In Plantation Church, Noel Leo Erskine investigates the history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Typically, when people talk about the "Black Church" they are referring to African-American churches in the U.S., but in fact, the majority of African slaves were brought to the Caribbean. It was there, Erskine argues, that the Black religious experience was born. The massive Afro-Caribbean population was able to establish a form of Christianity that preserved African Gods and practices, but fused them with Christian teachings, resulting in religions such as Cuba's Santeria. Despite their common ancestry, the Black religious experience in the U.S. was markedly different because African Americans were a political and cultural minority. The Plantation Church became a place of solace and resistance that provided its members with a sense of kinship, not only to each other but also to their ancestral past. Despite their common origins, the Caribbean and African American Church are almost never studied together. This book investigates the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths. The result will be a work that illuminates the histories, theologies, politics, and practices of both branches of the Black Church. This project presses beyond the nation state framework and raises intercultural and interregional questions with implications for gender, race and class. Noel Leo Erskine employs a comparative method that opens up the possibility of rethinking the language and grammar of how Black churches have been understood in the Americas and extends the notion of church beyond the United States. The forging of a Black Christianity from sources African and European, allows for an examination of the meaning of church when people of African descent are culturally and politically in the majority. Erskine also asks the pertinent question of what meaning the church holds when the converse is true: when African Americans are a cultural and political minority.

In Plantation Church, Noel Leo Erskine investigates the history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Typically, when people talk about the "Black Church" they are referring to African-American churches in the U.S., but in fact, the majority of African slaves were brought to the Caribbean. It was there, Erskine argues, that the Black religious experience was born. The massive Afro-Caribbean population was able to establish a form of Christianity that preserved African Gods and practices, but fused them with Christian teachings, resulting in religions such as Cuba's Santeria. Despite their common ancestry, the Black religious experience in the U.S. was markedly different because African Americans were a political and cultural minority. The Plantation Church became a place of solace and resistance that provided its members with a sense of kinship, not only to each other but also to their ancestral past. Despite their common origins, the Caribbean and African American Church are almost never studied together. This book investigates the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths. The result will be a work that illuminates the histories, theologies, politics, and practices of both branches of the Black Church. This project presses beyond the nation state framework and raises intercultural and interregional questions with implications for gender, race and class. Noel Leo Erskine employs a comparative method that opens up the possibility of rethinking the language and grammar of how Black churches have been understood in the Americas and extends the notion of church beyond the United States. The forging of a Black Christianity from sources African and European, allows for an examination of the meaning of church when people of African descent are culturally and politically in the majority. Erskine also asks the pertinent question of what meaning the church holds when the converse is true: when African Americans are a cultural and political minority.

This history of the theology and rituals of Rastafarianism features accents of the reggae rhythms of Bob Marley and the teachings and philosophy of Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist who motivated many of his fellow Jamaicans to embrace their African ancestral roots. Written by a trained theologian who was raised in the Jamaican village in which the Rastafarian faith originated, the book offers both a serious inquiry into the movement and the perspective of an insider in conversation with elders of the faith who still live in the village. Marley, who died in 1981, is the best known and one of the most articulate exponents of the themes of race consciousness that provide the core of Rasta hermeneutics. The poet and musician also made the faith appealing to the Jamaican middle class, which had turned away from the "Back to Africa" message that Garvey delivered in the 1930s. Noel Leo Erskine isolates and defines the main tenets of Rastafarianism, which emerged toward the end of the 20th century as a way of life and as a new international religion. He includes biographical descriptions of the key players in the development of Rastafari theology, provides details of its organization and ethos, and discusses the role of women in the religion. He also discusses the significance of Ethiopia to the faith; practitioners view that country both as their homeland and as heaven on earth. Examining the religion's relationship to Christianity, Erskine relates the Rastas to 19th-century Native Baptist and Revivalist traditions on the island and to the black theology movement in the United States. The Rastas see the European and North American churches as representatives of an oppressive colonialclass, he writes. The Rastafarian name for God--"Jah"--is derived from Yahveh, the God of the Hebrews, and members of the faith connect their struggle for dignity and solidarity in Jamaican society with the struggle of the oppressed Israelites. "Jah" and not the Bible is the decisive source of morality and truth for the Rastas. Clearly written, sympathetic, and at times critical, the book will be important in the fields of African, African American, and Caribbean studies, especially to the cultural and religious dimensions in each discipline.