Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion

Bibliographic Data

ID23467860
AuthorsHein Vanhee (corresponding author)
Year2001
Pages243-264
Publication date2001-11-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueCentral Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511529108.011
OpenAlexW1502729942
ISBN9780511529108
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Quant aux nègres de Congo et d'Angolle, il n'y a qu'à parler aux missionnaires qu'on envoie chez eux pour savoir quelles peines ils ont pour y conserver quelque ombre de la religion chrétienne, car ces nègres font sans scrupule ce que faisaient les Philistins, ils joignent l'Arche avec Dagon et ils conservent en secret toutes les superstitions de leur ancien culte idolâtre avec les cérémonies de la religion chrétienne. Jean-Baptiste Labat Among government documents from the 1760s of the flourishing French colony of Saint-Domingue, we find alarming reports talking about plantation slaves freely “mixing Catholicism with their pagan beliefs.” Moreover, it appears that it was “not uncommon to find them acting as missionaries and priests, issuing a doctrine that was replacing Catholic teachings.” Even the sacraments were said to be abused. Such alarming observations had been made earlier by Labat in the beginning of the eighteenth century and are found in most later accounts of slave religion or cultic practices on Saint-Domingue plantations. After the Haitian Revolution, the scanty historical documentation we have, points to a continued process of an appropriation and a reworking of rituals, texts and objects drawn from Roman Catholicism – yet in the relative absence of regular priests and missionaries. Twentieth-century Vodou, as the religion of the black population of Haiti has come to be generally called, exhibits numerous references to Roman Catholicism, which has provoked the most divergent comments in popular media, as well as a whole array of academic studies.

Christianity · Sociology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Philosophy · Religious studies

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