SLAVERY AND CONVERSION: AN ANALYSIS OF EX-SLAVE TESTIMONY (AFRO-AMERICAN, CHRISTIANITY, BLACK, SOCIAL ETHICS, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE)

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the intersection of slavery and conversion in the life experiences and social ethics of Afro-American ex-slaves whose oral histories were collected in the United States during the 1920s by the Fisk Social Science Institute and during the 1930s by the Federal Writers Project.;The thesis includes a critical review of the recent contributions of scholars who have made use of ex-slave interviews in the study of slave conversion and slave ethics from the perspective of theology, comparative religions, and American religious history.;An in-depth analysis of a subsample of informants who were converted during slavery reveals that blacks consistently refused to justify slavery on the ground of Christian ethics, but adopted a variety of ethical styles and responses to the question of how religious commitment relates to social responsibility.;The moral dilemma faced by the convert who is a slave is a question of how to confront the evil of slavery--by enduring bondage patiently until God brings about a new age of freedom, or by taking the initiative to escape or overthrow it? The slave experience demonstrates that Biblical Christianity calls believers to translate the spiritual endowments passively received in conversion into spiritual power to resist actively the evil of the present age. The post-emancipation experience bears witness to the critical hermeneutical challenge of Biblical ethics, which is the struggle to be faithful to God's call to freedom in the midst of a society that sometimes offers attractive compromises with the evils of oppression.;The basic hypothesis is that slave religion is a characteristically Christian response to the evil of slavery. A sample of 42 interviews of ex-slaves who actually described their conversion experiences is used as the primary data base. A composite typology is developed to describe conversion and religious experience. Its 15 critical dimensions are: nurture and guidance; hearing of Scripture; prayer and fasting; supernatural trance, vision or voice; dreams; struggle with evil; repentance; acceptance; divine healing; divine call or commission; shouting and ecstasy; baptism; joining church; change in lifestyle; testimony to others.