Pub Date : 2020-01-04DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0146
Ayodeji Ogunnaike
Abstract:Afro-Catholic syncretism has predominantly been analyzed through the metaphor of a mask in which African slaves ingeniously employed the traditions of Catholic saints to disguise their worship of African deities, ensuring the preservation of their traditions. The study of Brazilian Candomblé—primarily the work of Roger Bastide—has arguably been the most influential in developing this theory. However, this model assumes a Eurocentric framework of discrete, mutually exclusive religions. This article builds on and modifies the mask theory by applying indigenous Yoruba perspectives on cosmology, ontology, interreligious interactions, and masks as traditions that reveal truths more than disguise them. It draws on ethnographic research in Brazil and Nigeria with specialists and practitioners in orişa/orixa traditions and Catholicism. While Westerners may have only seen a mask that camouflaged African deities, Africans themselves created masks that maintained their traditions and revealed their deities, engaging in deep interreligious theology.
{"title":"What's Really Behind the Mask: A Reexamination of Syncretism in Brazilian Candomblé","authors":"Ayodeji Ogunnaike","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0146","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Afro-Catholic syncretism has predominantly been analyzed through the metaphor of a mask in which African slaves ingeniously employed the traditions of Catholic saints to disguise their worship of African deities, ensuring the preservation of their traditions. The study of Brazilian Candomblé—primarily the work of Roger Bastide—has arguably been the most influential in developing this theory. However, this model assumes a Eurocentric framework of discrete, mutually exclusive religions. This article builds on and modifies the mask theory by applying indigenous Yoruba perspectives on cosmology, ontology, interreligious interactions, and masks as traditions that reveal truths more than disguise them. It draws on ethnographic research in Brazil and Nigeria with specialists and practitioners in orişa/orixa traditions and Catholicism. While Westerners may have only seen a mask that camouflaged African deities, Africans themselves created masks that maintained their traditions and revealed their deities, engaging in deep interreligious theology.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43982220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-04DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0122
A. Masquelier
Abstract:The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of incidents of mass possession among schoolgirls in Niger. Possession by revengeful spirits dramatizes the controversies surrounding women's education. During exorcism, possessing spirits speak of the homes they lost when trees were cut to build schools. Spirits were part of a sacred topography disrupted by the transformation of bushland into farmland, the shift toward individual property, and urban expansion. This essay centers on narratives of loss, displacement, subjection, and appropriation and the claims to knowledge about the past that these narratives authorize. By focusing on schools as staging grounds for historical reckoning, I consider how the possession of schoolgirls by vindictive spirits and the memory work sparked by these unsettling events constitute temporal tactics—subversive modes of unfolding time so as to retrieve forgotten histories while also reframing the present (and, by implication, the future) in relation to a past that continues to evolve.
{"title":"A Matter of Time: Spirit Possession and the Temporalities of School in Niger","authors":"A. Masquelier","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0122","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of incidents of mass possession among schoolgirls in Niger. Possession by revengeful spirits dramatizes the controversies surrounding women's education. During exorcism, possessing spirits speak of the homes they lost when trees were cut to build schools. Spirits were part of a sacred topography disrupted by the transformation of bushland into farmland, the shift toward individual property, and urban expansion. This essay centers on narratives of loss, displacement, subjection, and appropriation and the claims to knowledge about the past that these narratives authorize. By focusing on schools as staging grounds for historical reckoning, I consider how the possession of schoolgirls by vindictive spirits and the memory work sparked by these unsettling events constitute temporal tactics—subversive modes of unfolding time so as to retrieve forgotten histories while also reframing the present (and, by implication, the future) in relation to a past that continues to evolve.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47088848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-04DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0084
E. Kravchenko
Abstract:African Americans regularly join Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States. By focusing on what practitioners do with Orthodox icons, this case study explores the processes through which specific experiences and expressions of being an Orthodox Christian become possible and meaningful for African American practitioners. This article suggests that saint veneration became a compelling Orthodox practice to practitioners because it provided a unique way to connect to the divine and to resist continuing racial discrimination in the United States. With the help of icons, African American men and women demonstrated that African people were saints, that African women contributed significantly to the history of Christianity, and that African Americans performed saintly acts. In this way, practitioners aimed to cultivate a reconciled Christian community where the full and equal membership of people of African descent is taken for granted. In following how Orthodox Christians put the materiality of their icons to work to deconstruct the assumption that whiteness is a universal default for religious experience, this article urges scholars of African American religions to make room for Eastern Orthodoxy as yet another tradition that supplies African Americans with creative tools to craft a compelling way of being a religious person.
