The World They Made Together
The book by Mechal Sobel suggests that a cooperative relationship between Africans and British in seventeenth and eighteenth century Virginia influenced and molded both cultures’ perceptions and values as a united religious entity. Religion in seventeenth century Virginia changed dramatically due to the closeness of the Afro-American and lower class Virginian cultures. To expand on Sobel’s thesis, the Great Awakening of eighteenth century Virginia served as a catalyst to amalgamate the values and morals of these black and white cultures.
Many similarities between the traditional African and British cultures existed prior to the convergence of these two societies and the impending ...
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alive through the handful of elite Virginians. This is best illustrated in the way Thomas Jefferson chose to run his household. He "sought to teach proper use of time to all the whites and blacks in his extended family" (Sobel 58). Jefferson believed "it was only by a methodical distribution of our hours, and a rigorous, inflexible observance of it that any steady progress can be made" (Sobel 59). Furthermore, he adorned his home with a multitude of clocks, including one giant clock, which could be heard "all over the farm" (Sobel 57), seen from the upper galleries and not only marked hours, minutes and seconds, but also kept track of the days (Sobel 57). This attitude certainly did not only apply to Jefferson, but "William Byrd, Landon Carter, George Washington…and many others, all through the period, were concerned about the time and the use of time" (Sobel 54).
The lower class, however, measured time in a far less exact manner. The lower class, the majority of whom were ...
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two races a common occurrence. This was especially true when the Great Awakening, a time of substantial religious revival, came about. To begin with, the two cultures already had some religious aspects in common. The most outstanding being a similarity between one fairly widely received African myth about the creation of man and how death was brought to mankind, and the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In the African myth, "it is told ‘that God forbade the first people to eat either a certain fruit, or eggs, or animals.’ When they ate this forbidden fruit, ‘death came to them’" (Sobel 171).
Despite the shared religious and work related values of the Afro-Americans and Virginians, ...
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"The World They Made Together." Essayworld.com. July 5, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-World-They-Made-Together/29571.
"The World They Made Together." Essayworld.com. July 5, 2005. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-World-They-Made-Together/29571.
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