Before Raboteau was born, his father, Albert Jordy Raboteau (1899-1943), was killed in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, by a white man who was never convicted of the crime. His mother moved from the South, where she was a teacher, to find a better place for her children.
He entered the Yale Graduate Program in Religious Studies, where he studied with American religious historian Sydney Ahlstrom and African-American historian John Blassingame, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy in 1974.
She remarried to an African-American priest. Raboteau"s stepfather taught him Latin and Greek starting at the age of five years, and also helped him focus on church and education. He was accepted into college at the age of sixteen.
He was awarded a Bachelor by Loyola University in 1964 and an Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley.
Raboteau"s dissertation, later revised and published as the book Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South, was published just as the black studies movement was gaining steam in the 1970s and in the wake of revolutionary scholarship on American slavery: Olli Alho"s The Religion of Slaves (1976), Blassingame"s Slave Community (1972) and Slave Testimony (1977), Eugene Genovese"s Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974), and Lawrence Levine"s Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1977). In 1982 Princeton University hired Raboteau, first as a visiting professor and then as full-time faculty.
He is currently (2009) Henry West. Putnam Professor of Religion. His research and teaching focus on American Catholic history, African-American religions, and religion and immigration issues.
He chaired the Department of Religion (1987-1992) and also served as dean of the Graduate School (1992-1993).
