This coming October 19-21, 2023 a consortium of research institutions will jointly sponsor an international conference in Washington, D.C. on the afterlives of slavery entitled "The Troubles I’ve Seen: Religious Dimensions of Slavery & Its Afterlives." The sponsoring institutions include Princeton Theological Seminary, Howard University School of Divinity, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the University of Liberia. More information on participation and attendance will be forthcoming shortly on the conference website.
Among the papers presented will be findings from the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review, to be included in a paper entitled "Lex orandi lex servitutis: Slavery as Valorized in the Language of the Book of Common Prayer" to be given by Jolyon Pruszinski, the Diocese of New Jersey Reparations Commission Research Historian. Here is the paper abstract:
"Christianity has a long history of valorizing languages of domination (e.g. “Lord,” “servant,” “slave,” “obedience,” “submission”), based partly on New Testament authors’ deployment of such language (particularly Pauline, and deutero-Pauline literature). However, in various Church settings this “slavish” language has been amplified well beyond its degree of usage in the New Testament. The American Book of Common Prayer (BCP), the primary liturgical guide for the worship of the Episcopal Church (TEC), is the product of such a setting, and exhibits dramatically more frequent usage of such language than does the New Testament. In the seventeenth century, the leadership of the Anglican Church came to view the practice of chattel slavery as salutary for the pecuniary benefit of the Church, Crown, and their faithful subjects. The Anglican Church both avidly contributed to the establishment of slavery in the American colonies, and sought to create a regime of obedience to the proper authorities, within which a valorized language of domination was particularly useful. The American BCP developed in a White context in TEC in which slavery was generally viewed as good, and dominating human relationships were viewed as appropriate. Through its continued use, the BCP reproduces such settings of domination, perhaps most troublingly, through the usage of Diaconate ordination vows which, in many circumstances, have required Black postulants to pledge servility to White bishops. The paper considers the contextual relevance of slavery for the development of the BCP and the afterlife of slavery perpetuated through its valorized language of domination."
