Terry Rey

The Somatics of Syncretism: Tying Body and Soul in Haitian Religion

The convergence of African religion and Christianity in the Atlantic world has inspired some of the most significant and most analyzed examples of syncretism in the study of religion. Scholarly discussions of these phenomena, however, tend to portray religions like Vodou in Haiti and Candomblé in Brazil as mergers of various Euro-Christian and ‘‘traditional’’ African elements that chiefly result from processes of cognitive ideation, thereby blurring the integrative somatic dimensions of religious syncretism. Modes of embodying knowledge, power, and morality are thus largely absent from the discussion of religious syncretism in Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, as well as other contact-cultural religions, whose congregational and performance spaces now span national boundaries. Drawing upon the historiography of Kongolese and Haitian religion, and on our multi-site ethnographic research among religious communities in Haiti, to think about religious syncretism in the African diaspora, this paper focuses on two key metaphors of mimetic knowledge and embodiment, mare and pwen (tying and point), arguing that they are both fundamental processes in Haitian religious syncretism and essential tropes for understanding Haitian Vodou and Catholicism, processes that are of predominantly Central African, and especially Kongolese, origin. Parmi les exemples du syncrétisme religieux, les plus intéressants et les plus étudiés académiquement, sont ceux qu’a inspiré la convergence des religions africaines et de la chrétienté dans le monde atlantique. Cependant, l’analyse de ces phénomènes a trop souvent tendance à surestimer les processus cognitifs dans les religions comme le vodou, le candomblé, et le santeria, et de ce fait estompe les dimensions somatiques du syncrétisme religieux. Ainsi, la connaissance corporelle, la morale, et le pouvoir — choses importantes dans le vodou et le catholicisme en Haïti et dans sa diaspora — sont effectivement niés. Basée sur l’historiographie de la religion kongolaise et sur nos travaux de recherche ethnographiques dans diverses communautés religieuses en Haïti, notre réflexion ici porte sur le syncrétisme religieux à travers deux métaphores intégratives et somatiques dans le vodou et le catholicisme en Haïti: mare (amarrer) et pwen (point). Nous soutenons que l’on peut mieux comprendre le processus du syncrétisme en général en fixant notre attention sur mare et pwen, procédés essentiels qui signifient profondément l’influence centrafricaine, et surtout kongolaise, dans la religion haïtienne.

The Politics of Patron Sainthood in Haiti: 500 Years of Iconic Struggle

Overview In many countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion, personal religious and collective national identity are extensively conditioned by the imagery and names of a national patron saint. Two of the most striking examples of this phenomenon are the cults of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland and Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. The shaping influence that each of these Marian icons has on what it means to be Polish or Mexican and Catholic, however understood, and the strength of Polish and Mexican Catholic faith in the Virgin Marys oversight of their nations can hardly be overstated. The roles of Czestochows and Guadalupe are contested, however, in both the religious and political histories of each nation, and similar iconic struggles have been waged in most other Catholic countries, as Paul C. Johnson explains: images of the saints have provided privileged, divinely sanctioned sites for negotiating the powers of ethnicity, nationalism, and ... race. Moreover, if certain prominent images of the Virgin Mary have been effectively forwarded as a national face, Catholic yet distinct from the Roman version-Guadalupe in Mexico, Fatima in Portugal, Lourdes in France, Nossa Senhora Aparecida (Our Appeared lady) in Brazil-precisely what, whom, and how these images represent has also been contested within national contexts.1 A less-known, though no less striking, case of this phenomenon is that of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Haiti, who formally succeeded Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of the Assumption as the Caribbean nations patron saint in 1942. This paper explains the history of national patron sainthood in Haiti, revealing three of its most crucial facets: (1) The overarching aims of specific political regimes in the establishment of the nations three historically successive patron saint cults; (2) the general ideological underpinnings of the promotion of a national Marian patron saint cult by the ruling classes; and (3) the appropriation of the national patron symbol by the subjugated to resist sociopolitical domination. The Virgin Mary: Patron Saint of Slavery and Revolution in Colonial Hispaniola A history of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the Americas might begin with a statement something like, The Virgin Mary was originally brought to the New World by Spanish missionaries who joined the early explorers and settlers in establishing Spanish Americas first colonies. While this would hardly be incorrect, a subject/object reversal in this sentence would better reflect a pervasive, underlying Ibero-Catholic belief that represents a cornerstone of national patron sainthood in the Americas. To the Spanish, it was the Virgin Mary who brought them to the Americas, and not vice versa, illustrated rather graphically in the image of Columbus chancing upon the shores of diverse Caribbean islands while standing on a ship named Santa Maria. The Virgin Mary had long been European Catholicisms ruler of the seas (Stella Maris, Our Lady of the Navigators, etc.), thus making her the logical choice as heavenly guiding force behind Spains maritime exploration and subsequent colonization of the New World. As Marina Warner notes, The Virgins governance of the oceans was adapted to a practical purpose: she was prayed to by the missionaries who set out across the Atlantic and other oceans to conquer new territories for Christ.2 The sixteenth-century Spanish painter Alejandro Fernandezs Virgin of the Navigators reflects the Marian legitimization of the colonial enterprise that the Spanish enjoyed and employed: The Virgin is represented standing on a cloud, the traditional image of the Virgin of Mercy, dressed in a splendid brocade tunic with a cape extended behind her. Two groups of navigators and other persons involved in the colonization of the New World are gathered within the protection of her cape. On the right side are King Ferdinand, Bishop Don Juan de Fonseca, Chief of the Casa de Contratacion and Superintendent of the Indies, and Don Santo Matienzo, first Abbot of Jamaica. …

