The Negro Christianized, An Essay to Excite and Assist that Good Work, the Instruction of Negro Servants in Christianity

"For Mather, leaving Natives and Africans outside the body of Christ...would only lead to trouble." - Faithful Bodies (2014)

"Every Sunday evening Mather invited black men and women into his home to listen to sermons." - Schooling Citizens (2010)

"Mather focused on the spiritual growth of his slave...after he became 'useless and froward.'" - Everyday Crimes (2019)

"Mather, in his tract The Negro Christianized...ranged scriptural...argument against those who denied the Negro's humanity." - Slave Religion (2004)

In 1706 New England Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer Cotton Mather (1663 1728) wrote a short 30-page work titled "The Negro Christianized."

The booklet was groundbreaking, as In 1706, the proposition that slaves should be instructed in the Bible would have horrified more traditionalist slave masters who banned the Bible for dread that slaves might adhere to ideas of equality contained in the New Testament.

In making his argument for the conversion of slaves to Christianity, Mather writes:

"Christianity will be the best cure for this Barbarity. Their Complexion sometimes is made an Argument, why nothing should be done for them. A Gay sort of argument! As if the great God went by the Complexion of Men, in His Favours to them! As if none but Whites might hope to be Favoured and Accepted with God! Whereas it is well known, That the Whites, are the least part of Mankind. The biggest part of Mankind, perhaps, are Copper-Coloured; a sort of Tawnies."

Dettagli