Introduction: Religious Circulation in Transatlantic Africa

Abstract

This special issue explores and analyzes the ways in which African or African-derived religions travel in the contemporary transatlantic space. By accounting for the recreation of African religions in culturally diverse contexts, this issue aims to discuss different forms of religious circulation between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Here, the term religious circulation is a heuristic device as an invitation to consider new transnational circuits, while it also describes forms of sociocultural and religious mobilities. It highlights the multi-directional character of religious flows that expose the connections and (dis)continuities in the making of Africa in the Atlantic world. In this framework, we pay particular attention to the role of ‘mutable mobiles’ in the circulation of religions - things, discourses, and practices that spread over various sites and different moments in time, taking different shapes but coexisting in one particular Atlantic space. The transatlantic space functions as a hub of African religiosities in the making.