Anticonversion sentiment was one
of the defining features of Protestant slave societies in the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries. While enslaved Africans in Spanish, French, and Portuguese
colonial societies were regularly introduced to Catholicism and baptized,
whether willingly or not, Protestant slave owners in the English, Dutch, and
Danish colonies tended to view conversion as inconsistent or incompatible with
slavery. Their anticonversion sentiment was indicative of the changing meaning
of Protestantism in the American colonies: over the course of the seventeenth
century, Protestant planters claimed Christian identity for themselves, creating
an exclusive ideal of religion based on ethnicity—a construct that I call “Protestant
Supremacy.” (Katherine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in
the Protestant Atlantic World [Early American Studies; Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2018], 2)
Protestant supremacy was the
predecessor of White Supremacy, an ideology that emerged after the codification
of racial slavery. I refer to “Protestant” Supremacy, rather than “Anglican” or
“Christian” Supremacy, because this ideology was present throughout the
Protestant American colonies, from the Danish West Indies to Virginia and
beyond. It was the most likely to develop to places with an enslaved population
that was larger than the free population such as the Barbados, Jamaica, or
South Carolina. In these colonies, Anglican, Dutch Reformed, and Lutheran slave
owners conceived of their Protestant identities as fundamental in their status
as masters. They constructed a caste system based on Christian status, in which
“heathenish” slaves were afforded no rights or privileges while Catholics,
Jews, and non-conforming Protestants were viewed with suspicion and distrust,
but granted more protections. (Katherine Gerbner, Christian Slavery:
Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World [Early American
Studies; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018], 2-3)
