Why did African Americans convert to Christianity?

[Proteus_MST]

Just found this link to a master thesis when preparing an answer to Ben in another thread:
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/et...tor_thesis.pdf

Obviously for catholic slaveholders, the church demanded that they should baptize and catechize their slaves

[Elok]

well, i must confess to being rather ignorant of the finer points of west african theologies, but i do know that peoples who came into contact with christianity often accepted the christian god without accepting christians' claims to his uniqueness. that is a reason why i think that sincere conversion, which, as you say, means rejecting all other gods, thus negating any offence, would make more sense than pretending.

My father-in-law often visits Vietnam, where he says the local Mahayana Buddhists cheerfully integrate Christianity into their personal pantheon. Mary, Jesus, and St. Whoever sit on the personal altar next to a bunch of bodhisattvas and suchlike. If you want something, it really can't hurt to ask them all--you never know who will be feeling generous on any particular day. I have not heard of local Catholics returning the favor, but then I have not asked too many questions. Peasant syncretism is a very real, very common thing in some parts, and I imagine it was still more common back in the day.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Kidlicious]

AAHZ is very consistent.

[Kropotkin]

Ancestor veneration, the workship of pseduo-mythological forefathers and the like, is common in many African cultures. For example amongst Igbo, who made up a significant part of the slaves in the Atlantic slave-trade. I suppose such traditions are hard to keep up when you are no longer living with people with a common ancestry.

[Elok]

Well, when your father's grave is on a faraway plantation you'll never have leave to visit, and his father's "grave" is an unmarked spot in the middle of the Atlantic, and his father died on a whole other continent . . . one does lack for shrines to worship at under such circumstances.

[Lorizael]

This thread is missing a chunk where BK answered the thread title by disparaging Islam and then I cursed the **** out of him and he claimed that meant I hated god or some ****. Were the posts deleted for moderation reasons (I'm guessing not, because for some reason I still have moderator powers and can see deleted posts) or lost during a server/database hiccup? If the latter, is this a known issue and do we know how widespread it is?

[The Mad Monk]

Hey.

[Lorizael]

"Hey is for horses," a kindergarten teacher yelled at me 35 years ago.

[Jon Miller]

Was this the era that moderators sometimes split threads or rearranged threads to keep them on topic? That seems like a lot of work in 2016 (I lost my moderator rights long ago and don't remember when I had them). It does seem like there were at least 2 threads that the conversation was happening on, and there are obvious references to posts in this thread that are now missing.

What is left here is pretty good, even Kid and BK don't derail it. This suggests moderation and not random lost posts.

JM

[Lorizael]

Maybe! I don't remember the confusion with another thread, but I am forced to admit that I don't precisely remember every single detail of every thread I contributed to at Apolyton over the last 23 years. Probably only like 95%.

You and I and MikeH all got mod powers at the same time in 2009 during the big ownership shakeup.

[N35t0r]

Oh wow, Both Lori and Jon.

[Lorizael]

I'm just checking in to see if our Civ7 sub is up yet.

[N35t0r]

One more forum to attract spambots

[Jon Miller]

Most of the forums should be archived. A civilization 7 forum would be good. I am more active on reddit and discord now.

JM