Raboteau’s subsequent publications continued to expand the range of voices and experiences reflected in scholarship about American religious life. His historical rendering not only inaugurated a new branch of historical scholarship, but more importantly, modeled a methodology in which everyday bondspeople were historical actors.ĭr. Raboteau narrated a world in which enslaved Africans and their southern descendants made calculated choices about where and how they created religious space, when and if they converted to Christianity, and the brand of Christianity they adopted upon conversion. Drawing upon sources ranging from institutional church records to missionary documents, Dr. The book was revolutionary not only in its content, but also its methodology.

As the field of religious studies and the broader academic world grappled with the imperatives set forth by Black liberation theologians and Black nationalist historians, Slave Religion constituted the first full-length historical treatment of the religious strivings of enslaved southerners. Raboteau published Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South-unequivocally his most famous book-in 1978. Louis, Mississippi in 1943 and raised in Michigan and California, his scholarship reflected an abiding commitment to rendering the religious lives of African-descended people visible in history with an eye towards contemporary justice concerns.ĭr. Raboteau was a giant in the fields of Africana and American Religions specifically, and Religious Studies more broadly. Raboteau, one word has reverberated throughout the many tributes and posts celebrating his storied professional life: giant.

In the weeks following the passing of Dr.

Albert raboteau