If you belong to a colonial or antebellum-era Episcopal church in the Diocese of New Jersey and want to begin to investigate your church’s ties to slavery and racism, we want to help. There is so much work to be done to uncover and document this under-acknowledged history and the prospect of beginning the work can feel daunting. Where does one start? What should be considered? Here are a few thoughts and resources to get you started.
PART 1: Limitations
It will help to begin by admitting that you are not going to find everything out. There is a lot that happened for which there is no documentary evidence. And even if there once was documentary evidence, a great deal of it has been lost or destroyed, and much that remains has yet to be catalogued (and as a result is very hard to find, or to even know that it exists). Research programs of this kind must admit their own limitations. Any researcher attempting to paint a picture of the past will paint, at best, a partial picture of what happened. That picture may be (and hopefully will be) representative, but it will not be exhaustive. The limitations of the research endeavor are important to acknowledge, and even as the limitations of the process may be disappointing to a beginning researcher, it is nevertheless important to discover and document what can be found. To discover what can be known about what happened regarding slavery and racism, even with the limitations on what can be known, is necessary for the process of repentance and repair.
It is also important to understand the limits of your research for knowing how to speak responsibly about your work. Sweeping generalizations have a way of being inaccurate, while carefully caveated and contextualized reporting is inherently more defensible, and therefore, valuable. You are only making a beginning, but a responsible beginning is far better than, on the one hand, inaccurately claiming to give the final word, or, on the other, giving up entirely because you will not be able to give the final word.
Moreover, it is critical to understand the limitations of your context. The vast majority of churches in the Diocese of New Jersey are, and have been, overwhelmingly White. If this is your context you must understand that this is a limited context from which to research. Looking through your parish records, or looking into the actions of historic parish leaders will only get you so far.
One of the key dynamics at play in this New Jersey church history of slavery and racism is that White people have often produced institutions, communities, and spaces that have alienated Black people. That means that in the records of Episcopal churches in New Jersey there is often little overt mention of Black people, or the treatment of Black people. That doesn’t mean that there were no Black people, or that nothing can be known of Black people, or that Black people were treated well. It simply means that Episcopal church sources, generally, are under-reporting the Black experience. Thus, as a source for the information on how Black people were treated, Episcopal church records, while a necessary element of the research program, are very limited. White churches are institutions generationally shaped by White ideas, assumptions, biases, and decisions. In order to work to overcome these structural limitations as much as possible, White researchers from White churches will need to look beyond their own experience and institutions. They will need to look for sources and stories from their broader local community, surrounding communities and their larger region, non-Episcopal churches, and secular historical sources. They will need to work to overcome the separation of their church community from the records they need. This separation is the result of generations of unjust actions that have alienated their church communities from the people they have hurt. Much of this story is housed outside the church, and if one is to uncover and attempt to tell this story, and to admit the church’s role in that hurt, a great deal of humility is required. It is not only your story. It is not even primarily your story. Tread lightly. Be sensitive. Be willing to learn. Be willing to apologize. Know that your own biases limit your understanding and caveat the products of your research accordingly.
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| Christ Church, Shrewsbury, a historic congregation in the Diocese of New Jersey that has conducted significant research on its ties to slavery (Dpsherman, Christ Church (Episcopal), CC BY-SA 4.0). |
PART 1: Limitations
It will help to begin by admitting that you are not going to find everything out. There is a lot that happened for which there is no documentary evidence. And even if there once was documentary evidence, a great deal of it has been lost or destroyed, and much that remains has yet to be catalogued (and as a result is very hard to find, or to even know that it exists). Research programs of this kind must admit their own limitations. Any researcher attempting to paint a picture of the past will paint, at best, a partial picture of what happened. That picture may be (and hopefully will be) representative, but it will not be exhaustive. The limitations of the research endeavor are important to acknowledge, and even as the limitations of the process may be disappointing to a beginning researcher, it is nevertheless important to discover and document what can be found. To discover what can be known about what happened regarding slavery and racism, even with the limitations on what can be known, is necessary for the process of repentance and repair.
It is also important to understand the limits of your research for knowing how to speak responsibly about your work. Sweeping generalizations have a way of being inaccurate, while carefully caveated and contextualized reporting is inherently more defensible, and therefore, valuable. You are only making a beginning, but a responsible beginning is far better than, on the one hand, inaccurately claiming to give the final word, or, on the other, giving up entirely because you will not be able to give the final word.
Moreover, it is critical to understand the limitations of your context. The vast majority of churches in the Diocese of New Jersey are, and have been, overwhelmingly White. If this is your context you must understand that this is a limited context from which to research. Looking through your parish records, or looking into the actions of historic parish leaders will only get you so far.
One of the key dynamics at play in this New Jersey church history of slavery and racism is that White people have often produced institutions, communities, and spaces that have alienated Black people. That means that in the records of Episcopal churches in New Jersey there is often little overt mention of Black people, or the treatment of Black people. That doesn’t mean that there were no Black people, or that nothing can be known of Black people, or that Black people were treated well. It simply means that Episcopal church sources, generally, are under-reporting the Black experience. Thus, as a source for the information on how Black people were treated, Episcopal church records, while a necessary element of the research program, are very limited. White churches are institutions generationally shaped by White ideas, assumptions, biases, and decisions. In order to work to overcome these structural limitations as much as possible, White researchers from White churches will need to look beyond their own experience and institutions. They will need to look for sources and stories from their broader local community, surrounding communities and their larger region, non-Episcopal churches, and secular historical sources. They will need to work to overcome the separation of their church community from the records they need. This separation is the result of generations of unjust actions that have alienated their church communities from the people they have hurt. Much of this story is housed outside the church, and if one is to uncover and attempt to tell this story, and to admit the church’s role in that hurt, a great deal of humility is required. It is not only your story. It is not even primarily your story. Tread lightly. Be sensitive. Be willing to learn. Be willing to apologize. Know that your own biases limit your understanding and caveat the products of your research accordingly.
(Continued in Part 2: Getting Oriented)
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
