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Seaborne Conversions, 1700-1800

出版	Duke University, 2005
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=AZg_tAEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋The beliefs of the Old World did not simply transfer to the New, but experienced a translation in the crossing. The close reading of eighteenth-century travel narratives benefits the understanding of American religion by viewing religious beliefs during a moment of liminality---an in-between time and space---in which no particular religious institution predominated. Three groups---sailors, passengers, and clergymen---constitute the objects of the study and provide its evidentiary base through letters, diaries, autobiographies, and ship's logs. This research argues that the process by which North America developed an increased reliance upon individualism and a functional religious pluralism incubated onboard Atlantic sailing vessels. These eighteenth-century voyages combined divergent and competing worldviews in a relatively open, non-institutional atmosphere that reveals the particular mentalities of the participants and their belief systems. Section one describes the environmental circumstances aboard ship that formed the backdrop for seagoing religious belief and culture---the maritime dimensions of time, space, gender, nature, and providence. Section two examines how distinct cultures and religious approaches adapted to ship life, and how the weeks and months spent at sea altered their religions. The ocean crossing placed limitations on varying Protestant traditions. The "Middle Passage" of African slaves offers helpful comparisons with this European experience, showing the common alterations and challenges that both underwent. Unlike passengers, sailors remained in the in-between space of the Atlantic. Seamen have often suffered the label irreligious, but a closer examination of their lives reveals profoundly religious rituals and behaviors. Individualism characterized the religion of sailors whose lives demonstrated the effects of institutional religious deprivation. Sailors also had to navigate multiple religious options. These shipboard meetings help to explain the formation of broader patterns in American culture, especially the emergence of a functional pluralism. The eighteenth century sea passage did not create pluralism but placed multiple world-views into single communities. In short, the ship crossing germinated the American approach to denominationalism involving mutual acceptance and competition, openness and exclusivity. The ship anticipates the difficulties of twenty-first century life, as well as providing a model for navigating modern trends such as globalization and religious pluralism.