Religion was an integral part of the European colonization of the Americas, as was race. From their first steps in the New World, European colonists faced peoples who differed from them both physically and culturally and had no way to make sense of this encounter other than relying on their preconceived notions. Faith was the main of these notions, and the colonists’ assumptions regarding those designated as “others” inevitably bore a religious imprint. Everything said above applies in full force to New England, where the Puritan newcomers rationalized their interactions with Native Americans and later African slaves with the help of their religious convictions. Bailey’s (2011) Race and Redemption explores how the Puritan worldview, with its heavy emphasis on salvation in faith, influenced New Englanders’ perception of the people of color. The book argues that the New Englanders’ Puritan ideas directly informed their notions of race, and while the well-structured narrative generally supports this claim, the nonchalant use of sources undermines its persuasiveness to a degree.
As mentioned above – and also stressed in the title – the book’s central topic is how religious beliefs of European newcomers to New England informed their perception of the people of color. Bailey (2011) sets the study in the 17th and 18th centuries, from the arrival of the first settlers to the time they achieved undisputed dominance in the region. The author’s main point of interest is how Puritan New Englanders subjugated Native Americans and blacks “socially, culturally, intellectually, legally, and theologically,” and how their religious worldview affected their perceptions (Bailey 2011, 7). These two questions are at the core of the book and constitute the issue that the author grapples with.
Bailey’s thesis is also relatively straightforward and outlined as early as the introduction. The central claim is that Puritans constructed the notion of race as early as the 17th century to interpret their experiences with those culturally and physically different through the lens of their faith (Bailey 2011). In particular, Bailey (2011) states that European settlers used their religious beliefs to come to terms with the undeniable reality of racial division and oppression, finding peace in the idea of redemption. In the author’s own words, Puritans “constructed race from the spiritual freedom found in the redemption being offered by puritans of all persuasions, tying race and redemption even closer together” (Bailey 2011, p. 14). While they deliberately and often arbitrarily assigned certain attributes to Native Americans and African slaves in their minds, the idea of offering redemption through faith alleviated potential spiritual conflicts resulting from racial discrimination.
The book’s structure corresponds to the thesis and furthers it in the course of five chapters. Chapter 1 explores how white Puritans established white dominance in the region after their arrival (Bailey 2011). Chapter 2 discusses the legally reinforced social order that emerged in New England from the colonists’ perception of people of color as inferior (Bailey 2011). In the third chapter, Bailey (2011) reflects on how Puritan narratives shaped the image of Native Americans and black in racial terms by assuming the privilege of talking for and instead of them. After that, Chapter 4 demonstrates how white new Englanders used religious symbols and notions to exercise and reinforce control over Native Americans and African slaves (Bailey 2011). Finally, the fifth and last chapter demonstrates how religious justifications helped Puritans to rationalize racial oppression by complementing it with the notion of spiritual redemption that Puritans offered to other races (Bailey 2011). Thus, the book advances its thesis logically way by exploring how Puritans established dominance, how they framed it in racial terms, how they exercised control, and how religion helped to make sense of it.
The author uses a fairly solid complement of sources to reinforce his claims. Primary sources mostly come from colonial officials, such as John Winthrop and Puritan preachers, such as John Eliot – especially since some, like Thomas Mayhew, could perform both roles. Yet while the amount of sources is satisfactory, the usage is questionable. Although the scope of the work includes almost two centuries, Bailey (2011) barely considers the contextual differences between his sources. In Chapter 3, he seamlessly quotes Cotton Mather, who wrote in 1706, and Jonathan Edwards’ letter from 1753 after each other to illustrate the belief in redemption through faith for non-whites (Bailey 2011). Yet these two sources have important contextual differences: the former appeared before the First Great Awakening, and the latter – a good decade after. In Mather’s time, the redemption of other races through Puritanism was largely limited to individual cases, and for Edwards, it was the existing reality that embraced entire communities. Yet the author treats these sources as if there is no difference between them, and this lack of chronological perspective is a considerable downside.
This nonchalant treatment of contextually different sources is the main factor that detracts from the book’s persuasiveness. The author’s main thesis is fairly substantiated: it is hard to argue that white Puritans dominated New Englanders of other races or that their Puritan views played a prominent role in how they perceived the world around them. Yet insufficient attention to historical context undermines the appeal of Bailey’s (2011) claims, as one cannot help but think that small but crucial differences get lost along the way. Even the author’s choice of words reinforces this flaw: Bailey (2011) uses the deceptively universal term “Puritans” to represent the White colonists dominating New England as a largely homogenous group across two centuries. The book’s terminology implicitly suggests that John Winthrop, Thomas Mayhew, and Jonathan Edwards had roughly the same interpretation of their religious creed informed by the same experiences, as they were all “Puritans.” Since this was obviously not the case, the reader is left with the impression that the book does not address many important intricacies that likely affected New Englander Puritans’ perception of the race from the early 17th to the late 18th century.
As one can see, Bailey’s (2011) Race and Redemption offers fairly solid insight into the perception of race in colonial New England during the 17th and 18th centuries, but the book is still flawed. The author seeks to explore how religion informed Puritan perception of race in the white New Englanders’ interactions with Native Americans and African slaves. The main thesis is that Puritan beliefs were crucial in exercising control over non-whites, and the notion of redemption helped colonists to come to terms with the sometimes conflicting reality of racial discrimination. The book’s structure advances the argument in a logical manner, and the amount and variety of sources are satisfactory. However, the author’s insufficient attention to the historical context of his primary sources undermines the book’s persuasiveness considerably.
Reference
Bailey, Richard A. 2011. Race and Redemption in Puritan New England. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.