Ezra's Bookshelf

Rebecca’s Revival

by Jon F. Sensbach · 315 pages

Jon F. Sensbach's Rebecca's Revival tells the extraordinary story of Rebecca Protten, born into slavery in the Caribbean around 1718, who became one of the first Black Christian missionaries in the Atlantic world. Protten, converted by Moravian missionaries in the Danish West Indies, began preaching to enslaved Africans, enduring persecution from colonial authorities who feared the implications of Black Christianity. She married a German missionary, traveled to Germany, and later continued her work in West Africa. Sensbach, a historian at Saint Joseph's University, draws on Moravian archives in Germany and the Caribbean to reconstruct Protten's life and context. The book examines how enslaved and free Black people appropriated Christianity to resist oppression, create community, and imagine freedom. Sensbach situates Protten within the broader Atlantic world of evangelical Christianity, African diaspora religion, and colonial commerce. Rebecca's Revival is both microhistory and Atlantic history, using one life to illuminate vast transformations. Sensbach writes accessibly while engaging scholarly debates about religion, slavery, and agency. Essential reading for anyone interested in early Black Christianity, women's history, or the global connections of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.