I'm entering my senior year in history and need to find a topic for my capstone.
This other r/AskHistorians post relates to my idea.
Recent polling showed a decline in participation in religion in the US among (I believe) every ethnicity/race. However, Pew Research shows that black Americans have the largest percentage of self-identification as Christian at 79%.
The previous user mentioned that 1/3 of slaves brought to the Americas were Muslim. That means that they had exposure to Abrahamic religions and monotheism in general.
I want to research why a group of people who were enslaved and had a religion forced upon them (Christianity) that was also used to justify their enslavement later developed into the most religious group in that country in that particular religion. Is this something worth researching? Is this something feasible? Is it a waste of time?
I think it would be a worthy project or at least I would find it interesting. I'm not a professional historian and I haven't kept up with recent research trends so you should talk to a professor about it to get their opinion. But if you do pursue it, I think a book to look at would be Nathan Hatch's "The Democratization of American Christianity" it examines religion in Jacksonian America and has a chapter on the faith of those who were enslaved. It's a little outdated but still relevant information to what you're asking for. He breaks down the differences between the faith of those enslaved and the people using that faith to keep them enslaved. So it would be a start to possibly understanding why you find such a high percentage of African-Americans remaining faithful.
It is a little patronizing as written, and that’s something you would need to be very careful of. You would also need to engage in depth with the fact that Christianity was also used to “justify” emancipation, as the majority of those who wrote and acted in support of abolition did so for explicitly Christian reasons.