Vodou and Voodoo as Alternative Religion

ABSTRACT:Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo are African Diaspora religions brought to the Americas by devotees who survived the transatlantic slave trade. Both are suffused by philosophies of communicating with the divine and serving a pantheon of sacred spirits. Both faiths have been misunderstood, with practitioners’ beliefs denigrated and their rituals stereotyped as crude, misguided, malevolent, or even criminal. However, each of the four articles in this special edition of Nova Religio speaks to how practitioners of Vodou and Voodoo, across different locales, social environments, and historical time frames, have pushed back against marginalization and defended their identities and legacies, while building religious communities of remarkable resilience.