Hell Without Fires
Subtitle: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2021
Language: eng
Number of pages: 151
ISBN-13: 9780813068596
Description: Hell without fires examines the spiritual and earthly results of conversion to Christianity for African American antebellum writers. Using autobiographical narratives, the book shows how black writers transformed the earthly hell of slavery into a "New Jerusalem", a place they could call home. These stories by five of the earliest antebellum spiritual writers - George White, John Jea, David Smith, Solomon Bayley, and Zilpha Elaw - create a new religious language that merges Christian Scripture with distinct retellings of biblical stores.