NEWS: Second Public Session of the History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee, 12/4/23 at 6:30pm

The History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council, convened by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ), will hold its second remote public meeting on Monday December 4, 2023 at 6:30pm, Eastern time. The Committee will share further details about its work and receive input from stakeholders and community members. This will be the second of nine planned sessions. The first was excellent and the second promises to be as well.

To watch only: Visit youtube.com/@dosocialjustice

 

To comment live during the event: Register at bit.ly/NJRCSession2 (link is case sensitive; copy and paste link into your browser). Commentary is limited to three minutes and should be related to the History of Slavery in New Jersey.

 

To submit longer commentary: You may write, submit audio or video, or another form of commentary to be considered by Committee members at bit.ly/NJRCPublicComment (link is case sensitive; copy and paste link into your browser).

 

If you are not able to attend live, a recording will be made available after the event on the NJISJ youtube channel: youtube.com/@dosocialjustice

REVIEW: The Anglican Church in New Jersey, by Nelson R. Burr (1954).

The Anglican Church in New Jersey. By Nelson R. Burr. Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, 1954. pp. xvi-768. $10.00 (out of print).[1]

Nelson R. Burr, the celebrated church historian,[2] has written a history of the development of The Anglican Church in New Jersey. Burr’s text is the best known and most widely distributed book dealing with its subject, and while it does faithfully represent many aspects of the colonial correspondence of Anglican priests stationed in New Jersey, in general it does so uncritically. The effect of this authorial approach is that Burr has produced a credulous, often hagiographic, and frequently racist history that privileges the perspective of the privileged at the expense of marginalized peoples. It is a verbose testament to the power of survivor bias in the telling of church history and, while standing on the shelves of Episcopal church libraries throughout the state of New Jersey, it also stands as a warning to modern historiographers.

            Burr’s text does not purport to cover exhaustively the entire history of the Anglican (and later Episcopal) Church in New Jersey, but focuses most closely on the colonial era, prior to the formation of the Episcopal Church (hence the title).[3] In choosing this focus Burr relies overwhelmingly on a particular corpus of documentary evidence, that is, on the records of correspondence between New Jersey priests and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.), a voluntary Anglican association founded in 1701 to send priests to the colonies and, by extension, expand the reach and influence of the Church. Copies of this corpus are housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. and in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, while digital scans of the bulk of the holdings are now available for viewing online.[4] As a reference to the New Jersey-related portion of this catalog of correspondence, and as a starting point for investigating the primary documents themselves, Burr’s book is invaluable. It oscillates between summary paraphrase and fine-grained detail, at times approaching the tenor of an annotated bibliography, both highlighting many of the key themes of the correspondence and providing careful and specific reference to particular letters. However, if one is reading for narratological style, the structure of the text leaves something to be desired. Though the chapters move somewhat chronologically, they are clearly a product of a thematic collation of notes on the primary texts, presented in thematically designated chapters. The unfortunate result is that paraphrases of information drawn from the S.P.G. correspondence appear repeatedly across multiple chapters, almost without awareness of the fact that the author is repeating himself. Thus the book at times resembles a reference text more than a history, and seems structured based on the assumption that the reader will not be digesting the whole text cover-to-cover as printed.

            The more significant problem with Burr’s presentation of his source material is his apparent credulity regarding the institution of the Church as an agent of exclusive good. His narration maintains throughout a cadence of inevitability (and facile solidarity with the figures of the past), suggesting that pious Anglicans did right, others resisted, but that all things fell out essentially for good generally, and for the good of the Church particularly. In this he may be accurately representing the tone of the underlying sources, and the culture of the Church at the time of his writing,[5] but in doing so he reproduces institutional hagiography largely uncritically and rarely deploys a historiographic idiom that diverges in any appreciable way from survivor bias.

