"Provides a fascinating and nuanced study of the transformations in
religious and social ideals among Moravians as they worked to
implement their aspirations in the harsh realities of a North
Carolina landscape shaped by racism. Ferguson reveals the
intersecting dynamics of religious aspirations, sectarian
prejudices, conflicting designs across cultural landscapes,
paradoxical divergences of religious ideals and social realities,
and the life stories of African Americans working to navigate such
contested terrain."--Christopher C. Fennell, author of "Crossroads
and Cosmologies" "A fascinating examination of the tension of race
relations in the antebellum South. "God's Fields" unfolds like a
murder mystery and is hard to put down."--Christopher E. Hendricks,
author of "The Backcountry Towns of Colonial Virginia" The Moravian
community of Salem, North Carolina, was founded in 1766, and the
town--the hub of nearly 100,000 piedmont acres purchased thirteen
years before and named "Wachovia"--quickly became the focal point
for the church's colonial presence in the South. While the brethren
preached the unity of all humans under God, a careful analysis of
the birth and growth of their Salem settlement reveals that the
group gradually embraced the institutions of slavery and racial
segregation in opposition to their religious beliefs. Although
Salem's still-active community includes one of the oldest African
American congregations in the nation, the evidence contained in
"God's Fields" reveals that during much of the twentieth century,
the church's segregationist past was intentionally concealed.
Leland Ferguson's work reconstructing this "secret history" through
years of archaeological fieldwork was part of a historical
preservation program that helped convince the Moravian Church in
North America to formally apologize in 2006 for its participation
in slavery and clear a way for racial reconciliation. Leland
Ferguson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the
University of South Carolina. He is the author of "Uncommon Ground:
Archaeology and Colonial African America, 1650-1800," a recipient
of the Southern Anthropological Society's James Mooney Award.
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