Sarah J. Mahler

Terry Rey

Alex Stepick

In addition to being a religious countryùover ninety percent of Americans believe in God--the United States is also home to more immigrants than ever before. Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City focuses on the intersection of religion and civic engagement among Miami's immigrant and minority groups. The contributors examine the role of religious organizations in developing social relationships and how these relationships affect the broader civic world. Essays, for example, consider the role of leadership in the promotion and creation of "civic social capital" in a Haitian Catholic church, transnational ties between Cuban Catholics in Miami and Havana, and several African American congregations that serve as key comparisons of civic engagement among minorities. This book is important not only for its theoretical contributions to the sociology of religion, but also because it gives us a unique glimpse into immigrants' civic and religious lives in urban America.

Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami

Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in America, they have diversified socioeconomically. Together, they have made South Florida home to the largest population of native-born Haitians and diasporic Haitians outside of the Caribbean and one of the most significant Caribbean immigrant communities in the world. Religion has played a central role in making all of this happen. Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith is a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities, based on fieldwork in both Miami and Haiti, as well as extensive archival research. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, Rey and Stepick explore Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities. This meticulously researched and vibrantly written book contributes to the growing body of literature on religion among new immigrants. Terry Rey is Associate Professor of Religion at Temple University. He is the coeditor (with Alex Stepick and Sarah Mahler) of Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City: Religion, Immigration, and Civic Engagement in Miami. Alex Stepick is Professor of Sociology at Portland State University and Professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. He is coauthor (with Alejandro Portes) of City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami. In the North American Religions series

Haitian Religion in Miami

Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith

Jacob Kẹhinde Olupona

As the twenty-first century begins, tens of millions of people participate in devotions to the spirits called Òrìsà. This book explores the emergence of Òrìsà devotion as a world religion, one of the most remarkable and compelling developments in the history of the human religious quest. Originating among the Yorùbá people of West Africa, the varied traditions that comprise Òrìsà devotion are today found in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia. The African spirit proved remarkably resilient in the face of the transatlantic slave trade, inspiring the perseverance of African religion wherever its adherents settled in the New World. Among the most significant manifestations of this spirit, Yorùbá religious culture persisted, adapted, and even flourished in the Americas, especially in Brazil and Cuba, where it thrives as Candomblé and Lukumi/Santería, respectively. After the end of slavery in the Americas, the free migrations of Latin American and African practitioners has further spread the religion to places like New York City and Miami. Thousands of African Americans have turned to the religion of their ancestors, as have many other spiritual seekers who are not themselves of African descent. Ifá divination in Nigeria, Candomblé funerary chants in Brazil, the role of music in Yorùbá revivalism in the United States, gender and representational authority in Yorùbá religious culture--these are among the many subjects discussed here by experts from around the world. Approaching Òrìsà devotion from diverse vantage points, their collective effort makes this one of the most authoritative texts on Yorùbá religion and a groundbreaking book that heralds this rich, complex, and variegated tradition as one of the world's great religions.

The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture

Òrìşà Devotion as World Religion

By 1791, the French Revolution had spread to Haïti, where slaves and free blacks alike had begun demanding civil rights guaranteed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Enter Romaine-la-Prophétesse, a free black Dominican coffee farmer who dressed in women's clothes and claimed that the Virgin Mary was his godmother. Inspired by mystical revelations from the Holy Mother, he amassed a large and volatile following of insurgents who would go on to sack countless plantations and conquer the coastal cities of Jacmel and Léogâne. For this brief period, Romaine counted as his political adviser the white French Catholic priest and physician Abbé Ouvière, a renaissance man of cunning politics who would go on to become a pioneering figure in early American science and medicine. Brought together by Catholicism and the turmoil of the revolutionary Atlantic, the priest and the prophetess would come to symbolize the enlightenment ideals of freedom and a more just social order in the eighteenth-century Caribbean. Drawing on extensive archival research, Terry Rey offers a major contribution to our understanding of Catholic mysticism and traditional African religious practices at the time of the Haitian Revolution and reveals the significant ways in which religion and race intersected in the turbulence and triumphs of revolutionary France, Haïti, and early republican America.

Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World

The Priest and the Prophetess

This book is one of the most extensive single ethnographical studies on religion yet conducted in the Caribbean. It is a sociological analysis of the Marian devotion in Haiti that aims to reveal the differences between the Marianism of Haitian poor and that of the Haitian elite, and to explain the forces that underlie these differences, and to understand the syncretism of Marian beliefs and symbols with their correspondents in Haitian Vodou. Data generated through over four hundred interviews with Catholics and Voduisants and extensive participant/observation at Marian feasts throughout Haiti over a four-year period is analyzed and explained with references to the theories concerning religion and class of Antonio Gramsci, Max Weber, and Pierre Bourdieu. Two case studies personalize the elite/popular schism at the heart of Haitian Marianism, while a historical survey of the roles that the Mary symbol has played in Haitian politics reveals both the ways in which the dominant in Haitian society have, since the arrival of Columbus in 1492, attempted to manipulate the symbol and myth of the Virgin to legitimize and perpetuate the social inequalities upon which their power and privilege depends, and instances of Marian appropriation by the subjugated, who have at times transformed Mariology into a source of inspiration for struggle against domination. Historical research also discloses how the Catholic Church hierarchy has aimed to employ the Virgin Mary in its epic campaign to eradicate Vodou from Haitian society. The reason that this campaign has failed is due to the fact that the Virgin Mary was widely assimilated with Ezili, the Vodou spirit of love and sensuality, making Haiti's Maryuniquely Haitian. In sum, the effects of Vodou and of class struggle on Haitian Marianism are discussed and analyzed.

The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti

Our Lady of Class Struggle

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, significant numbers of Haitian immigrants began to arrive and settle in Miami. Overcoming some of the most foreboding obstacles ever to face immigrants in America, they, their children, and now their grandchildren, as well as more recently arriving immigrants from Haiti, have diversified socioeconomically. Together, they have made South Florida home to the largest population of native-born Haitians and diasporic Haitians outside of the Caribbean and one of the most significant Caribbean immigrant communities in the world. Religion has played a central role in making all of this happen. Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith is a historical and ethnographic study of Haitian religion in immigrant communities, based on fieldwork in both Miami and Haiti, as well as extensive archival research. Where many studies of Haitian religion limit themselves to one faith, Rey and Stepick explore Catholicism, Protestantism, and Vodou in conversation with one another, suggesting that despite the differences between these practices, the three faiths ultimately create a sense of unity, fulfillment, and self-worth in Haitian communities. This meticulously researched and vibrantly written book contributes to the growing body of literature on religion among new immigrants, as well as providing a rich exploration of Haitian faith communities.

Terry Rey

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