Black Missionary in an Age of Enslavement: The Life and Times of George Liele

Much discussion of Protestant Christianity and its missions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is focused on the work of English missionary William Carey and American Missionaries Adoniram and Ann Judson, who travelled to India in 1793 and 1813. This book reframes this conventional understanding of mission studies and outreach by exploring the legacy and life of the enslaved American Baptist George Liele (1750-1825)--the first African American ordained to the Christian ministry.

Black Missionary in an Age of Enslavement looks at Christianity and mission through the life and times of Liele, highlighting his travels as an itinerant preacher in South Carolina, Georgia, Jamaica (and through his protégé there, David George), Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone and, toward the end of his life, England. Liele knew what it meant to be both slave and free. In Jamaica, as in Savannah, he was imprisoned for his faith and saw the survival of the church as pivotal. Liele was a man of firsts: the first African American ordained to the Christian ministry (May 20, 1775), and the first missionary to take the Christian gospel outside the United States. It was Liele, more than any other missionary, who initiated the practice of offering education to native people both enslaved and free. With the hymnal in one hand and the Bible in the other, Liele taught the enslaved and free that they were destined for liberation.

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 served as secretary of The Society for the Study of Black Religion and is a member of the American Academy of Religion. In 2021-2022, he received the ＂On Eagles Wing Teaching Award＂ at the Candler School of Theology. Erskine has authored 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 (forthcoming, 2023).