![]() Exploring a range of religious traditions including Candomblé and Yoruba, Raboteau presented in a clear and concise manner the epistemic resources Blacks retrieved and developed to comprehend and respond to the white supremacist worldview that attempted to destroy their humanity. Raboteau, along with historians such as Sterling Stuckey and John Blassingame, played a substantial role both in explaining and legitimating the unique ways African slaves and their descendants imagined the sacred, interpreted Christianity, and invented Afro-Christianity within the bloody and brutal context of slavery in the Americas. ![]() Raboteau’s meticulous account of transatlantic Black religions, the religious history of Africans, and the (often ignored) religious philosophy of African Americans introduced to the academy and lay readers alike the languages, traditions, narratives, practices, and rituals of a despised people many Westerners assumed were ignorant and devoid of reason, history, tradition, and morality. ![]() With the 1978 publication of Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” In the Antebellum South, seminaries and divinity schools that had long ignored Black religion as a legitimate epistemic resource in American religion were now compelled to rethink their positions. Raboteau breathed new life into the academic study of religion with his magisterial account of the transformation of African indigenous religions during and after the Middle Passage. ![]()
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