The black church

This being prompted by a review in the NYRB of the book at reference 1. A sharing of a few snippets.

First, despite the contrary convention in British Common Law, the colonists in what subsequently became the US passed laws which denied freedom to slaves baptised into Christianity. So it became OK to be both Christian and servile. A practise which had largely lapsed in Europe, serfs in eastern Europe and Russia aside.

Second, there is a claim that a significant proportion of the slaves arriving in the Americas, say somewhere between 5% and 20% were Muslims. Not adherents of the various aboriginal faiths at all. A lot of these came from a place called Senegambia, between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, at the junction between the dry Africa to the north and the equatorial Africa to the south. Is there any trace of all these Muslim slaves left now, modern conversions aside?

Third, I was struck how the black church in the US became a focus & hope for oppressed people, just as the Catholic branch had been in Ireland and Poland. I might be a fully paid up atheist, but the church can still be a force for good - even if it has lurched to the right in Poland - even if the Catholic branch remains as silly about its celibate priesthood as we remain about our recreational drugs. Not to mention the fact that the early Christian church was, in many ways, a good deal more civilised than the Roman empire set over it. 

Reference 2 confirms that there were indeed Muslims in the relevant part of the world in the nineteenth century, so presumably there were at the time of the slave trade before that - although I did not find out how many. With the Muslims having pushed down by land, from the north, presumably well before we Europeans arrived by sea.

Reference 1: The black church: This is our story, this is our song - Henry Louis Gates Jr. - 2021.

Reference 2: Les peuplades de la Sénégambie: Histoire, Ethnogaphie, Moeurs et Coutumes, Legendes, etc - L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud - 1879. To be found at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6529489w/.