Marian devotion at a Haitian Catholic Parish in Miami: The feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

This article provides rich ethnographic description of the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in June 2002 at Notre Dame dHaiti Catholic Church in Miami, one of the most important public events in Haitian immigrant religion. By comparing the Patronal Feast in Miami with its counterpart in Haiti, I challenge scholarly exaggerations about the degree to which diasporic Haitian Catholics practice Vodou. Finally, this article illuminates emerging tensions in Haitian Catholicism caused by the tremendous recent growth in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora of the Charismatic Renewal, a surging Pentecostal movement that has overwhelmed Liberation Theology and its social agenda.

Congregating by cassette Recording and participation in transnational Haitian religious rituals

A single communications device has transformed interactions between members of widely dispersed transnational Haitian religious communities: the audiocassette recorder. Messages, hymns and prayers taped on them crisscross the sea between Haiti and its diaspora, engaging distantly separated co-religionists in sporadically sequenced, yet effectively intimate conversations and rituals. For both Vodouist and Catholic religious congregations, tape recordings in Haitian Creole effectively circumvent scriptural French and help cement transnational ties by creating vast transnational performative spaces. This article draws on ethnographic research in Haiti and Florida to describe and theorize the important role that audiocassettes have played, in the transnational Haitian case, in cementing `assembled groups and recreating `certain mental states of those groups in ways that Durkheim might not have imagined when developing his epic argument about the socially cohesive function and essence of religion, an argument from which we take our theoretical orientation.

The Saint and Siren: Liberation Hagiography in a Haitian Village

For at least 125 years, the cult of St Philomena has enjoyed tremendous popularity in and around the northern Haitian seaside village of Bord de Mer de Limonade, just ten kilometers east of Cape Haitian, the country’s second largest city. Though periodically suppressed by the Catholic Church hierarchy because of freewheeling syncretism between the saint and the maritime Vodou spirit Lasyrenn (The Siren), devotion to St Philomena thrives in Bord de Mer, whose shrine attracts hundreds of pilgrims each week and thousands during her early September feast day celebrations. This paper explores the history and present of devotion to St Philomena and Lasyrenn in Bord de Mer, arguing that the association of the two spiritual beings amounts to a popular liberation hagiography that flouts ecclesial and state authority while anchoring and asserting local Haitian identity and feminine power. Depuis au moins 125 ans, le culte de sainte Philomène a connu une énorme popularité autour du village côtière du nord d’Haïti de Bord de Mer de Limonade, une dizaine de kilomètres à l’est du Cap-Haïtien, deuxième ville du pays. Bien que périodiquement réprimée par la hiérarchie catholique à cause du syncrétisme licencieux entre le saint et l’esprit maritime vodouisant Lasyrenn (La Sirène), la dévotion à sainte Philomène prospère dans le village, où son sanctuaire attire des centaines de pèlerins chaque semaine et des milliers au cours du jour de sa fête chaque 5 septembre. Cet article explore l’histoire et le présent de la dévotion à sainte Philomène et Lasyrenn à Bord de Mer, postulant que l’association entre ces deux êtres spirituels donne lieu à une hagiographie populaire de libération qui bafoue l’autorité ecclésiale et de l’État tout en retenant et en affirmant l’identité locale haïtienne et une sorte de pouvoir féminin.

Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion

Over the last 20 years or so, a renewed and swelling interest in theories of religion has stirred in a number of academic disciplines, from religious studies and archaeology to economics and neurology. Though it remains the case that contemporary theorists sometimes commit what might be called the ‘sin of grandiosity’ of their classical predecessors, seeking to develop a one-size-fits-all explanation of ‘religion’, and sometimes exhibit some measure of disciplinary fetishism, new and exciting avenues of interdisciplinary theoretical orientations are emerging towards understanding the subject better than ever before, though the dangers of reductionism remain a concern, as several of the essays in this text warn. Contemporary Theories of Religion is an excellent resource for getting a sense of all of this, comprising 15 engaging essays that each summarise and critically review a particular theory of religion to have appeared in book form during this period, along with Michael Stausberg’s fine introduction and conclusion. As much as I would have liked to have seen at least some women among the contributors (who are all men) or theorists represented here (Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s Religion as a Chain of Memory, for instance?), the editor is to be commended for having assembled an all-star cast of contributors, whose assessments of the theories represented are mostly compelling and whose arguments are mostly convincing. This book should thus be taken very seriously by all scholars of religion, as we should surely take stock of theoretical matters from time to time. Contemporary Theories of Religion ‘‘is produced in a spirit (call it ‘modernist’, if you will) that valorizes theory, critique, and discussion as a means of doing science’’ (14). The choice of which theories of religion to include in the volume was somewhat restricted by the editorial decision to invite only submissions that critically engage book-length studies, which unfortunately eliminated a number of high-impact theorists from consideration, like Bourdieu, Butler, and Foucault, for example. That said, on offer here are 15 very thoughtful engagements: Steven Engler and Mark Gardiner on Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley’s Rethinking Religion; Benson Saler on Stewart Guthrie’s Faces in the Clouds; Gustavo Benavides on Walter Burkert’s Creation of the Sacred; Robert Segal on Roy Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors and Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity; Gregory Alles

Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery (review)

summer of 1492, after which no unconverted Jews legally remained in Spain (and the Inquisition in Spain lasted from 1478 to 1834).The book also asserts that the hidden Jews “came to the New World looking for freedom and survival” (Herz, p. x) and fled to the northwest “where a degree of religious safety might be hoped for” (Soltes, p. 5), yet most of the documentary evidence suggests that conversos came to the New World and dispersed from Mexico City and Lima principally for economic reasons.

Catholicism and Human Rights in Haiti: Past, Present, and Future

This article surveys the relationship between Catholicism and human rights during four periods of Haitian history: (1) the colonial era of plantation slavery; (2) the antisuperstitious campaigns from 1898 to 1943; (3) the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier from 1957–1971; and (4) the rise and fall of liberation theology in Haiti from the mid 1970s to the present. My primary argument is that despite a generally deplorable Catholic track record vis-a-vis human rights, there has also been a consistent ethical tributary of Catholic struggle for social justice in this poor Caribbean nation. Its strongest current fed the church-based activism that helped topple the dynastic Duavlier regime in 1986—a current that has since weakened in part due to the emergence of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Prospects for a liberationist renewal within the Renewal, however, could dictate the future of the Haitain Catholic Churchs engagement in the struggle for human rights.