The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion 9781403977861ts01.indd i 10/22/2007 10:08:26 PM Religion/Culture/Critique Series editor: Elizabeth A. Castelli How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film By Erin Runions (2003) Connected Places: Region, Pilgrimage, and Geographical Imagination in India By Anne Feldhaus (2003) Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making Edited by S. Brent Plate (2003) Derrida’s Bible (Reading a Page of Scripture with a Little Help from Derrida) Edited by Yvonne Sherwood (2004) Feminist New Testament Studies: Global and Future Perspectives Edited by Kathleen O’Brien Wicker, Althea Spencer Miller, and Musa W. Dube (2005) Women’s Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers Edited by Meena Khandelwal, Sondra L. Hausner, and Ann Grodzins Gold (2006) Retheorizing Religion in Nepal By Gregory Price Grieve (2006) The Religious Dimensions of Advertising By Tricia Sheffield (2006) Gender, Religion, and Culture in the Pre-Modern World Edited by Alexandra Cuffel and Brian Britt (2007) American Protestants and TV in the 1950s: Responses to a New Medium By Michele Rosenthal with an Afterword by Martin E. Marty (2007) The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion Edited by Theodore Louis Trost (2007) 9781403977861ts01.indd ii 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion Edited by THEODORE LOUIS TROST 9781403977861ts01.indd iii 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM THE AFRICAN DIASPORA AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION Copyright © Theodore Louis Trost, 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7786–1 ISBN-10: 1–4039–7786–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The African diaspora and the study of religion / edited by Theodore Louis Trost. p. cm. ISBN 1–4039–7786–0 (alk. paper) 1. Africa—Religion—Study and teaching. 2. African diaspora. I. Trost, Theodore Louis, 1954– BL2400.A417 2007 200.89996 —dc22 2007019674 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. 9781403977861ts01.indd iv 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM Contents List of Illustrations vii Series Editor’s Preface ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii List of Abbreviations xix Introduction: Alexander Crummell and the Destined Superiority of African People 1 Wilson Jeremiah Moses Part 1 Africa in Diaspora 1 R aising Champions, Taking Territories: African Churches and the Mapping of New Religious Landscapes in Diaspora 17 Afe Adogame 2 Christianity on Trial: The Nation of Islam and the Rastafari, 1930–1950 35 Maboula Soumahoro 3 Ahmadi, Beboppers, Veterans, and Migrants: African American Islam in Boston, 1948–1963 49 Fatimah Fanusie Part 2 Diaspora in Literature and Culture 4 Robert Nathaniel Dett and African America’s Christian Kingdom of Culture, 1926–1932 73 Regennia N. Williams 5 S lain in the Spirit: Sexuality and Afro-Caribbean Religious Expression in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand 93 Merinda Simmons 9781403977861ts01.indd v 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM vi Contents 6 Candomblé, Christianity, and Gnosticism in Toni Morrison’s Paradise 111 Maha Marouan Part 3 Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean 7 The African Diaspora in Mexico: Santería, Tourism, and Representations of the State 131 Angela N. Castañeda 8 Writing Out Africa? Racial Politics and the Cuban regla de ocha 151 Christine Ayorinde 9 Macumba Has Invaded All Spheres: Africanity, Black Magic, and the Study of Afro-Brazilian Religions 167 Kelly E. Hayes Part 4 Diaspora in Theory 10 Early American Pentecostalism: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Anticipation 193 Matthew Waggoner 11 T oward a Tradition of African American Pragmatic Religious Naturalism 213 Jonathon S. Kahn 12 Africa on Our Minds 229 Russell T. McCutcheon Conclusion: “Africa” in the Study of African American Religion 239 Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. Notes on the Contributors 251 Index 255 9781403977861ts01.indd vi 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM Illustrations 7.1 Santería ritual at 1996 IVEC festival 137 7.2 Santería sacrificial offering in 1996 IVEC festival 139 7.3 Public altar for Santería worship in 1996 IVEC festival 140 7.4 Poster for 2002 IVEC festival 141 7.5 Before and after picture of Santo Niño de Atocha or Elegua 145 10.1 Seymour surrounded by four white colleagues associated with the Azusa Mission 202 9781403977861ts01.indd vii 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM This page intentionally left blank Series Editor’s Preface Religion/Culture/Critique is a series devoted to publishing work that addresses religion’s centrality to a wide range of settings and debates, both contemporary and historical, and that critically engages the category of “religion” itself. This series is conceived as a place where readers will be invited to explore how “religion”—whether embedded in texts, practices, communities, or ideologies—intersects with social and political interests, institutions, and identities. The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion brings together the work of scholars from a range of disciplines—history, religion, cultural anthropology, literature, and cultural studies—to focus attention on the richness and intri- cacy of the African diaspora and its engagements with and stagings of religion. The contributors to this volume invite readers to explore the religious cultures and worlds that have emerged out of the complex legacies of enslavement and colonial subjugation. What comes into view is the very transformation of received traditions—whether Christianity, Islam, or indigenous religions— into distinctive iterations of themselves and of religiosity itself. This book explores religion as both a social fact and a mode of representation and signi- fication, as a way of thinking, and as a way of being and doing in the world. Each chapter in the volume stays closely focused on the object of analysis, whether the life of a community lived out ritually or the figurations of diasporic Africa in a literary text or, indeed, the theoretical questions that “diaspora” and “Africa” as organizing terms themselves raise. At the same time, each chapter also challenges its readers to reconsider the boundaries of “religion” as a category of social and cultural analysis and to rethink the work that “reli- gion” does in lives characterized by loss, displacement, and dispersion. The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion is a welcome addition to the Religion/Culture/Critique series for its contributions to religious studies, Africana studies, and the places where the two fields so fruitfully intersect. Elizabeth A. Castelli Religion/Culture/Critique Series Editor New York City May 2007 9781403977861ts01.indd ix 10/22/2007 10:08:27 PM