Relations of the Negro with Christianity in Portuguese America
1958 ◽
Vol 14
(4)
◽
pp. 454-484
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Keyword(s):
The African came to know Christianity, in this part of the New World, as a system of values (the Christian ideas), and as a normative structure (the Catholic Church). These two were interrelated, although frequently in conflict with other values and other structures emerging from the social system which was established as a consequence of Portuguese colonization. In his quality as slave he was integrated into an inter-relational combine which included new forms of ecologic adaptation, of economy, of inter-personal relationships and their regulation, on a rural basis, and of a slave-holding, latifundiarian and senhorial orientation.