Caribbean journal of religious studies
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 40,13 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Caribbean Area
ISBN :
Creole Religions of the Caribbean
Author : Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 21,64 MB
Release : 2011-07-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0814762573
Book Description
A comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions developed in the Caribbean region Creolization—the coming together of diverse beliefs and practices to form new beliefs and practices—is one of the most significant phenomena in Caribbean religious history. Brought together in the crucible of the sugar plantation, Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions that have developed in the region. From Vodou, Santería, Regla de Palo, the Abakuá Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical–cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Pocomania and Rastafarianism. This second edition updates the scholarship on the religions themselves and also expands the regional considerations of the Diaspora to the U. S. Latino community who are influenced by Creole spiritual practices. Fernández Olmos and Paravisini–Gebert also take into account the increased significance of material culture—art, music, literature—and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.
Caribbean Religious History
Author : Ennis B. Edmonds
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 25,81 MB
Release : 2010-06-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0814722350
Book Description
The colonial history of the Caribbean created a context in which many religions, from indigenous to African-based to Christian, intermingled with one another, creating a rich diversity of religious life. Caribbean Religious History offers the first comprehensive religious history of the region. Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez begin their exploration with the religious traditions of the Amerindians who flourished prior to contact with European colonizers, then detail the transplantation of Catholic and Protestant Christianity and their centuries of struggles to become integral to the Caribbean’s religious ethos, and trace the twentieth century penetration of American Evangelical Christianity, particularly in its Pentecostal and Holiness iterations. Caribbean Religious History also illuminates the influence of Africans and their descendants on the shaping of such religious traditions as Vodou, Santeria, Revival Zion, Spiritual Baptists, and Rastafari, and the success of Indian indentured laborers and their descendants in reconstituting Hindu and Islamic practices in their new environment. Paying careful attention to the region’s social and political history, Edmonds and Gonzalez present a one-volume panoramic introduction to this religiously vibrant part of the world.
Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics within a Caribbean Context
Author : Oral A. W. Thomas
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 36,7 MB
Release : 2016-04-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1134939841
Book Description
The Bible is of central importance within Caribbean life but is rarely used as an agent for social change. Caribbean biblical hermeneutics focus more on the meaning of biblical texts for today and less on the context in which the texts themselves were written. 'Biblical Resistance Hermeneutics within a Caribbean Context' offers a biblical hermeneutic that acknowledges the importance of the socio-ideological interests, theological agendas, and social practices that produced the biblical texts, as well as the socio-cultural context of the contemporary reader. The book examines the social context of post-independence Caribbean and outlines the difficulties of biblical interpretation within Christian communities that descend from a history of slavery. Current hermeneutical practices in the Caribbean are critiqued and a biblical resistant reading offered that enables the Bible to be used as a cultural weapon of resistance.
Caribbean Theology
Author : Howard Gregory
Publisher : Canoe Press (IL)
Page : 142 pages
File Size : 15,8 MB
Release : 1995
Category : History
ISBN : 9789768125095
Book Description
This timely collection explores critical issues facing theological education in the West Indies, with special attention to the current status and content of Caribbean theology. Contributors represent a number of mainstream Protestant traditions (Anglican, Moravian, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian) and approach their topics from a variety of specializations (Biblical Studies, Church History, Social Sciences, Pastoral Care, and Christian Education). Howard Gregory, who is the president of the United Theological College of the West Indies, has done an exemplary job of representing the diversity of theological opinion at the conference as well as highlighting some common concerns of participants. All participants, Gregory points out, acknowledged a pressing need to address practical aspects of pastoral care and to identify priorities specific to the Caribbean region. In addition, all participants underscored the need for renewed commitment to the task of developing and teaching an "authentic" Caribbean theology, although there is considerable disagreement as to exactly what an " authentic" Caribbean theology should be. --
The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad
Author : Alexander Rocklin
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 29,99 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781469648705
Book Description
How can religious freedom be granted to people who do not have a religion? While Indian indentured workers in colonial Trinidad practiced cherished rituals, "Hinduism" was not a widespread category in India at the time. On this Caribbean island, people of South Asian descent and African descent came together--under the watchful eyes of the British rulers--to walk on hot coals for fierce goddesses, summon spirits of the dead, or honor Muslim martyrs, practices that challenged colonial norms for religion and race. Drawing deeply on colonial archives, Alexander Rocklin examines the role of the category of religion in the regulation of the lives of Indian laborers struggling for autonomy. Gradually, Indians learned to narrate the origins, similarities, and differences among their fellows' cosmological views, and to define Hindus, Muslims, and Christians as distinct groups. Their goal in doing this work of subaltern comparative religion, as Rocklin puts it, was to avoid criminalization and to have their rituals authorized as legitimate religion--they wanted nothing less than to gain access to the British promise of religious freedom. With the indenture system's end, the culmination of this politics of recognition was the gradual transformation of Hindus' rituals and the reorganization of their lives--they fabricated a "world religion" called Hinduism.
