Slavery and Sacred Texts

The Bible, the Constitution, and Historical Consciousness in Antebellum America

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

AvJordan T. Watkins,Utah) Watkins, Jordan T. (Brigham Young University

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In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation's sacred religious and legal texts - the Bible and the Constitution - to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters' emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a belief in the Bible's timeless teachings and the Constitution's enduring principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense of historical distance.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-03-09
Mått150 x 230 x 25 mm
Vikt636 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieCambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society
Antal sidor400
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781108746892

Tillhör följande kategorier

Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion
Rättshistoria inom Juridik
Amerikas historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Slaveri inom Historia och arkeologi

Acknowledgements; Prologue; Introduction; 1. 'Recourse must be had to the history of those times'; 2. 'The ground will shake'; 3. 'Texts … designed for local and temporary use'; 4. 'The further we recede from the birth of the constitution'; 5. 'The culture of cotton has healed its deadly wound'; 6. 'Times now are not as they were'; 7. 'We have to do not … with the past, but the living present'; 8. A 'Modern crispus attucks'; Conclusion; Epilogue; Index.

'Watkins examines an impressively wide range of thinkers, white and Black, famous and forgotten, as they argued over whether Scripture and the Constitution (itself a kind of secular 'scripture') supported slavery - and if so, how opponents of slavery should respond. This important book not only illuminates the striking parallels between biblical criticism and constitutional interpretation, it will help Americans think through the racism at the root of so many of our institutions.' Dean Grodzins, author of American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism