Religion in Nat Turner’s Virginia
Compiled by Elizabeth Bennett
BA, Samford University, May 2010- Psychology, Minors: Business, Spanish
MA, University of Alabama, May 2017- Women’s Studies
BA, Samford University, May 2010- Psychology, Minors: Business, Spanish
MA, University of Alabama, May 2017- Women’s Studies
Abstract
What fueled the Nat Turner Rebellion was not simply a contempt for the institution of slavery or a hatred for his owner, it was his long held belief that he had an elevated and eternal calling. Nat, widely considered a prophet, interpreted a solar eclipse February 21, 1831 as God speaking directly to him. That event was all the encouragement he needed to move forward with planning and executing a rebellion against the slaveholders and their families in his Virginia community. To understand the environment and motivation, it is important to understand the religious culture of 1831 Virginia in which Nat Turner had come to understand the role of God in his slavery and suffering. These readings will provide context for both sides of the slavery argument that religious whites were involved in as well as the creation and practice of slave religion- a blend of African tribal customs with tenets of Christianity. While not directly addressed in the film The Birth of a Nation, these social forces created a climate in which Nat Turner was educated and elevated in both his community and the white slaveholder community, creating what he believed to be a divine opportunity to rebel.
Primary and Secondary Sources
Religion in the Colonies/States
Anti-Slavery Christianity
Slave Religion
Nat Turner the Prophet, Nate Parker the Man
Other Religions
- Stephen Longenecker, Gettysburg Religion: Refinement, Diversity, and Race in the Antebellum and Civil War Border North (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014).
- Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
- Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight Against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Anti-Slavery Christianity
- Samuel Brooke, Slavery, and the Slaveholder's Religion: As Opposed to Christianity (1846).
- John M Chenoweth, “Practicing and Preaching Quakerism: Creating a Religion of Peace on a Slavery-Era Plantation,” American Anthropologist 116, no. 1 (2014): 94-109.
- John Woolman and Phillip Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1989).
Slave Religion
- Noel Leo Erskine, Plantation Church: How African American Religion Was Born in Caribbean Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- Eddie S. Glaude Jr., "Of the Black Church and the Making of a Black Public,” Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 19-43.
- Michael A. Gomez, “Turning Down the Pot: Christianity and the African-Based Community” Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 244-290.
- Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Nat Turner the Prophet, Nate Parker the Man
- Adelle M. Banks, “Nat Turner: A Rebel and a Man of Faith,” 6 October 2016, Religion News Service.
- TK Barger, “Religion Influenced Nat Turner,” 15 October 2016, The Blade.
- Roxanne Gay, “Nate Parker and the Limits of Empathy,” 19 August 2016, New York Times.
- Jackson McHenry, “The Birth of a Nation Downplays Nat Turner's Fanaticism, But Can’t Figure Out What to Say About His Religion,” 7 October 2016, Vulture.
Other Religions
- John Blake, “How religion has been used to promote slavery,” 29 March 2012, CNN.com.
- Edward Blum, “Slavery and Religion in (Not Just) a Christian Nation,” in ed. Matthew Avery Sutton and Darren Dochuk, Faith In The New Millennium: The Future of Religion and American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 25-42.
