Author: Benjamin Hebblethwaite Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1496236475 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas explores spirit-based religious traditions across vast geographical and cultural expanses, including Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Using interdisciplinary research methods, this collection of original perspectives breaks new ground by examining these traditions as typologically and historically related. This curated selection of the traditions allows readers to compare and highlight convergences, while the description and comparison of the traditions challenges colonial erasures and expands knowledge about endangered cultures. The inclusion of spirit-based traditions from a broad geographical area emphasizes the typology of religion over ethnic compartmentalization. The individuals and communities studied in this collection serve spirits through rituals, song, instruments, initiation, embodiment via possession or trance, veneration of nature, and, among some Indigenous people, the consumption of ritual psychoactive entheogens. Indigenous and African diaspora practices focused on service to ancestors and spirits reflect ancient substrates of religiosity. The rationale to separate them on disciplinary, ethnic, linguistic, geographical, or historical grounds evaporates in our interconnected world. Shared cultural, historical, and structural features of American indigenous and African diaspora spirit-based traditions mutually deserve our attention since the analyses and dialogues give way to discoveries about deep commonalities and divergences among religions and philosophies. Still struggling against the effects of colonialism, enslavement, and extinction, the practitioners of these spirit-based religious traditions hold on to important but vulnerable parts of humanity’s cultural heritage. These readings make possible journeys of recognition as well as discovery.
Author: T. Trost Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230609937 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
This book focuses on the location of the religious heritage of Africa within the academic study of religion - including indigenous African religions, African Christianities, African/American forms of Islam, the religions of African Americans, Afro-Caribbean religions, and Afro-Brazilian religions.
Author: Carolyn M. Jones Medine Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137498056 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
Contemporary Perspectives on Religions in Africa and the African Diaspora explores African derived religions in a globalized world. The volume focuses on the continent, on African identity in globalization, and on African religion in cultural change.
Author: Jacob K. Olupona Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199790787 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
What are African religions? African Religions: A Very Short Introduction answers this question by examining primarily indigenous religious traditions on the African continent, as well as exploring Christianity and Islam. It focuses on the diversity of ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and worldviews, emphasizing the continent's regional diversity. Olupona examines a wide range of African religious traditions on their own terms and in their social, cultural, and political contexts. For example, the book moves beyond ethnographic descriptions and interpretations of core beliefs and practices to look at how African religion has engaged issues of socioeconomic development and power relations. Olupona examines the myths and sacred stories about the origins of the universe that define ethnic groups and national identities throughout Africa. He also discusses spiritual agents in the African cosmos such as God, spirits, and ancestors. In addition to myths and deities, Olupona focuses on the people central to African religions, including medicine men and women, rainmakers, witches, magicians, and divine kings, and how they serve as authority figures and intermediaries between the social world and the cosmic realm. African Religions: A Very Short Introduction discusses a wide variety of religious practices, including music and dance, calendrical rituals and festivals, celebrations for the gods' birthdays, and rituals accompanying stages of life such as birth, puberty, marriage, elderhood, and death. In addition to exploring indigenous religions, Olupona examines the ways Islam and Christianity as outside traditions encountered indigenous African religion. He shows how these incoming faith traditions altered the face and the future of indigenous African religions as well as how indigenous religions shaped two world religions in Africa and the diaspora. Olupona draws on archaeological and historical sources, as well as ethnographic materials based on fieldwork. He shows that African religions are not static traditions, but have responded to changes within their local communities and to fluxes caused by outside influences, and spread with diaspora and migration.
Author: J. Clark Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137002832 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
This work is concerned with the way Black Christian formation, because of the acceptance of universal, absolute, and exclusive Christian doctrines, seems to justify and even encourage anti-African sentiment.
Author: Suzanne Crawford O'Brien Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1538104768 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 239
Book Description
Religion and Culture in Native America presents an introduction to a diverse array of Indigenous religious and cultural practices in North America, focusing on those issues in which tribal communities themselves are currently invested. These topics include climate change, water rights, the protection of sacred places, the reclaiming of Indigenous foods, health and wellness, social justice, and the safety of Indigenous women and girls. Locating such contemporary challenges within their historical, religious, and cultural contexts illuminates how Native communities' responses to such issues are not simply political, but deeply spiritual, informed by sacred traditions, ethical principles, and profound truths. In collaboration with renowned ethnographer and scholar of Native American religious traditions Inés Talamantez, Suzanne Crawford O'Brien abandons classical categories typically found in religious studies textbooks and challenges essentialist notions of Native American cultures to explore the complexities of Native North American life. Key features of this text include: Consideration of Indigenous religious traditions within their historical, political, and cultural contexts Thematic organization emphasizing the concerns and commitments of contemporary tribal communities Maps and images that help to locate tribal communities and illustrate key themes. Recommendations for further reading and research Written in an engaging narrative style, this book makes an ideal text for undergraduate courses in Native American Religions, Religion and Ecology, Indigenous Religions, and World Religions.
Author: Paul Christopher Johnson Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520249704 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
"I'm extremely impressed by Johnson's book. Diaspora Conversions offers an outstanding combination of theoretical acuity, erudition, and ethnographic prowess. It is bound to become highly influential in the study of religion in motion."—Manuel A. Vasquez, co-author of Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas "Johnson's work bursts through the present conversations on African diaspora and brings us onto entirely new ground, shattering simplistic ideas and replacing them with critical distinctions. This smart and talented ethnographer succeeds in combining detailed and rich ethnographic fieldwork with an unrelentingly critical and sophisticated analysis. Johnson's work brings to life one of the most central, perhaps the most central, classic question of African American anthropology: "How is Black culture constituted, even through dislocation and displacement?"—Elizabeth McAlister, author of Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora "Diasporic Conversions convincingly breaks new ground by showing how the meaning of 'homeland' is fundamentally a product of historically situated and contested forms of collective imagination. What will make Johnson's book a benchmark in the study of the African diaspora, and diasporic situations more generally, is that it is not just a richly documented and rigorously argued ethnography, but a genuine anthropology of historical consciousness."—Stephan Palmié, author of Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition
Author: Jacob Olupona Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 0814762115 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
African immigration to North America has been rapidly increasing. Yet, little has been written about this significant group of immigrants and the particular religious traditions that they are transplanting on our shores, as scholars continue largely to focus instead on immigrants from Europe and Asia. African Immigrant Religions in America focuses on new understandings and insights concerning the presence and relevance of African immigrant religious communities in the United States. It explores the profound significance of religion in the lives of immigrants and the relevance of these growing communities for U.S. social life. It describes key social and historical aspects of African immigrant religion in the U.S. and builds a conceptual framework for theory and analysis. The volume broadens our understandings of the ways in which new immigration is changing the face of Christianity in the U.S. and adds needed breadth to the study of the black church, incorporating the experiences of African immigrant religious communities in America.
Author: Suzanne Crawford O Brien Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317346181 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 145
Book Description
Focusing on three diverse indigenous traditions, Native American Religious Traditions highlights the distinct oral traditions and ceremonial practices; the impact of colonialism on religious life; and the ways in which indigenous communities of North America have responded, and continue to respond, to colonialism and Euroamerican cultural hegemony.
Author: Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Author: T. Trost
Author: Carolyn M. Jones Medine
Author: Jacob K. Olupona
Author: Stephen D. Glazier
Author: J. Clark
Author: Suzanne Crawford O'Brien
Author: Paul Christopher Johnson
Author: Jacob Olupona
Author: Suzanne Crawford O Brien