{"title":"Black Orthodox \"Visual Piety\": People, Saints, and Icons in Pursuit of Reconciliation","authors":"E. Kravchenko","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0084","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:African Americans regularly join Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States. By focusing on what practitioners do with Orthodox icons, this case study explores the processes through which specific experiences and expressions of being an Orthodox Christian become possible and meaningful for African American practitioners. This article suggests that saint veneration became a compelling Orthodox practice to practitioners because it provided a unique way to connect to the divine and to resist continuing racial discrimination in the United States. With the help of icons, African American men and women demonstrated that African people were saints, that African women contributed significantly to the history of Christianity, and that African Americans performed saintly acts. In this way, practitioners aimed to cultivate a reconciled Christian community where the full and equal membership of people of African descent is taken for granted. In following how Orthodox Christians put the materiality of their icons to work to deconstruct the assumption that whiteness is a universal default for religious experience, this article urges scholars of African American religions to make room for Eastern Orthodoxy as yet another tradition that supplies African Americans with creative tools to craft a compelling way of being a religious person.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47382084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-04DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0062
D. Hills
Abstract:This article explores constructions of meaning and Black male identity formation as portrayed in the film Black Panther. Interpreted through the prism of Black religious thought, ethics, and Africana framings of relationality, Black Panther provides insight into the nature and terms of identity formation and meaning-making as critical features of Black religion broadly conceived.
{"title":"Killmonger's Quandary: Notes on Religious Meaning, Freedom, and Identity in Black Panther","authors":"D. Hills","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0062","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores constructions of meaning and Black male identity formation as portrayed in the film Black Panther. Interpreted through the prism of Black religious thought, ethics, and Africana framings of relationality, Black Panther provides insight into the nature and terms of identity formation and meaning-making as critical features of Black religion broadly conceived.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46214707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-04DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0001
Vaughn A. Booker
Abstract:This article examines religious humor in the "Pulpit and Pew" series of the midcentury monthly magazine Negro Digest. By entertaining the recurring link in African American Protestant traditions between religion and irreverence, this study of "Pulpit and Pew" examines the mode of religious affiliation that I characterize as irreverent religious participation. This literary humor provided relatable scenes and scenarios in Afro-Protestant life as the source materials for humor about African American religious thought and practice. With the "Pulpit and Pew" series of compiled jokes, irreverent religious humor reflected the reality of African American social practices and, in turn, provided levity that lessened the association of an ostensibly pious individual's religious devotion with an irreproachable moral status. "Pulpit and Pew" demonstrates that many African Americans with religious commitments have appreciated irreverent religious humor that may register as antireligious without necessarily rejecting all things associated with religious fidelity.
{"title":"\"Pulpit and Pew\": African American Humor on Irreverent Religious Participation in John H. Johnson's Negro Digest, 1943–1950","authors":"Vaughn A. Booker","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines religious humor in the \"Pulpit and Pew\" series of the midcentury monthly magazine Negro Digest. By entertaining the recurring link in African American Protestant traditions between religion and irreverence, this study of \"Pulpit and Pew\" examines the mode of religious affiliation that I characterize as irreverent religious participation. This literary humor provided relatable scenes and scenarios in Afro-Protestant life as the source materials for humor about African American religious thought and practice. With the \"Pulpit and Pew\" series of compiled jokes, irreverent religious humor reflected the reality of African American social practices and, in turn, provided levity that lessened the association of an ostensibly pious individual's religious devotion with an irreproachable moral status. \"Pulpit and Pew\" demonstrates that many African Americans with religious commitments have appreciated irreverent religious humor that may register as antireligious without necessarily rejecting all things associated with religious fidelity.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70842967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.5325/jafrireli.8.2.0266
I. Selassie
{"title":"Rethinking Garveyism as Religion: The UNIA Universal Negro Ritual and UNIA Universal Negro Catechism","authors":"I. Selassie","doi":"10.5325/jafrireli.8.2.0266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/jafrireli.8.2.0266","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70842924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0273
Jualynne E. Dodson
Abstract:This article offers a brief review of Dr. James H. Cone's involvement with the organizational beginnings and function of the Black Theology Project. The discussion centers on the Project because Cone's writings and participation helped inspire U.S. African descendant clergy, laypeople, academics, activists, and theologians to work collectively in BTP efforts. BTP was also an influential and international touchstone for other groups of African descendants seeking to articulate liberation theology as developed within the historical realities of their existence. The article reviews the origins of BTP and some of what it accomplished during its fifteen-year tenure, drawing on archival materials held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York City Public Library. In addition, I was an active member of BTP and served as a past executive director.
