Gale L. Kenny – författare

The Oberlin College mission to Jamaica, begun in the 1830s, was an ambitious, and ultimately troubled, effort to use the example of emancipation in the British West Indies to advance the domestic agenda of American abolitionists. White Americans hoped to argue that American slaves, once freed, could be absorbed productively into the society that had previously enslaved them, but their “civilizing mission” did not go as anticipated. Gale L. Kenny’s illuminating study examines the differing ideas of freedom held by white evangelical abolitionists and freed people in Jamaica and explores the consequences of their encounter for both American and Jamaican history.Kenny finds that white Americans—who went to Jamaica intending to assist with the transition from slavery to Christian practice and solid citizenship—were frustrated by liberated blacks’ unwillingness to conform to Victorian norms of gender, family, and religion. In tracing the history of the thirty-year mission, Kenny makes creative use of available sources to unpack assumptions on both sides of this American-Jamaican interaction, showing how liberated slaves in many cases were able not just to resist the imposition of white mores but to redefine the terms of the encounter.

The Oberlin College mission to Jamaica, begun in the 1830s, was an ambitious, and ultimately troubled, effort to use the example of emancipation in the British West Indies to advance the domestic agenda of American abolitionists. White Americans hoped to argue that American slaves, once freed, could be absorbed productively into the society that had previously enslaved them, but their “civilizing mission” did not go as anticipated. Gale L. Kenny’s illuminating study examines the differing ideas of freedom held by white evangelical abolitionists and freed people in Jamaica and explores the consequences of their encounter for both American and Jamaican history.Kenny finds that white Americans—who went to Jamaica intending to assist with the transition from slavery to Christian practice and solid citizenship—were frustrated by liberated blacks’ unwillingness to conform to Victorian norms of gender, family, and religion. In tracing the history of the thirty-year mission, Kenny makes creative use of available sources to unpack assumptions on both sides of this American-Jamaican interaction, showing how liberated slaves in many cases were able not just to resist the imposition of white mores but to redefine the terms of the encounter.

Illuminates how white American Protestant women embraced a racially specific version of socialinclusiveness that centered themselves as the normAmidst the global instability of the early twentieth century, white Christian American women embracedthe idea of an "empire of Christ" that was racially diverse, but which they believed they were uniquelyqualified to manage. America's burgeoning power, combined with women's rising roles within thechurch, led to white Protestant women adopting a feminism rooted in religion and imperialism.Gale L. Kenny examines this Christian imperial feminism from the women's missionary movement tocreate a Christian world order. She shows that this Christian imperial feminism marked a break from anearlier Protestant world view that focused on moral and racial purity and in which interactions amongraces were inconceivable. This new approach actually prioritized issues like civil rights and racialintegration, as well as the uplift of women, though the racially diverse world Christianity it aspired towas still to be rigidly hierarchically ordered, with white women retaining a privileged place as guardians.In exposing these dynamics, this book departs from recent scholarship on white evangelical nationalismto focus on the racial politics of white religious liberalism. Christian Imperial Feminism adds a necessarylayer to our understanding of religion, gender, and empire.