valuable book. . . . [that] should help to change the scholarly conversation about early African-American religion."--William & Mary Quarterly