God & Slavery in the Americas

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

More than a century before African slaves were trafficked to the Virginia colony in 1619, Christopher Columbus transported captured indigenous peoples of the New World to Spain. The dispossession and enslavement of non-Europeans in the colonization of the Americas was justified by Christians but also condemned by Christians with different political and economic interests. This development course in theology introduces students to the challenging intersection of faith, slavery, and freedom by exploring key figures and events that have shaped the complex historical legacy of Christianity in the Americas, a hemispheric past that remains ever bound together. In addition to Christianity's role in colonial expansion and racial ideology, the course especially considers how faith in God provided a catalyst for the empowerment and resistance of the oppressed and their advocates in shared struggles to attain greater justice, equality, and independence. From the "Protector of the Indians" Bartolome de las Casas to St. Oscar Romero, and the "the Black Moses" Harriet Tubman to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the course explores these and other extraordinary figures of hope who risked their lives in the Americas to both protest grave social injustices and promote authentic expressions of faith. To confront this turbulent past theologically, students will examine idolatry, migration, land, liberty, poverty, and the common good as normative categories with ongoing significance in the face of contemporary social crises affecting the most vulnerable peoples and the environment.