The clearest problem this bias creates for The Anglican Church in New Jersey appears in the Church’s treatment of the enslaved, and specifically enslaved Africans and African-Americans. Here Burr cleaves to the tone of his sources, which were written by priests who saw slavery as entirely justifiable within a “great chain of being,” while ignoring the actual data about slavery that the sources contain. Prolific enslavers, like Col. Lewis Morris and Col. Daniel Cox, who helped make draconian slave codes New Jersey law, are described in entirely glowing terms. Burr’s whitewash can perhaps best be seen in a subsection title which unironically asserts that “The Church Cherishes the Negro.” This brief section (pp. 224-228) paints a picture of benevolent concern and solicitude on the part of White Anglican priests. Almost without exception, the priests that he mentions as devoting attention to “the negroes” in this section in fact sought to create, buttress, and benefit from a slave society, while being active enslavers themselves. The letters Burr is working with, as he admits (p. 226), make frequent mention of the enslaved, but he is very selective in his presentation. Included in the New Jersey S.P.G. correspondence are plans for slave-worked plantations governed by priests,[6] reports of how Christianization is useful for suppressing slave revolt,[7] and mathematically challenged insistences that Anglicans are not significant enslavers.[8] But when Burr refers to these aspects of the correspondence, he justifies the enslavers, failing to indicate any appreciation for the crushingly oppressive injustice of the system the Church helped produce. Nor does he articulate precisely how enslavement constituted “cherishing.” 

Burr’s approach to the relation of enslaved Black people to the Church appears to be consistent with his convictions regarding race and the Church in general. In The Anglican Church in New Jersey he indicates his belief not just that the Anglican (and Episcopal) Church is essentially only for White people, but rather that it is only for a narrow subset of White people. This prejudice can be seen in his commentary on the demographic tables in his conclusion (e.g. Table IV, pp. 483-84) ostensibly explaining the obstacles to Episcopal Church growth in New Jersey presented by immigration from “southern and eastern Europe” (p. 468).

Burr’s text, though useful as a compendium of topically organized references to S.P.G. correspondence pertinent to New Jersey, is less a critical historiography, and more a starry-eyed, but deeply flawed hagiography of the Church. While clearly knowledgeable of the Church’s responsibility for slavery and racism from the testimony of the SPG letter archive, Burr manipulates his narrative to keep that knowledge from his readers with a dexterity that approaches prestidigitation.

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, M.Div., Ph.D.

Lecturer, Department of Religion, Princeton University

Reparations Commission Research Historian, Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

---

[1] Available through Hathi Trust at https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001640884.

[2] For whom the annual Anglican and Episcopal History journal prize for best article is named.

[3] Though it does provide a cursory 69-page summary of the subsequent period through its publishing (1954).

[4] Courtesy of the British Online Archives, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) Correspondence Collection: “American in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1635-1928.” Manuscript copy scans at: https://microform.digital/boa/collections/11/america-in-records-from-colonial-missionaries-1635-1928.

[5] One review from the time it was published (William Warren Sweet, “The Anglican Church in New Jersey. By Nelson R. Burr,” Church History24.2 [1955]: 188-189) actually suggested that Burr has “refused to set the Church with its ministers and people upon a pedestal of perfection, and records the losses, failures and weaknesses as well as their courage and successes.”  The bar was set very low indeed to result in such an estimation. 

[6] T. Haliday to S.P.G. Secretary, 9 October 1717, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 12, pp. 301-7.

[7] J. Sharpe to S.P.G. Secretary, 23 June 1712, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 7, pp. 214-17.

[8] J. Holbrooke to S.P.G. Secretary, 17 November 1727, S.P.G. Correspondence Collection, Book A, Vol. 20, pp. 193-98.

NEWS: African Union and CARICOM Members Seek Reparations

Recent reporting has highlighted a joint effort by member nations of the African Union and member nations of the Caribbean organization CARICOM to hold European nations accountable for "historical mass crimes" related to slavery. A recent summit meeting in Accra, Ghana resulted in statements calling for formal apologies from European nations that were involved with enslavement and financial reparations to address the ongoing negative effects of the Atlantic slave trade. The delegates of the seventy-five nations representing the African Union and CARICOM were reportedly buoyed by recent announcements from the Church of England designating £100 million in reparations funding for its involvement in enslavement. The full Church of England report is available here. Some estimates suggest that the total owed by Britain alone to Caribbean nations for the effects of its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade could amount to over £18 trillion.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

The Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) - First American Bishop, New Jersey Enslaver

Samuel Seabury (Ralph Earl artist QS:P170,Q1350959, 
Ralph Earl - Samuel Seabury - NPG.84.171 - National Portrait Gallery,
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons)

Today is the feast day for the Right Rev. Samuel Seabury, best known as the first consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He was elected bishop of Connecticut by ten clergy in 1783 and consecrated in Scotland in 1784. He was then formally elected by the Connecticut convocation in 1785. What is somewhat less well known is that he was an enslaver, and he became an enslaver during his time as a priest in New Jersey before the Revolutionary War. 
        The first parish Seabury served following his ordination was Christ Church, New Brunswick where he was rector from 1754 to 1757. After serving in New Jersey he held various appointments in New York State, and after the Revolutionary War, moved to Connecticut, where he had grown up and where his father had been a priest.
        His father had been an enslaver[1] when Seabury was growing up, so Seabury was likely already comfortable with the institution by the time he was an adult. But Seabury himself did not come to own any slaves until his marriage to Mary Hicks in his late-twenties, in 1756 while he was the rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey.[2] Many different priests and wealthy parishioners at Christ Church had owned slaves during the colonial era.[3] Hicks' family (also an enslaving family of origin like Seabury's) gave a dowry of one slave and a promise of more upon the marriage, than a number of additional enslaved persons subsequently. Throughout the rest of his career Seabury would remain an enslaver, still keeping enslaved persons until his death.[4]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

[1] Seabury's father's will lists ownership of an enslaved "mulatto" man named Newport. See New York Historical Society, Abstract of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, Vol. VI, 1760-1766 (New York: 1898), 347-348.
[2] See, for instance, Bruce Steiner, Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Oberlin: Ohio University Press, 1971), 65ff.

[3] See Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, ed. "The History of Slavery at Christ Church, New Brunswick," Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (March 27, 2023).

[4] Seabury's will lists two enslaved persons: Nell and Rose (see the scanned manuscript made available by the Connecticut State Library). The 1790 census data for New London County, Connecticut lists three enslaved persons in the household (Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, The First Census of the United States, 1790: Connecticut [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908], 129). For additional information see also "Samuel Seabury (1729-1796)" which is part of the "Trinity and Slavery" collection of the Primus Project hosted by Trinity College.

NEWS: Update on Diocese of NJ Racial Justice Review in Good News in the Garden State

Many thanks to Canon Steve Welch, the editor of Good News in the Garden State for publishing an update on the ongoing work of the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review! The article, entitled "Reparations Commission Researching History of Slavery and Racism in the Diocese" summarizes the findings and work to this point, explains how this is actually good news, and provides some possibilities for how congregations can engage in research and support of the initiative. Onward!

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

VIDEO: NJISJ History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee, Public Session #1 Recording

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has posted video from the first public session of the History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council which was held on September 26, 2023. The session was the first of nine planned public sessions. There were a number of activists and scholars among the panelists including Elaine Buck, Taja-Nia Henderson, Marisa Fuentes, Beverly Mills, and Leslie Alexander. Viewing is worth your time.

NEWS: Afterlives of Slavery Conference at Howard University

The recently completed Afterlives of Slavery Conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C. was a great success. It included three days of excellent papers on the theme “The Troubles I’ve Seen: Religious Dimensions of Slavery and Its Afterlives.” The conference was sponsored by Howard University, Princeton Theological Seminary, the National Museum and African American History and Culture, and the University of Liberia, Monrovia. A book is planned to publish the papers from the conference (more details to come) so be on the lookout for the contributions from members of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey! See below for more information on papers and presenters.

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

 

 

Afterlives of Slavery Conference Presenters and Speakers (October 19-21, 2023)

 

Day 1: Thursday, October 19, 2023

 

Welcome and Greetings: Afe Adogame

 

Keynote Address #1: Daina Ramey Berry, University of California, Santa Barbara, “‘A Spirit too Bold and Daring for a Slave’: Lineage, Legacy, and Legitimizing History.” 

 

Panel #1: Institutional Presidents (Gordon Mikoski presiding).

