Rebecca Protten (1718-1780
Rebecca's Revival is the remarkable story of a Caribbean woman--a slave turned evangelist--who helped inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebecca Protten left an enduring influence on African-American religion and society. Born in 1718, Protten had a childhood conversion experience, gained her freedom from bondage, and joined a group of German proselytizers from the Moravian Church. She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, a Danish sugar colony in the West Indies. Laboring in obscurity and weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas.
Protten's eventful life--the recruiting of converts, an interracial marriage, a trial on charges of blasphemy and inciting of slaves, travels to Germany and West Africa--placed her on the cusp of an emerging international Afro-Atlantic evangelicalism. Her career provides a unique lens on this prophetic movement that would soon sweep through the slave quarters of the Caribbean and North America, radically transforming African-American culture.
Jon Sensbach has pieced together this forgotten life of a black visionary from German, Danish, and Dutch records, including letters in Protten's own hand, to create an astounding tale of one woman's freedom amidst the slave trade. Protten's life, with its evangelical efforts on three continents, reveals the dynamic relations of the Atlantic world and affords great insight into the ways black Christianity developed in the New World.
Photo of oil painting (courtesy of Jon Sensbach) by Johann Valentin
Haidt, held by the Moravian Archives (Unity Archives [Archiv der
Bruder-Unitat]), Herrnhut (Germany). Christian Protten (1715-1769) and
Rebecca), (1718-1780 an ex-slave and Moravian convert were married in
Germany in 1740; shown also is their child, Anna Maria Protten.
Christian Jacob Protten also Christian Jakobus Africanus Protten or Uldrich (15 September 1715 – 24 August or 23 October 1769) was a Euro-African Moravian missionary pioneer, linguist,
translator and educationalist-administrator in Christiansborg on the Danish Gold Coast in the eighteenth century. The first recorded grammatical treatise in the Ga and Fante languages was written by Protten and published in Copenhagen in 1764.
Rebecca was born on the British Caribbean Island of Antigua, possibly as the child of a black mother and white father. It is debated whether or not she was born free in Antigua, but it is known that she was sold into slavery at the age of about six to a prominent planter on the Dutch island of St. Thomas by the name of Lucas van Beverhout. Beverhout became extremely fond of Rebecca and saw her extraordinary vigor for Christianity blossom at an early age, which in turn lead him to teach her to read and write, and also led to her being freed. In 1736, at about the age of eighteen, she met a German missionary named Friedrich Martin who saw the effectiveness of Rebecca as a tool to connect with the black slaves on the island.The missionary work of these two figures turned the slave population of St. Thomas into a small cluster of believers, whether they truly accepted the word of Christ or used religion as a way of getting intellectual freedom from slavery, the outcome was no different, they turned to the religion anyway.
Read more about this powerful woman.
https://khronikosum.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/the-limits-of-rebeccas-revival/
Rebecca's Revival is the remarkable story of a Caribbean woman--a slave turned evangelist--who helped inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebecca Protten left an enduring influence on African-American religion and society. Born in 1718, Protten had a childhood conversion experience, gained her freedom from bondage, and joined a group of German proselytizers from the Moravian Church. She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, a Danish sugar colony in the West Indies. Laboring in obscurity and weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas.
Protten's eventful life--the recruiting of converts, an interracial marriage, a trial on charges of blasphemy and inciting of slaves, travels to Germany and West Africa--placed her on the cusp of an emerging international Afro-Atlantic evangelicalism. Her career provides a unique lens on this prophetic movement that would soon sweep through the slave quarters of the Caribbean and North America, radically transforming African-American culture.
Jon Sensbach has pieced together this forgotten life of a black visionary from German, Danish, and Dutch records, including letters in Protten's own hand, to create an astounding tale of one woman's freedom amidst the slave trade. Protten's life, with its evangelical efforts on three continents, reveals the dynamic relations of the Atlantic world and affords great insight into the ways black Christianity developed in the New World.
Rebecca was born on the British Caribbean Island of Antigua, possibly as the child of a black mother and white father. It is debated whether or not she was born free in Antigua, but it is known that she was sold into slavery at the age of about six to a prominent planter on the Dutch island of St. Thomas by the name of Lucas van Beverhout. Beverhout became extremely fond of Rebecca and saw her extraordinary vigor for Christianity blossom at an early age, which in turn lead him to teach her to read and write, and also led to her being freed. In 1736, at about the age of eighteen, she met a German missionary named Friedrich Martin who saw the effectiveness of Rebecca as a tool to connect with the black slaves on the island.The missionary work of these two figures turned the slave population of St. Thomas into a small cluster of believers, whether they truly accepted the word of Christ or used religion as a way of getting intellectual freedom from slavery, the outcome was no different, they turned to the religion anyway.
Read more about this powerful woman.
https://khronikosum.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/the-limits-of-rebeccas-revival/
