Setting Down the Sacred Past

A seminal work that is destined to become a classic in the field... it is the kind of work that people will be reading... thirty years from now. -- Paul Harvey, author of Freedom's Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South, from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era This remarkable piece of historical writing allows us to eavesdrop on discussions of fundamental importance to African Americans through the course of the long nineteenth century about the nature of blackness, about divine destiny in history, about the emotional and historical connections between Africa and black America, and about the past as a guide to the future. -- Jon Sensbach, author of Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World Laurie Maffly-Kipp's work reveals the rich theological imaginations of vernacular religious thinkers who offered their readers bold histories of the world and religious interpretations of African American peoplehood. A major contribution to the field of African American religious history. -- Judith Weisenfeld, Princeton University A challenging analysis of how African Americans understood themselves, challenging because it alters so much of what we take for granted. A deeply human book. -- David Hall, Harvard University Maffly-Kipp traces, with great care and originality, the development of African-American collective history and memory from the Revolution into the early twentieth century. She offers a profound reflection on how historical consciousness is formed. -- Leigh E. Schmidt, Harvard University

As early as the 1780s, African Americans told stories that enabled them to survive and even thrive in the midst of unspeakable assault. Tracing the narratives from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, this work presents an extraordinary trove of sweeping race histories that African Americans wove together out of racial and religious concerns.

As early as the 1780s, African Americans told stories that enabled them to survive and even thrive in the midst of unspeakable assault. Tracing previously unexplored narratives from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, Laurie Maffly-Kipp brings to light an extraordinary trove of sweeping race histories that African Americans wove together out of racial and religious concerns.

Asserting a role in God's plan, black Protestants sought to root their people in both sacred and secular time. A remarkable array of chroniclers—men and women, clergy, journalists, shoemakers, teachers, southerners and northerners—shared a belief that narrating a usable past offered hope, pride, and the promise of a better future. Combining Christian faith, American patriotism, and racial lineage to create a coherent sense of community, they linked past to present, Africa to America, and the Bible to classical literature. From collected shards of memory and emerging intellectual tools, African Americans fashioned stories that helped to restore meaning and purpose to their lives in the face of relentless oppression.

In a pioneering work of research and discovery, Maffly-Kipp shows how blacks overcame the accusation that they had no history worth remembering. African American communal histories imagined a rich collective past in order to establish the claim to a rightful and respected place in the American present. Through the transformative power of storytelling, these men and women led their people—and indeed, all Americans—into a more profound understanding of their interconnectedness and their prospects for a common future.