Books by Christina C Davidson
GFDD/FUNGLODE, 2018
This study examines the history and current state of evangelical Christianity in the Dominican Re... more This study examines the history and current state of evangelical Christianity in the Dominican Republic. It focuses on two historical Protestant denominations: the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) and the Iglesia Evangélica Dominicana (I.E.D.). Each of these denominations was founded in the Dominican Republic during key moments in the country’s history. Using historical documents and interviews with church leaders, this article focuses on the ways that each institution has adapted to Dominican society in the twenty-first century while also maintaining ties to the United States. It additionally questions how factors such as social marginalization, racial discrimination, the growth of the Dominican evangelical community, and continued connections to U.S. institutions have affected the trajectory of these churches. Ultimately, this research analyzes how historical church leaders view their place within Dominican society and their historic and current ties to U.S. institutions.
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Papers by Christina C Davidson
Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories, 2022
Considering Anglo-US Protestant evangelization in Latin America at the start of the twentieth cen... more Considering Anglo-US Protestant evangelization in Latin America at the start of the twentieth century, this chapter examines the racial hierarchy that White US missionaries purposefully constructed and vigilantly guarded in the Dominican Republic. By constructing and imposing such racial hierarchy, White US evangelicals engaged in a form of spiritual warfare diametrically opposed to Black Protestantism and an emerging Black anti-colonial activism.
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Reconstruction and Empire: The Legacies of Abolition and Union Victory for an Imperial Age, 2022
In contrast to the traditional historiographical focus on Africa, this chapter shifts the locus o... more In contrast to the traditional historiographical focus on Africa, this chapter shifts the locus of scholarly attention to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola where the AME Church established churches and schools in the 1870s and 1880s prior to enacting a robust missionary program on the African continent. It argues that the AME Church’s foray into foreign missions was a direct outgrowth of the denomination’s expansion to the U.S. South during Reconstruction.
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Journal of African American History, 2021
Despite the many examples of Black internationalist protest against US empire in secular society,... more Despite the many examples of Black internationalist protest against US empire in secular society, scholars have not recorded the same degree of ambivalence among Black Protestant Christians at the end of the nineteenth century. Countering a singular vision of Black Christian thought, this article examines a moment in African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church history when clergy quarreled over the idea of ecclesiastical imperialism—the attempt to unite all people of African descent through Protestant Christian evangelization and AME Church expansion. Stationed in Haiti, Episcopal bishop James T. Holly developed the idea of ecclesiastical imperialism in opposition of the AME Church’s reunion with the British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Church of Canada. Rather than a petty interdenominational dispute, the AME-BME organic union debate exposed the paradox of Black equality predicated on white religious supremacy. Objectors to the union challenged the AME Church’s emerging ideology of Pan-African Christian unity and charted a distinct path forward for the denomination, the African Diaspora, and the United States.
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Estudios Sociales, 2020
La Iglesia episcopal metodista africana (AME, por sus siglas en inglés), iglesia negra fundad... more La Iglesia episcopal metodista africana (AME, por sus siglas en inglés), iglesia negra fundada en los Estados Unidos en 1816, se estableció por primera vez en el este de Haití cuando más de 6.000 hombres libres negros emigraron de los Estados Unidos a La Española entre 1824 y 1825. Casi un siglo después, la iglesia AME creció rápidamente en la República Dominicana a medida que un grupo importante de personas provenientes de las Antillas menores inglesas se estableció en el sureste dominicano para trabajar en las plantaciones de azúcar. Este artículo examina los vínculos entre los descendientes de inmigrantes afroamericanos, las personas provenientes del Caribe inglés y los líderes de la AME con sede en EE. UU., entre los años 1899-1916.
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Church History, 2020
This article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Repub... more This article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Republic between 1905 and 1911, a brief period of political stability in the years leading up to the U.S. Occupation (1916–1924). Although Protestant missions during this period remained small in scale on the Catholic island, the views of British and American missionaries evidence how international perceptions of Dominicans transformed in the early twentieth century. Thus, this article makes two key interventions within the literature on Caribbean race and religion. First, it shows how outsiders’ ideas about the Dominican Republic's racial composition aimed to change the Dominican Republic from a “black” country into a racially ambiguous “Latin” one on the international stage. Second, in using North Atlantic missionaries’ perspectives to track this shift, it argues that black-led Protestant congregations represented a possible alternative future that both elite Dominicans and white North ...
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Journal of Africana Religions, 2017
Often recognized for its advocacy on behalf of African descendants, the African Methodist Episcop... more Often recognized for its advocacy on behalf of African descendants, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church has been silent on issues regarding anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic. By tracing the historical connection between Black America and Haiti in the nineteenth century and recounting the twentieth-century history of the AME Church in the Dominican Republic, this article explains how an institution created in defense of racial equality could inadvertently facilitate its own silencing. Using archival research, ethnography, and interviews, this article critically analyzes narratives that distance Dominican African Methodists from African Americans and Haitians. It argues that such silences in the AME Church are the result of the church’s social marginalization in the Dominican Republic, African American leaders’ habitual neglect of the AME Church’s Dominican branches, and the assimilation of Black Anglophone migrants into Dominican culture.
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New West Indian Guide, 2015
The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a black Church founded in the United States in 1816... more The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, a black Church founded in the United States in 1816, was first established in eastern Haiti when over 6,000 black freemen emigrated from the United States to Hispaniola between 1824 and 1825. Almost a century later, the AME Church grew rapidly in the Dominican Republic as West Indians migrated to the Dominican southeast to work on sugar plantations. This article examines the links between African-American immigrant descendants, West Indians, and U.S.-based AME leaders between the years 1899-1916. In focusing on Afro-diasporic exchange in the Church and the hardships missionary leaders faced on the island, the article reveals the unequal power relations in the AME Church, demonstrates the significance of the southeast to Dominican AME history, and brings the Dominican Republic into larger discussions of Afro-diasporic exchange in the circum-Caribbean.
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Book Reviews by Christina C Davidson
Church History, 2021
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H-Net Reviews, 2017
Review of Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930-1961 ... more Review of Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930-1961 by Edward Paulino.
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Journal of African American History, 2019
Review of Slavery and Silence: Latin America and the U.S. Slave Debate by Paul D. Naish.
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Hispanic American Historical Review, 2018
Review of The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World by Davi... more Review of The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic World by David Kazanjian.
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Digital History by Christina C Davidson
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Books by Christina C Davidson
Papers by Christina C Davidson
Book Reviews by Christina C Davidson
Digital History by Christina C Davidson