In eight chapters this study analyzes the religious experiences of blacks in Florida between 1565 and 1906. The first three chapters concentrate on the period from the founding of St. Augustine to the beginning of Radical Reconstruction. Because understanding the religious experiences of black Floridians during the nineteenth century requires a grasp of the nature of cultural change in the preceding century, Chapter 1 outlines the colonial moorings of the history of black Floridians. A denomination-by-denomination treatment of slave religion between 1822 and 1861, found in Chapter 2, reveals that the modal public worship setting for most Florida slaves, regardless of denomination, was racially mixed, white-controlled churches in which black members were generally relegated to special pews, galleries, and other spatial restrictions. Chapter 3 throws light on the murky Civil War years during which black religious assertion began to be felt. Once freedom came, the desires of black Christians for churches and pastors of their own, already visible throughout the slavery era, were made manifest. The subsequent four chapters discuss the central role of emergent independent black churches in the economic, political, and social development of Florida's black population during the first four decades after emancipation. One chapter each is devoted to the A.M.E. Church, other Methodists, and Baptists. The remaining denominations (such as Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Lutherans) are treated in a single chapter. Finally, Chapter 8 broadly interprets the role of religion in Afro-American cultural change, focusing on the centrality and persistence of possession-like ritual behavior and spanning over three hundred forty years. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, Section: A, page: 1836. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75338 |
| Creators | Hall, Robert La Bret |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 485 p. |
| Coverage | Florida |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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