How do we trouble the hegemony of historical and contemporary religious practices that may not have been included in the archive or definitions of “appropriate” ritual, ceremony, or communion with transcendent spiritual forces? Can previously “hidden histories”, transgressive behaviors or practices be recast as worthy of engagement, study, and embrace as alternative pathways to spiritual communion and/or religious ecstasy? These papers tackle archival and contemporary constructions of gender, and sexual orientation, social/professional roles in relation to faith, interreligious dialogism, everyday spirituality for folks construed as non-traditional interlocutors/practitioners with the divine. Not only do they highlight alterity, double-consciousness, vernacular spirituality, improvisatory rites, and narratives of resistance, but see these experiences and performativities as a way and means to realize dreams, desires, quell fears, create harmony and contest construction of misogynoir prejudice for more inclusive epistemes of religious engagement.
In this presentation, I explore the possibility of interreligious dialogue between adherents of Vodou and Christianity in Haiti. I suggest that the aim of interreligious dialogue between Vodouists and Haitian Protestant Christians in Haiti should involve first candid conversations about the roots or causes of religious conflict and group hostility that have divided both Haitian Vodouists and Protestant (Evangelical) Christians. Interreligious dialogue should contribute to a better understanding of these two dominant religious systems, enhance interreligious literacy, cultivate intentional friendship and hospitality, and contribute to peace-making and nation-building in the Haitian society. In light of both objectives, the paper will bring clarity on the nature of interfaith dialogue and analyze how both Vodouist writers and Christian theologians of the Protestant tradition have responded to conflict and differences in relationship to Haitian history, theology, ethics, and culture. I close this paper with some recommendations on how adherents of Vodou and Protestant Christianity can pursue genuine interfaith dialogue toward the common good and human flourishing in the Haitian society and the Haitian diaspora.
In the 1930’s, folklorist Harry Hyatt began an extensive project collecting supernatural folk-beliefs throughout the American Gulf and Coastal South. More than a mere collection of otherworldly curiosa, Hyatt’s Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, Rootwork offers a largely unvarnished glimpse of everyday experience – bootlegging, gambling, sex-work - not often openly discussed in 1930’s academic discourse. Two of Hyatt’s most remarkable interviews involve interlocutors who did not conform to binary gender or sexual roles, and whose pragmatic occult instructions provide us with views of both quotidian and supernatural experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in the early 20th century South. Through a close reading of these interviews, elements drawn from other ethnographies of Conjure, and my own fieldwork with Healers and Spiritualists in New Orleans, I wish to suggest a necessary “Queering of Conjure” – an articulation of the vital roles LGBTQ+ people of color have played in creating, shaping and disseminating these traditions.
Scholars researching Black Religion give limited attention to its geographical scope beyond tightly guarded ecclesiastical places. Even fewer explore Black Women’s essential contributions to Black lived religion. I seek to expand such by proposing that stripping be read as Black religious ritual and strip clubs as hush harbors- sacred, religious spaces where Black Women spiritually commune with Deity. Using Womanist theologians and feminists to shape my theoretical framework, this paper examines playwright Katori Hall’s tv show P-Valley, arguing that stripping and strip clubs provide Black Women with transcendent ecstasy beyond sociohistorical limitations of their race, gender, sexuality, geography, and class. Through ritual, P Valley’s Black Women struggle for complex subjectivities that reconceptualize adverse, hegemonic representations. They also reject patron’s misogynoir bodily consumptions and resist gentrifying land developments that would hinder and displace their liturgy. These Black Women remind viewers that religion abounds everywhere, revealing God in their sexual bodies and performances.