The Gospel of John Marrant: Conjuring Christianity in the Black Atlantic
Date: Friday, November 15, 2024
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: Virtual event
Language: Presented in English
Cost: FREE
Join us for a virtual presentation with Alphonso F. Saville IV as he discusses his book The Gospel of John Marrant: Conjuring Christianity in the Black Atlantic. This event speaks to the historic connections between black populations throughout the Atlantic, and the spread of a message of perseverance among its populations. Specifically, the book connects to the Black Loyalist experience, as well as that of slavery in North America.
About the Book:
The Reverend John Marrant (1755–91) was North America’s first Black ordained minister and one of America’s earliest Black authors and preachers. The author examines how Protestantism and West African indigenous religious practices deeply informed his life and ministry. Saville follows Marrant from his time evangelizing the Cherokee in Georgia to meeting with Black Freemasons in Boston to engaging with diasporic communities along the Eastern Seaboard and in England. Using the Black folk magic tradition of conjure as a lens for understanding Marrant’s religious imagination, Saville outlines the importance of Africana religious and cultural themes, symbols, and cosmologies in the biblical interpretation and ritual culture of early Black North American Christian communities. Marrant’s life and work, Saville contends, reveal the diverse religious cultures that contributed to the formation of African American Christianity and its evolution into a prominent institution during the colonial and early history of the United States. In so doing, he demonstrates the need to re-center both religion and Africa in the study of African American cultural and intellectual history.
About the Author:
Alphonso F. Saville, IV is a scholar of American religion whose research focuses on the legacies of slavery in American religion, African American Christianity, and the religions and literature of the African diaspora.
About Canada’s Storytellers:
Canada’s Storytellers is an ongoing series of programs that connects visitors with cultural works, and their creators, to explore themes of immigration, migration, multiculturalism, (in)equality and Canadian identity. Canada’s Storytellers has welcomed renowned authors such as Lawrence Hill, Madeleine Thien, Mark Sakamoto, Blaise Ndala, Kim Thuy; screened films like Kayak to Klemtu, Bagages, I Am Rohingya, and more.