Katharine Gerbner has written op-eds, essays, and academic articles about religion, race, slavery, and freedom. She publishes in both peer-reviewed and popular venues, including the Washington Post, Church History, and the William & Mary Quarterly.
Op-eds and Public Writing
The Immanent Frame:
“Race”
Race is a political construct that has evolved over time. This short essay on “Race” shows how the idea of whiteness emerged from Christian foundations and traces the shifting relationship between race and religion from the colonial period until today.
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Friends Journal:
“Slavery in the Quaker World: Christian Slavery and White Supremacy,”
While Quakers are known for their role in the abolitionist movement, “Slavery in the Quaker World” reveals how early Quakers were complicit in Atlantic Slavery and traces the legacy of slave-owning Quakers to the creation of race and White Supremacy.
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Washington Post:
“People think whiteness is innate. They’re wrong: it was created to keep black people from voting.”
The origins of race are political – not biological. This Washington Post article traces the emergence of racial categories in the colonial era, revealing how “whiteness” was created to exclude freed Black people from political power.
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Barn Raiser:
“What Counts As American Religion?”
In this book review of Thomas Tweed’s Religion in the Lands that Became America, Katharine Gerbner considers the people and stories that have been part of American religious history, who has been left out, and what should count as American religion.
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The Immanent Frame:
“Conversion and Race in Colonial Slavery,”
Rejecting simplistic narratives about slave control or resistance, “Conversion and Race in Colonial Slavery” examines the complicated history and meaning of conversion for enslaved and freed Africans in the Atlantic world.
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Academic Articles
“Maroon Science: Knowledge, Secrecy, and Crime in Jamaica,” in Critical Approaches to Science and Religion, eds. Terence Keel, Myrna Perez Sheldon, and Ahmed Ragab (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023).
This chapter examines the historical relationship between obeah and science among Jamaican Maroons, exploring how the criminalization of obeah in 1760 led to the gradual adoption of “science” as an alternative term for obeah.
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“Archival Violence, Archival Capital: Ethics, Inheritance, and Reparations in the Thistlewood Diaries” in William & Mary Quarterly 79:4 (2022), 595-624.
Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “inheritance,” this article argues that scholars must recognize how their research creates “archival capital.” Through a material history of the Thistlewood Diaries, Katharine Gerbner calls for reparative approaches to archival acquisition and stewardship.
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“Religion and Rebellion: Slavery and Empire in Early America,” in Religion and US Empire: New Critical Histories, eds. Tisa Wenger and Sylvester Johnson (New York: NYU Press, 2022).
Focusing on the Stono Revolt, Tacky’s Rebellion, and Vesey’s Conspiracy, this article argues that enslaved rebels had a formative influence on evolving concepts of religion and imperial governance in the British Empire and early United States.
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“Church and Slavery,” in Oxford Bibliographies, ed. Trevor Burnard (Oxford University Press, 2022).
A bibliographic essay describing the central debates about the Church and Slavery in the Atlantic World, offering synopses of the major books and articles in the field.
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“Protestant Supremacy: The Story of a Neologism,” forum on Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World in Church History 88:3 (2019).
In a Church History forum about her 2018 book, Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner describes how and why she coined the term “Protestant Supremacy” as a precedent for “White Supremacy.”
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“Writing Against Slavery: Germantown, Quakers, and the Ethnic Origins of Early Anti-Slavery Thought” in Babel of the Atlantic: Language and Cultural Politics in Colonial Pennsylvania, ed. Bethany Wiggin (Penn State University Press, 2019).
This article examines the ethnic and linguistic origins of early antislavery thought among Quakers in late seventeenth-century Pennsylvania, focusing on the pivotal 1688 Germantown protest.
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“Introduction: Missionary Encounters in the Atlantic World,” with Karin Vélez, Journal for Early Modern History 21, nos. 1/2 (2017).
The introduction to a special issue of the Journal for Early Modern History, this article raises questions about the meaning of missionary encounters in the early modern world by making interdenominational and inter-imperial connections.
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“‘They Call Me Obea’: German Moravian Missionaries and Afro-Caribbean Religion in Jamaica, 1754-1760,” in Atlantic Studies 12:2(2015), 160-178.
In order to understand the meaning of Obeah in mid-eighteenth century Jamaica, this article argues that scholars must view Christian practice and European natural history as being part of the Afro-Caribbean category of Obeah.
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“Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” in History Compass 13:3 (2015), 134-147.
The meaning of the word “conversion” remains contested among scholars, particularly when used to refer to non-European conversion to Christianity. This article surveys a variety of alternatives to the word “conversion,” and argues that discarding the term risks minimizing or overlooking the experiences of non-European converts.
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“Beyond the ‘Halfway Covenant’: Church Membership, Extended Baptism, and Outreach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1656-1667,” in The New England Quarterly 85:2 (2012), 281-301.
Examining the tension between church purity and community outreach, this article focuses on Puritan minister Jonathan Mitchel’s approach to baptism in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1656 to 1667.
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“Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the ‘Exhortation,’ and the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Debate on Slavery,” in Early American Studies 9:3 (2011), 552-575.
This article investigates the emergence of early antislavery thought within the Quaker community, focusing on two pivotal documents: the “Germantown Protest” and the “Exhortation and Caution to Friends concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes,” printed by George Keith.
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“The Ultimate Sin: Christianising Slaves on 17th century Barbados,” in Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave Studies 31:1 (2010), 57-73.
This article argues that an attempted rebellion in 1675, which was widely blamed on Quakers, linked slave conversion to rebellion in a new and decisive way that had repercussions throughout the English Atlantic World.
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“‘We are against the traffik of men-body’: The Germantown Quaker Protest of 1688 and the Origins of American Abolitionism.” in Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 74:2 (2007), 149-172.
A textual analysis of the first protest against slavery written in the English colonies, which was composed by German and Dutch speaking Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania.