he growing American fascination with Jesus imagery ran directly intothe slavery debates as well. There, the embodied white Jesus became acomplicated symbol of resistance and passivity. Visions and images ofJesus were part of the antislavery crusade.

John Hughes,

By the time the Civil War came, a host of white Americans directly connected Jesus to the slave. "The Christ of American civilization is the Slave,"a writer for William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator concluded.

For many black and white abolitionists, Jesus had most in common withthe enslaved.

"all men are created equal" caused havoc in a nation builtupon slavery, the whitening of Christ generated a host of conflicts and contradictions.

These were years when white American Protestants used renditions ofand ideas about the body of Jesus to redeem and control the United Statesand its people. They were hoping to make the United States a Jesus nation.

They taught thatJesus died for all but enslaved others and segregated people by race andstatus. And, worst of all, they made the Son of God into their own image

They taught theGolden Rule of Christ but lived for the greed of gain.

William Apess was certain that Jesus was not white.

I was a poor slave, and every body knowed I hadreligion, for it was Jesus with me every-where I went. I could never hearher talk about that heavenly journey."5

Mymaster looked at me and seemed to tremble."5

The physical size of this white Jesus was distinct. On almost all occasions, the sacred was small. Repeatedly, former slaves reported seeing"a little man" who was God's herald. One remembered, "God came to meas a little man. ... He was dressed in dark, but later he came dressed inwhite." Former slave Peter Randolph tried to explain the fascination withsacred smallness. "They think Jesus to be inferior to God in size; and thatthe reason why He is so small is, that He once dwelt in the flesh, and wasso badly treated as to hinder his growing large!"56 Usually diminutive andusually white, this savior had a powerful impact on those he visited. WhenChrist crossed the color line, he did so to help, not hurt. Here was a whiteman who wanted to save them, not to sell them

Spanish, Mexican, and white American authorities did not like whatnatives were doing with Christ. They did not appreciate Christ being rendered black or encouraging rebellions against their rule.

The field of Jesus visualization was bolstered by an influx of Catholic immigrants, a demographic shift that also fired Protestant nativism and questions of whiteness.

Visualizations of Jesus grew by leaps and bounds. New "Illuminated Bi-bles" with woodcut engravings were sold, the most expensive and popularbeing Harpers Illuminated and New Pictorial Bible. It was printed in installments between 1843 and 1846 and had more than 1,500 engravings Theentire volume cost more than twenty dollars, or about twenty days of laborfor a carpenter working on the Erie Canal (or twenty-eight days of work fora common laborer). According to Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, "This is byfar the most elegant specimen of printing ever produced in New York, toNew York City, P. T. Barnum capitalized on the growing regard for C iris sbody by placing a life-size wax figure of him in the American M

Tom Paine, now told readers that it was commonsense to join the "age of reason" and ditch religion.

The transition from light to white could be seen all throughout America.For whites, blacks, and Native Americans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Mormons, Jesus was becoming a white man

" Another new believer, Anson Call, also saw a blue-eyed Jesus. Christ came tohim with "light and beautiful skin with large blue eyes, a very full foreheadand his hair considerably black." What had been painstakingly pennedas blinding light, as a consuming fire, as defying all description, was nowput in the form of a white man with blue eyes.

1 saw the Lord and he spakeunto me saying Joseph thy Sins are forgiven thee." That was not exactlyright either. He saw the "crucifyed Lord" who actually said, "Joseph mySon thy Sins are forgiven thee." Jesus had come in the brightest of lights,and the Son of God had called Joseph his son

"Ask of God,

"[We] claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to thedictates of our own conscience,"

Jesus was a power among Indians, but often still a limited presence.Whether in California, Pennsylvania, or New England, most Native Americans continued to identify with older tribal faiths and had little or nothingto do with Christ.

"They constantly recurred to my mind.Even when 1 was asleep, I dreamt of that blood which Christ shed for us.Tschoop's meditation on the blood of Christ led to an awakening amongthe Mahicans of New York and the establishment of a Moravian Indiancommunity at Shekomeko. The Moravians also successfully won Indianconverts in Connecticut

his Indian Great Awakening produced some of the earliest publishedNative American theological and autobiographical writings. By writing forthemselves in Christian idioms, Indian authors created a new language andmeans of critiquing English colonialism

hites marveled at the advent of Indian conversions.

Light was not white. For colonial Americans, purity was not about color.It was about essence. Jesus as light connoted power, goodness, and love.He was, literally and figuratively, the light of the world. The color white,moreover, was not an unambiguous emblem of purity.

From the 1730s onward, the colonial world changed dramatically. NewProtestant immigrants came who were more open than were the Puritansto visualizing the sacred. Revival fires made heaven seem visible. Desiresto behold the sacred spread far and wide. Radical Baptist minister IsaacBackus confided time and again in his diary of his longing to "see" God andthat he wanted so badly for the Lord to

Whiteness never dominated these visions of Jesus, and many of thevisionaries were not white themselves. Native Americans and a new setof Protestant missionaries fixated on the redness of Christ, especially hisbloodied and broken body. A growing number of African American Christians turned him into a universal and impartial savior who stood beyondand called against the confines of bondage. White Protestants, in turn,transformed him into a God of liberty for themselves, but not necessarilyfor others.

There hecreated new stained-glass windows of Christ's life, death, resurrection, andascension. West's experience reflected where Jesus stood as a visual presence in revolutionary America: portrayals of him came from outsiders, andif one wanted to gain notoriety for it, one pretty much had to leave.

