Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE CENTRAL AFRICA: SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND THE SLAVE TRADE
- PART TWO CENTRAL AFRICANS IN BRAZIL
- PART THREE CENTRAL AFRICANS IN HAITI AND SPANISH AMERICA
- 7 Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas in Kongo and Haiti
- 8 The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities
- 9 Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion
- 10 Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism: A Sociohistorical Exploration
- PART FOUR CENTRAL AFRICANS IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
- Index
9 - Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE CENTRAL AFRICA: SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND THE SLAVE TRADE
- PART TWO CENTRAL AFRICANS IN BRAZIL
- PART THREE CENTRAL AFRICANS IN HAITI AND SPANISH AMERICA
- 7 Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas in Kongo and Haiti
- 8 The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities
- 9 Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion
- 10 Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism: A Sociohistorical Exploration
- PART FOUR CENTRAL AFRICANS IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
- Index
Summary
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 LabatAmong 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.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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