Panel Discussion: Race, Religion, and Freedom in the 18th Century North

Discussion will focus on two seminar papers: “African American and Indian Church Affiliation: Reevaluating Race and Religion in the North, 1730-1776,” by Richard Boles of George Washington University, and  “A World of Deference and Dependence: Slavery and Unfreedom in Eighteenth-century Boston,” by Jared Hardesty of Boston College. Boles’s paper explores black and Indian participation in each major Protestant denomination, suggesting the need to reevaluate aspects of the religious history of the colonial North in regard to how blacks and Indians influenced theology and church practices. Hardesty’s essay aims to raise serious questions about the nature of freedom in the American Colonies by engaging the literature concerning liberty in early America and challenging the popular slave/free dichotomy that dominates the historiography.