Afro-American religion

Example of Louisiana-Tradition Voodoo altar inside a temple in New Orleans.

Afro-American religions (also known as African diasporic religions or New World traditions) are a number of related religions that developed in the Americas among enslaved Africans in various countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, and parts of the southern United States. They derive from African traditional religions (especially of West and Central Africa) and Indigenous American traditions and beliefs.

Characteristics

These religions involve ancestor veneration and a pantheon of divine spirits, such as the Orisha, loa, Nkisi, and Alusi. In addition to mixing these various African traditions, many New World religions incorporate elements of Christian, Indigenous American, Kardecist, Spiritualist, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Judaic, and European traditions. This mixing of traditions is known as religious syncretism.

List of traditions

Other closely related regional faiths include:

• Sanse or Puerto Rican Vudú (Fon and Ewe, Puerto Rico)
• Comfa (mixture of Igbo, Akan, and Yoruba traditions, Guyana)
• Xangô de Recife (Yoruba, Brazil)^[4]
• Xangô do Nordeste (Yoruba, Brazil)
• Tambor de Mina (Yoruba, Brazil)
• Santo Daime (folk Catholicism and Spiritism, Brazil)
• Espiritismo (mixture of Indigenous American, African, European, and Asian beliefs, Puerto Rico)
• Hoodoo (mixture of West African, Indigenous American, and European traditions, Mississippi Delta)

New religious movements

Most new religious movements are void of these traditional pre-Abrahamic African beliefs. A first wave of such movements originated in the early twentieth century:

• Moorish Science Temple of America (Eastern philosophy, USA);
• Nation of Islam (Islam, USA)
• Black Hebrew Israelites (Judaism, USA)
• Five-Percent Nation (Islam and Emanationism, USA)
• United Nation of Islam (Islam, USA)
• Rastafari movement (African-influenced Judeo-Christian, Jamaica); and

A second wave of new movements originated in the 1960s to 1970s, in the context of the emergence of New Age and Neopaganism in the United States:

• União do Vegetal (Brazil, entheogenic, since 1961);
• Vale do Amanhecer (Brazil, Spiritism, since 1965);
• Nuwaubian Nation (USA, Kemetism, UFO religion, and Islam, since the 1980s)
• Ausar Auset Society (USA, Kemetism, Pan-Africanism, since 1973); and
• Black Buddhist Community in America (USA, Buddhism, since the 1960s).

See also

• African traditional religion

References

External links

• Roots and Rooted

Afro-American religion Religions Abakuá Candomblé (Bantu Jejé Ketu) Dominican Vudú Haitian Vodou Kumina Louisiana Voodoo Obeah Palo Quimbanda Santería Spiritual Baptist Umbanda Winti Roots Ifá Orisha (Yoruba) Loa (Fon and Ewe) Alusi (Igbo) Winti (Akan) Nkisi (Kongo) Roman Catholicism (France Portugal Spain Netherlands) Protestantism (England Netherlands) Indigenous American mythology