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Time and the Millennium: On the Religious Experience of the American Slave
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
Few scholarly debates have equaled, either in emotional intensity or in linguistic acrimony, the recent controversy surrounding the publication of Robert. W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman's Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Although much of the energy of that particular dispute has been focused on the assumptions of Fogel and Engerman's quantitative methodology, the substance of many of the exchanges has been reminiscent of similar debates that have taken place among students of black American history throughout the past several decades. The issues in these debates have been large in number and diffuse in nature, but at their core has been a constantly recurring theme: the concern with the cultural source and the social viability of this or that black institution. The black family has been the institution receiving the most scholarly attention of late, but remaining unresolved are two nagging and closely related questions—that concerning the degree of African cultural survivals in the slave community and that concerning the docile or rebellious nature of slave religion.
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References
NOTES
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