Between 1500 and the 1860s, Europeans and Americans forcibly removed approximately 12 million African people from the African continent, transported them to the Americas, and enslaved them.

Why did Europeans and Americans enslave Africans? How did they justify their actions?

Katharine Gerbner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, leads us on an exploration of ways Christianity influenced early ideas about slavery and its practice.

About the Show

Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Episode Summary

Katharine Gerbner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, joins us for an exploration of ways Christianity influenced early ideas about slavery and its practice.

As we dive into the long and complicated history between slavery and Christianity, Katharine reveals the evolution of the relationship between Christianity and slavery in Europe; How ideas about Protestant Christianity and slavery developed in the North American and Caribbean colonies; And, the idea of Protestant supremacy and how it influenced and gave way to the idea of race-based slavery.

What You’ll Discover

The relationship between Christianity and slavery prior to the 17th century

European practices of slavery between medieval period and the 17th century

How slavery and Christianity expanded in Africa

Differences between Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity

How Protestant Christianity viewed slavery

Differences between Catholic and Protestant colonies

Differences between Catholic and Protestant practices of slavery

Christianity and slavery in Barbados

The Barbadian idea of “Protestant Supremacy”

When the English shift from using Christianity to race in justifications for slavery

Influence of Barbadian ideas about slavery on other colonies

Virginian precedents and ideas about slavery

Quaker missionaries and their ideas about slavery

Anglican missionaries and their ideas about slavery

Moravian missionaries and their ideas about slavery

Shifting ideas and debates about christianizing slaves

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Time Warp Question

In your opinion, what might have happened if the English, Dutch, and Danish had required baptism for enslaved people as the Spanish, Portuguese, and French did? How would the relationship between Protestantism and slavery have evolved differently?

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