Mather’s campaign to baptize enslaved Africans gained institutional momentum

Evidence

If Mather stayed abreast of current events in the colonies in the 1720s, then he had no reason to worry about his missionary legacy. More fervently than any American voice since the 1680s, Mather had urged slaveholders to baptize enslaved Africans, and enslaved Africans to leave the religions of their ancestors. Moving slowly and carefully uphill, he had made strides over the years. Like-minded Anglican missionaries, such as James Blair, Thomas Bray, and the agents of his Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, had taken this idea further. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 188

Categorization

• DEFINE: This passage is early evidence of the assimilationist strain: persuading the enslaved to abandon ancestral religions and adopt the colonizer’s — a position Kendi will categorize, worth flagging as the scheme’s roots.
• XREF: Connects to the later chapters analyzing how missionaries’ conversion campaigns served as a racial-ideas mechanism justifying continued enslavement while claiming uplift.