Spiritual Middle Passage: Women and Religion in the African Atlantic Diaspora

The spiritual lives of African and African-American women in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade remain curiously under examined. Women played important roles as spiritual leaders in West African socieites, and evidence strongly suggests that they brought those capabilities with them across the Atlantic to the Americas. This paper will provide a preliminary overview of black women's religious experiences between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries, suggesting a range of “informal narratives” as source materials. It will propose a diversity of religious activities in which women were engaged, indicating extensive involvement in shaping the religious life of New World slave communities.