Jonathan Walton, President, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA 

Julius Nelson, President, University of Liberia, Liberia 

Erika Gault, Director of the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life, Smithsonian Museum for African American History and Culture, USA 

Romelle Horton, President, Cuttington University, Liberia 

Ben Vinson III, President, Howard University, USA 

 

Paper Session #1A: Regions: Africa I

Okelloh Ogera (Kenya): “The Continuing Legacy of ‘Enslavement’: An Appraisal of the Experiences of the Frere Town Freed Slaves Community.” 

Clement Donard Fumbo (Tanzania): “Consequences of enslavements for contemporary life in Tanzania and transnationally.” 

Telesia Musili (Kenya): “Sex for Work: Unearthing Colonial Legacies of Slavery in Kericho Tea Farms in Kenya.” 

Olufemi Akanji Olaleye (Nigeria): “Sounding Politics, Religions, and Enslavement of Cultural Oath-Taking Systems in Southwest Nigeria: 2015-2022.” 

 

Paper Session #1B: Theological Issues

Matthew Elia (Venezuela/USA): “The Origins of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery.” 

Lawrence A. Whitney (USA): “Ain’t I Elect? – Protestant Logic from Slavery through Intersectionality.” 

David Latimore (USA): “The Troubles I’ve Seen: Religious and Economic Dimensions of Slavery & Its Afterlives.” 

Jolyon G. Pruszinski (USA): “Lex Orandi, Lex Servitutis: Slavery as Valorized in the Language of the Book of Common Prayer.” 

 

Paper Session #1C: The Arts I (Narrative)

Jordan Burton (USA): “Non-Agency in the Anti-Black State: A Comparative Study of Method.” 

David Childs (USA): “All God's Chillun Got Wings: The Theological and Sociological Meaning and Origin of the Myth of the Flying African.” 

Aaron C. Waldon (Cuba): “A Strange Fruit: A Theopoetics of Colonization & Chattel Slavery in Amerika.” 

Andre LePelle Keitt (USA): “Bringing the Freedom Trail to Life, For Real!” 

 

 

Day 2: Friday, October 20, 2023

 

Keynote Address #2: Yolanda Pierce, Vanderbilt Divinity School “Laying on of Hands: Slavery’s Sins & Divine Healing. 

 

Panel #2: “Christian Nationalism and Self-Determination in African Americans’ Participation in the African Missions Movement (1820-1925)” (William Allen presiding).

Kimberly Hill (USA), University of Texas at Dallas 

Jenny McGill (USA), Indiana Wesleyan University 

Andrew N. Wegmann (USA), Delta State University 

Ben Wright (USA), University of Texas at Dallas 

Nemata Blyden (USA), George Washington University 

 

Paper Session #2D: Regions: Africa II

William E. Allen (Liberia): “The future is not known: The Rise of Liberia's Congoes from Enslaved and Wardship to Power.” 

Ignatius Afe Oshiomogwe (Nigeria/USA): “The Afterlives of Slavery and the Religious Ethics of the Metal Peace Tree on Providence Island, Monrovia, Liberia.” 

Francis Ethelbert Kwabena (Ghana/Finland): “Afterlives of Slavery and the Re-Emergence of Memory, Culture and Religion in Ghana and Beyond.” 

Grace Umezurike (Nigeria): “Ohu and Osu Slavery System: It’s Nature, Dynamics, and Impact on the Contemporary Igbo Society.” 

Samaila Wada Ayuba (Nigeria/USA): “The Nexus Between Formerly Enslaved Persons, Identity Negotiation and the Making of Hausa Christianity in Northern Nigeria.” 

 

Paper Session #2E: Education Issues

Monique Jones (USA): “Sin, Shame, and the Anti-DEI Movement in Parochial Schools.” 

Jairus Hallums (USA): “On the Come Up in Massa’s House: Twenty-First Century Black Educational Leader Sensemaking Under the White Gaze.” 

Taulby H. Edmondson (USA): “Knights of the Lost Cause: Neo- Confederate Fraternities and the Christian Myths of the Lost Cause on Campus.” 

Anthony Harris (USA): “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?” 

