Black Missionary in an Age of Enslavement - by Noel Leo Erskine (Hardcover)

About the Book

This fascinating and brilliantly researched biography explores the life, impact, and legacy of the enslaved American Baptist George Liele (1750-1825), the first African American ordained to the Christian ministry who influenced Black theology and the church's understanding of missions.

Book Synopsis

This fascinating and brilliantly researched biography explores the life, impact, and legacy of the enslaved American Baptist George Liele (1750-1825), the first African American ordained to the Christian ministry who influenced Black theology and the church's understanding of missions.

Review Quotes

Black Missionary in an Age of Enslavement is an erudite documentation of George Liele's pioneering role as the first African American Baptist missionary and his enduring impact on the fight for freedom and justice for Afro-Jamaicans. Professor Erskine's remarkable detailing of Liele's legacy and his lasting influence on Afro-Caribbean religious movements and the struggle for emancipation shows how his ministry laid the groundwork for subsequent leaders. It is here that we see the pivotal role in the abolitionist movements within the British colonies. With its compelling prose, breadth, analytic innovation, and page turning revelations, this is a must read in all interested in uncovering the complex realities of the Black Atlantic world!

Baptists often identify themselves as a missionary people, and they customarily begin their narration of this identity by invoking William Carey's voyage to India in 1793. But this starting point for a story of White Baptist mission to other ethnic groups in other lands ignores the fact that ten years before Carey set sail for India, a formerly enslaved African American Baptist named George Liele had become the first Baptist to travel to another land to engage in mission with his arrival in Jamaica in 1783. Dr. Erskine succeeds in re-centering the story of Baptist mission with Liele as its pioneer, not only by detailing the remarkable story of Liele's life and ministry, but by exploring the liberative framework of Liele's theology that motivated his missionary work and left an enduring legacy.

Readers will love this book because it tells the extraordinary story of a late 18th century enslaved Africa named George Liele who was converted to Christianity by his master's pastor, preached the gospel to other slaves, became the first African to receive ordination and founded the first black church in both the United States and Jamaica.

About the Author

Noel Leo Erskine is a Professor of Theology and Ethics at Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. A native of Jamaica, he has been a visiting professor in ten schools in six countries. Erskine has written six books and edited five, among which include Decolonizing Theology (1998), King Among the Theologians (1994) From Garvey to Marley: Rastafari Theology, (2005), Black Theology and Pedagogy (2008), Plantation Church: How African American Religion was Born in Caribbean Slavery (2014) and Black Theology: Thinking about Our Faith (2023).