{"title":"Black Theology Project: Organizational Gift, Intellectual Apparatus—Legacies of Dr. James Cone","authors":"Jualynne E. Dodson","doi":"10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0273","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article offers a brief review of Dr. James H. Cone's involvement with the organizational beginnings and function of the Black Theology Project. The discussion centers on the Project because Cone's writings and participation helped inspire U.S. African descendant clergy, laypeople, academics, activists, and theologians to work collectively in BTP efforts. BTP was also an influential and international touchstone for other groups of African descendants seeking to articulate liberation theology as developed within the historical realities of their existence. The article reviews the origins of BTP and some of what it accomplished during its fifteen-year tenure, drawing on archival materials held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York City Public Library. In addition, I was an active member of BTP and served as a past executive director.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45833890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0299
Joseph Hellweg
Abstract:Across West Africa, postmenopausal women, whom Laura Grillo calls the "Mothers," have expressed outrage at male political mismanagement by exposing their breasts and genitalia. This essay explores the contributions of and tensions within Grillo's analysis of the Mothers' history of protest, referencing Grillo's superb ethnographic and historical account.
{"title":"Mothers of Invention: Gender, Strategic Essentialism, and Women's Genital Power in West Africa","authors":"Joseph Hellweg","doi":"10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0299","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Across West Africa, postmenopausal women, whom Laura Grillo calls the \"Mothers,\" have expressed outrage at male political mismanagement by exposing their breasts and genitalia. This essay explores the contributions of and tensions within Grillo's analysis of the Mothers' history of protest, referencing Grillo's superb ethnographic and historical account.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47637231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0316
Laura S. Grillo
Abstract:This response by the author of An Intimate Rebuke relays how the book's subject, female genital power (FGP) and the principle of "matrifocal morality," emerged from fieldwork. Taking up key questions by four commentators, it emphasizes the need to make Africa the source and subject of novel critique.
{"title":"Excavating the Matri-archive: The Author's Response","authors":"Laura S. Grillo","doi":"10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0316","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This response by the author of An Intimate Rebuke relays how the book's subject, female genital power (FGP) and the principle of \"matrifocal morality,\" emerged from fieldwork. Taking up key questions by four commentators, it emphasizes the need to make Africa the source and subject of novel critique.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45372735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-13DOI: 10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0291
S. Hawthorne
Abstract:In this response I challenge the neglect of postcolonial theory in Laura Grillo's An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in Côte d'Ivoire and argue instead for its inclusion as a resource for immanent critique. I argue that Grillo's text enhances and enriches the way we may think about time and politics in the postcolonial moment, but that it may in turn also be revitalised and strengthened by speaking with and to postcolonial thought, adding it to the lexicon and strategies of displacement Grillo identifies in practices of female genital power and the matri-archive they reference.
{"title":"At the Edge of Time: Postcolonial Temporalities in An Intimate Rebuke","authors":"S. Hawthorne","doi":"10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/JAFRIRELI.7.2.2019.0291","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this response I challenge the neglect of postcolonial theory in Laura Grillo's An Intimate Rebuke: Female Genital Power in Ritual and Politics in Côte d'Ivoire and argue instead for its inclusion as a resource for immanent critique. I argue that Grillo's text enhances and enriches the way we may think about time and politics in the postcolonial moment, but that it may in turn also be revitalised and strengthened by speaking with and to postcolonial thought, adding it to the lexicon and strategies of displacement Grillo identifies in practices of female genital power and the matri-archive they reference.","PeriodicalId":41877,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Africana Religions","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45527771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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