 

Paper Session #2F: Historical Perspectives

David Childs (USA): “Jordan River I’m Bound to Cross: Researching Slavery and Religion in Northern Kentucky and Ohio.” 

Ken Miyagi (Japan/USA): “Religious Discursive Resistance: Theodore Sedgwick Wright’s Anti-Colonization Thought.” 

Kimberly Akano (Nigeria/USA): “Learning Africa: African Americans, Religious Education, and the Pursuit of Freedom.” 

David Daniels III (USA): “Before Slave Religion: The Theological Contours of Kongolese-American Christianity, 1619-1750.” 

 

Panel Discussion #3: Pastors Roundtable (David Latimore presiding).

Rev. Kenneth Rioland, Paramount Baptist Church, Washington D.C. 

Rev. William Lamar, Metropolitan AME Church, Washington D.C. 

Rev. John H. Molina-Moore, National Capitol Presbytery, Rockville, MD. 

 

Day 3: Saturday, October 21, 2023

 

Keynote Address #3: Jacob Olupona, Harvard University “The Afterlife of Slavery in Africa: Unforeseen Religious and Sociocultural Consequences.” 

 

Paper Session #3G: Regions: Caribbean, the Americas, and Europe

Jorge William Falcão Junior (Brazil): “What to do after abolition? A Presbyterian Missionary's Perspectives on Brazil and the United States of America.” 

Eloy Alfaro (Ecuador): “Reasons to prefer Semi slavery. Afro- descendants who stayed on the San José - Ecuador country state, after the manumission 1850–1970.” 

Selina Stone(Jamaican/Britain): “From Mis-Education to Re-Formation: Colonialism, Slavery and The Task of Decolonising Theological Education in Britain.” 

Binu Varghese (India/USA): “Roots and Routes of discontent: Indian Ocean Slave trade and Indian Americans.” 

 

Paper Session #3H: Theological Issues II

Isaac Sekyi Nana Mensah (Ghana/USA): “‘Slave Cost not a little’: Racial Baptism on Jesuit Slave Plantations in Maryland.” 

Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo (Philippines/USA): “Black Body and Blood: The Eucharistic Imagination of Racial Capitalism.” 

Donna J. Sloan (USA): “The Religious/Spiritual Journey of Africans in America.” 

Itohan M. Idumwonyi (Nigeria/USA): “Sexploitation of Women in Slavery and Women in African Pentecostal Church in the United States.” 

 

Paper Session #3I: The Arts II

Olukayode Odujobi (Nigeria): “From Oral Tradition to Historical National Treasure: Preservation and Documentation of Negro Spirituals from 1867 to 2007.” 

Emily Pruszinski (USA): “Ethical Challenges for the Black Christ in White Church Iconography: Problematizing Jeannine Baker-Fletcher's ‘Ghostly Grace.’” 

Janice A. McLean-Farrell (Jamaica/USA): “Singing Songs of Freedom to exorcise the demons: Interrogating the relationship between Caribbean Christianity, U.S. Hegemony and the Status Quo.” 

Anna Stamborski (USA): “Who Defines? Who Decides?: How Black Congregants Define ‘Antiracism’ and Role of the Black Church in Antiracist Efforts” 

 

Paper Session #3J: Contemporary Issues

Richard X, III (USA): “‘It look like a Slave Ship in There’: Rikers Island as the Afterlife of Slavery.” 

Evan Dietrich Gosen (USA): “Punishment Obsession: The American Criminal Legal System as a Vestige of Enslavement Ideology.” 

Nosizwe Breaux-Abdur-Rahman: “Race, Culture and Islam: Indigenous African American Muslim and Non-Indigenous Muslim Relationships.” 

Michael Brandon McCormack (USA): “Original Sin or Exotic Notions? Mitch McConnell, 1619, and the Afterlives of Slavery.” 

 

Panel Discussion #4: “Whitewashing Ancient Slavery and its Modern Legacies” (Frederick Ware presiding).

Chance Bonar, Tufts University 

Mónica Rey, Boston University 

Ella Karev, Mónica Rey 

Ericka Dunbar, Baylor University 

Kevin Burell, Wilfrid Laurier University 

 

End of Program