Look at What You Have Done: Sacred Power and Reimagining the Divine

Abstract

Rebecca Cox Jackson, a younger contemporary of Jarena Lee, was born in 1795 near Philadelphia. Initially, she was affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Her older brother Joseph Cox was a local preacher and held several offices for the AME denomination including that of elder. Joseph, along with Rebecca’s husband Samuel Jackson who was also AME, figures prominently in her journal writings. Jackson’s diary entries are edited by Jean McMahon Humez and published as Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress. In these entries, Jackson relates experiences and encounters that point to a dispositional propensity toward religious concepts and elements that in some ways parallel aspects of a West African ethos or common orientation cited in the works of Martin and Hayes. The first indication of this phenomenon occurs in Jackson’s description of her religious conversion that takes place in 1830 when Jackson is 35 years old. Similar to other Protestant Christian conversion narratives Jackson experiences a spiritual awakening of the soul that is initiated by an acute emotional and spiritual crisis. This crisis erupts when Jackson is confronted by one of her deepest fears—her fear of lightning. When a lightning storm would strike she would take to her bed ill. On this particular occasion, Jackson prays mightily to alleviate the attack. In her journal she describes what happens next.KeywordsBlack WomanAfrican American WomanMystical ExperienceInstitutional AuthoritySpiritual CapitalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.