West saw more of America and the world than did most Americans.He was born in Pennsylvania in 1738, was supposedly taught by Indiansto paint, trained in Philadelphia in the 1750s, and then became a successful portrait painter in New York City. He then reversed the usual migratory pattern, traveling east to Europe in the early 1760s.

Their focus on the "inner light," through whichGod's spirit could speak to anyone at any time, seemed like theological andsocial chaos.

To blame a minister for thus declaring the truth to those who are underawakenings, and not immediately administering comfort to them, is like blaming a surgeon because when he has begun to thrust in his lance, whereby he hasalready put his patient to great pain, and he shrinks and cries out with anguish,he is so cruel that he won't stay his hand, but goes on to thrust it in further, tillhe comes to the core of the wound. Such a compassionate physician, who assoon as his patient began to flinch, should withdraw his hand, and go about immediately to apply a plaster, to skin over the wound, and leave the core untouched, would be one that would heal the hurt slightly, crying, "Peace, peace,when there is no peace" [Jer. 6:14; 8:11]. .

We had needalways to stand on our watch [Hab. 2:1], and to be well versed in the art of warand not to be ignorant of the devices of our enemies, and to take heed lest byany means we be beguiled through their subtlety

If we take the Scriptures for our rule, then the greater and higher are the exercises of love to God

God in this work has begun at the lower end, and he has made use of theweak and foolish things of the world to carry on his wo

he error of those who have ill thoughts of the great religious operation on theminds of men, that has been carried on of late in New England (so far as theground of such an error has been in the understanding, and not in the disposition), seems fundamentally to lie in three things: first, in judging of this work apriori; secondly, in not taking the Holy Scriptures as an whole rule whereby tojudge of such operations; thirdly, in not justly separating and distinguishing thegood from the bad

Officiousness in tendring their Help where it is not needed, to disservethe Interest of the Redeemer

That when Persons are extraordinarily affected with a recentDiscovery of the Greatness and Excellency of the divine Being, the Certaintyand infinite Importance of eternal Things, the Preciousness of Souls, and thedreadful Danger and Madness of Mankind, together with a great Sense ofGOD's distinguishing Kindness and Love to them; no Wonder that now theythink they must exert themselves, and do something extraordinary, for theHonour of God, and the Good of Souls, and know not how to forbear speakingand acting with uncommon Earnestness and Vigo

the End of the Influence of theSPIRIT of GOD is not to increase Men's natural Capacities:" But 'tis to fit theirPowers for religious Exercis

How far 'tis a Truth, that this People have scarce heard of sucha Thing as the Outpouring of the SPIRIT of GOD

People, in order to know, whether theInfluences they are under, are from the SPIRIT, don't carefully examine them bythe Word of GOD,

View me, Lord, from head to foot, and see mecomplete in Christ; view me and smile,

I fly to the complete righteousnessof Christ, and there I will hang and plead for acceptance with God.

‘I am a free woman of color.’’

Of 221 people baptized in New Orleans in 1733, 165, or 75 percent, wereenslaved people. Even though enslaved females represented only 44 percentof the total slave population, they made up 54 percent of those who ap-proached the baptismal font during those years.∞

Their e√orts essentially met withfailure. Planters were, for the most part, resistant to the project and theenslaved found little in Anglicanism to attract them. But the Anglican e√ortwas also hampered by a shortage of missionary personnel.

Taking these womeninto account complicates the history of American Catholicism by revealingan earlier stratum of the institution in which people of African descentconstituted the largest and most active segment of one of the church’s mostsizable colonial congregations

The historiography of American Catholicism has long been dominated bythe ethnic immigrant paradigm. In the three decades before the outbreakof the Civil War, thousands of Irish and German immigrants poured intoAmerica and its Catholic Church, swamping the small community anchoredby Maryland Catholics that preceded it. The church that took shape in thenineteenth century was large, fast growing, urban,

Of these churches, 70 percent could be de-scribed as Irish, and the clergy was said to be ‘almost entirely Irish.’ The nextlargest group was the Germans, who occupied one out of every four churchesin the city.’

It is a storythat reveals itself only by looking beyond the priests and parishes that plantedthe administrative apparatus of Tridentine Catholicism in colonial Louisianato women, black and white, religious and lay

ne gets the impression that women were singularly unimportant,even in crises that lesser scholars might argue revolved around women. In

Here her relat10ns ipl d by a nurturing parent. This paternalild t d and conso e ·troubled ch correc e h d'd perhaps

knew she was but . h . s sorrow.Th , a wit enng flowerats here tod h 'ay, per aps gone in an hourMore fool then I to 1 k h , ...A 'f . 00 on t at was lents I mme own h h ., w en t us impermanen

Therefore let us choose life—that we, and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving toHim, for He is our life and our prosperity.

rom the former Considerations arise these conclusions. First, this love among Christians is areal thing, not imaginary. Secondly, this love is as absolutely necessary to the being of the body ofChrist, as the sinews and other ligaments of a natural body are to the being of that body. Thirdly,this love is a divine, spiritual, nature; free, active, strong, courageous, and permanent; undervaluingall things beneath its proper object and of all the graces, this makes us nearer to resemble thevirtues of our heavenly father

There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’times. There is a time also when Christians (though they give not all yet) must give beyond theirability