A Kairos Moment for Caribbean Theology
Author : Garnett Roper
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 15,18 MB
Release : 2013-08-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1621898318
Book Description
The project of developing a contextual theology for the Caribbean was first articulated in the early 1970s in Trinidad and Jamaica. In the years since, many evangelical churches and theologians in the Caribbean have been ambivalent about the validity of this project, assuming that an emphasis on context was somehow antithetical to the pure gospel. But the crisis of the times, along with a more mature hermeneutic, has led to a re-evaluation of this assumption. Here a group of evangelical Caribbean theologians enter the discussion, with substantive proposals for how the gospel addresses the Caribbean context. They are joined by other theologians from mainline Protestant and Catholic traditions in the Caribbean. The result is an ecumenical dialogue on the diverse ways in which orthodox Christian faith may provide both challenge and hope for the Caribbean context. Half the essays in this volume were originally presented at the Forum on Caribbean Theology held in 2010 at the Jamaica Theological Seminary; the rest were invited especially for this volume.
Messianic 'I' and Rastafari in New Testament Dialogue
Author : Delano Vincent Palmer
Publisher : University Press of America
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 46,43 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0761850457
Book Description
Anyone familiar with the Rastafari movement and its connection with the Bible is struck by the prevalence of messianic I-locution found in both. As the phenomenon is important in the canonical Testaments, more so within the New Testament, this study seeks to investigate its significance in certain epistolary pieces (Romans 7:14-25: 15:14-33), the bio-Narratives and the Apocalypse in their historical and cultural milieu. The next stage of the investigation then compares the findings of the aforementioned New Testament books with corresponding statements of the Rasta community, in order to determine their relevance for the ongoing Anglophone theological enterprise. In sum, this study seeks to bring into critical dialogue the permutative messianic 'I' of the New Testament with the self-understanding of Rastalari. Book jacket.
Overcoming Self-Negation
Author : Carlton Turner
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 36,60 MB
Release : 2020-10-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1532687028
Book Description
Bearing in mind the complex and multiple legacies of slavery and colonialism, particularly as they present themselves in the African Caribbean, Turner addresses what he sees as a fundamental but underexplored phenomenon: Self-Negation. He defines this as the tendency for persons living in the aftermath of slavery and colonialism to "not" like themselves, or to live with a dissonance in their identity. This problem is particularly seen in the relationship between the Church and African indigenous religious heritages within the region. Using the Bahamas as the site for qualitative research and theological reflection, he explores the complex relationship between the Church and Junkanoo, an African Caribbean street festival. Whilst Bahamians eagerly participate in both spheres, it is the common belief that Church is sacred and Junkanoo is secular, and the two should never mix. Turner theorizes that the theological root of the issue is the kinds of colonial hermeneutics that still inform church and cultural practices. Whilst Self-Negation is perpetuated by a hermeneutic of dichotomy, Turner proposes a counter, a hermeneutic of embrace, that takes African indigenous cultural heritages seriously and brings wholeness to the kinds of religious and cultural identities within postcolonial and post-slavery societies.
Reading Spiritualities
Author : Dawn Llewellyn
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 22,12 MB
Release : 2016-04-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1317071077
Book Description
The phenomenon of 'sacred text' has undergone radical deconstruction in recent times, reflecting how religion has broken out of its traditional definitions and practices, and how current literary theories have influenced texts inside the religious domain and beyond. Reading Spiritualities presents both commentary and vivid examples of this evolution, engaging with a variety of reading practices that work with traditional texts and those that extend the notion of 'text' itself. The contributors draw on a range of textual sites such as an interview, Caribbean literature, drama and jazz, women's writings, emerging church blogs, Neopagan websites, the reading practices of Buddhist nuns, empirical studies on the reading experiences of Gujarati, Christian and post-Christian women, Chicana short stories, the mosque, cinema, modern art and literature. These examples open up understandings of where and how 'sacred texts' are emerging and being reassessed within contemporary religious and spiritual contexts; and make room for readings where the spiritual resides not only in the textual, but in other unexpected places. Reading Spiritualities includes contributions from Graham Holderness, Ursula King, Michael N. Jagessar, David Jasper, Anthony G. Reddie, Michèle Roberts, and Heather Walton to reflect and encourage the interdisciplinary study of sacred text in the broad arena of the arts and social sciences. It offers a unique and well-focused 'snapshot' of the textual constructions and representations of the sacred within the contemporary religious climate - accessible to the general reader, as well as more specialist interests of students and researchers working in the crossover fields of religious, theological, cultural and literary studies.
