Yvonne Chireau, Department of Religion, Swarthmore, PA 19081
7/8/96
African religions in New World Diaspora
Traditionally, the main source of written documentary evidence has been European chroniclers from 15th-18th c. Portugal, France, Netherlands, England, but now we can look at other sorts of evidence to get at the experience of Africans in the diaspora.
Robert Faris Thompson's work suggests ways to get to the evidence.Wyatt MacGaffey's Society and Culture in the Congo is a good example of the use of historical and anthropological perspectives to get at non-verbal cultures. Even the names that are defined during the period (Ivory coast, Gold coast, slave coast) have much more to do with the invading cultures' concerns than with the concerns of the indigenous peoples. These areas include a vast area of west Africa, as well as the area around Madagascar. Large numbers of these people were Islamic, though often this was blended with traditional religions, and this blended with Christianity from early times, then re-invigorated during the 15th c. John Thornton writes about this religious development also. Result of this is Catholic conversions. His argument is that African Christianity begins on the continent, not in the new world and this is where the kind of Christianity that appears in NC really has its roots. (see his article in American Historical Review a few years ago) So some of the slave "recruitment" came through Christian conversions.
Barnes: did Africans become literate in these conversions?
Ans: Maybe some--especially those who moved back and forth between Spain/Portugal and Africa
African religious cultures should be considered "traditional" in the sense of being influenced by the past, but they are not static. Note this as we look at the great diversity of cultures from which the modern-day diaspora emerges. Mechal Sobel, Trabelin' On, and The World they Made Together, maintains that there was no single religion shared by Africans, but there was a shared outlook: pre-Copernican, human-centered view. Humans are at the center of the universe, with 6 focal points: God, spirits, humans animals/nature, objects, vital forces. These focal points form the basis of an African-American perspective.Sidney Mintz and Richard Price suggest that the real thing is not as simple as it at first seems. Mechal Sobel, in The Creation of Afro-American Culture, says, there is not one cosmology, brought to the new world, but rather, a number of cosmologies, CREATED here. Margaret Washington, A Peculiar People, and Al Rabateau, Slave Religion, and C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church and the African-American Experience.
Important perspectives for understanding African diaspora cosmology: TIME is cyclical, not necessarily liniear, different notion of a future; ACTIVE ROLE of the dead in the lives of the dead, and active relationship between the living and the dead; SOCIAL CONFLICT is CONNECTED to MISFORTUNE--evil, illness, etc. are not random, but are brought about by a concerted effort between the living, dead, and nature; HUMANS CAN INFLUENCE THE SACRED REALM through ritual
Greider: analogous ideas exist in other cultures, and the trick is to identify the aspects of this that are bio- or cultural or regional-specific.
Rubin: as the western world becomes "modern", religions that hold onto these more traditional notions, are seriously challenged
Rogers: there are commonalities, but it is those that help to create merged cultures in the new settings
Since these are not text-based, students who are accustomed to having a "book" are at a disadvantage when they try to read a sermon or whatever.
Sicius: Would you talk a bit about the relationship between the supernatural and political action
Ans: political realities in the Caribbean are an example. This can't be erased from the culture if it is "danced", performed, held and transported in the body
Jensen: is blues music a part of this reality?
Harvey: John Michael Spencer, Blues and Evil is a good source of discussion on this
Montgomery: and don't forget Eileen Southern, several works, including African American traditions in Story, Song, Dance...
Kray: are there African verbal traditions of any sort that play into this also?
Ans.: We'll let Janet Shannon talk more about this in the 19th c.
Helmer: There are difficulties with trying to see into similar to those faced when one tries to see into the inside of Native American realities from the outside
Rubin: there's a level of commodification that pulls this out of context, as we have pulled so much out of context and sell it on the open religion market.
Greider: commodification and consumerism are different aspects of the modern transformations of "traditional" religious cultures. some physical culture has to be part of the religious experience.
Rubin: but with Santeria, we have reduced it to a kind of "what are you into lately." All this is really related to the modern-day encounter between African religions and the current religious market-place.
Prejsnar: the Japanese Buddhist obun festival in New Jersey (in a locale that has a strong Japanese community) will happen July 20, and we could organize a bus to go there
Chireau: Central god is not worshipped, per se, instead, one tends to focus on the lesser divinities, which are emanations of the central god (though some argue that this is polytheism or whether there is just one god, with many manifestations) A good read on this subject: Ben Ray, African Religion. John Mbiti African Religions and Philosophy.
Greider: it's more western ideas that make us conceive of this as one OR the other. There does not need to be such a clear distinction. It can be BOTH monotheistic AND polytheistic.
Rubin: the problem is, though, that from a sociology of religion perspective, there are different implications for how one lives one's life depending upon how one defines one's divinity (ies).If your belief system includes spirits of those who inhabit other worlds and who interact regularly with inhabitants of this world, then here is no "final" nothingness after death. One can live forever. But what does this mean about human relationship in the new world?
Ans.: Chosen divinities can possess the humans, and there are issues around this and the genderedness of possession in Yoruba religion. Lorand Matory, "Sex and the Empire that is no More explores questions of possession and male/female gods inhabiting the bodies of earthly people without regard to gender.What actually happened in those first few generations of slavery is called by John Butler a "spiritual holocaust" book: Awash in a Sea of Faith. He says that traditional religious faiths were virtually destroyed, and fragments, divorced from institutional structure, remained to be re-arranged into the what was left aft high mortality, trauma etc. of first generation into next generation (18thc) where ideas came alive again in family formation.Saneria, etc. comes alive in Cuba where Oyo kingdom (Yoruba) sends large numbers of Ifa priests to Cuba and the succeeding generations of Oyo reinforced this grouping of people of similar culture--a tradition that is surviving in New York Cuban communitites today.
Kray: language still alive?
Ans.: Some say Yoruba languages are alive there today.
(Glass will organize a study group to focus on creating a syllabus for
undergraduate course on American religion. Brady will organize a trip to
Barnes foundation, where French impressionists and African masks
collections are richly represented.)
Oyotunji Village in Beaufort, SC, lays claim to being the only black community: a black nationalist community started in 1970. On a visit to Cuba (1959) the leader was the first African American to be initiated into the Ife religion, then he returns to Nigeria where he is initiated there. Also, then comes to U.S. and sets up a communitarian tradition, like Shakers or others who relate peripherally to mainstream. This group has a web page as well "http//www.mcni.net/~obatala/" and offers retreat weekends, and readings by telephone and email: "obatala@mcni.net" He's trying to make this tradition available to the current marketplace--interesting set of questions around current dynamic. Harper Collins has a version of book on Yoruba divination: Neimark, ed., The Sacred Ifa Oracle
Many would call these "new age" but Chireau feels this is traditional. Practitioners feel that this is now a world religion.
Montgomery: Catherine Albanese classes this as New Age...
Rogers: How do we define "new age?"
Piar: "new age" is another example of white middle class language to denigrate the experiences of those of whom they disapprove. Issue is: how do we define "new age"? If it has historically based origins is it still new age?
Brusco: All of this seems so individualistic...where is the community-based level of the new religions?
Barnes: Eric Hobsbawn, The Invention of Tradition raises this issue. It is as much romanticization as commodification.
Rubin: let's look again at Catherine Albanese, where New Age fits into a long tradition but has a whole new dimension with web addresses cutting us off from any notion of community.
Chireau describes the hypertext document created by her and by her students through her courses with undergraduates that could be done by undergraduates: projects on new world re-created religions
Greider: there is a good magazine: "educom"which will help us get up to speed with these things.
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This page updated 11/29/96.