The Priest and the Prophetess

The Priest and the Prophetess

Author: Terry Rey

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0190625856

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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.


Philanthropy and Race in the Haitian Revolution

Philanthropy and Race in the Haitian Revolution

Author: Erica R. Johnson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-19

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 3319761447

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This book examines the ways in which a minority of primarily white, male, French philanthropists used their social standing and talents to improve the lives of peoples of African descent in Saint-Domingue during the crucial period of the Haitian Revolution. They went to great lengths to advocate for the application of universal human rights through political activities, academic societies, religious charity, influence on public opinion, and fraternity in the armed services. The motives for their benevolence ran the gamut from genuine altruism to the selfish pursuit of prestige, which could, on occasion, lead to political or economic benefit from aiding blacks and people of color. This book offers a view that takes into account the efforts of all peoples who worked to end slavery and establish racial equality in Saint-Domingue and challenges simplistic notions of the Haitian Revolution, which lean too heavily on an assumed strict racial divide between black and white.


Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue

Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue

Author: Celucien L. Joseph

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-10-30

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1666742430

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Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue addresses both historical factors and ideological issues that created antagonism and conflict between Christians and Vodouists in Haiti. The book offers practical solutions and strategies to help create a harmonious and peaceful environment between religious practitioners associated with Vodou and Christianity. Toward this goal, this volume considers various perspectives and theories, such as autobiography, anthropology, ethnographic fieldwork, religious experience, and gender to examine the subject matter. This volume offers practical examples and resources on how to engage in interreligious dialogue and promote interreligious education in Haiti. There are three philosophical and practical ideas underlying this book project: (1) it is grounded on the belief that religion has value, and it could bring social goods to different communities and enhance human dignity and justice; (2) it is premised on the idea that dialogue and cooperation are necessary for nation-building and human development (as democratic ideals) and that one of the leading functions of the world’s religious traditions is to promote both cooperation and dialogue through mutual understanding and for the common good; and (3) that the power and public role of religion in society can be used as a major force of unification and peace-building among divergent factions and schools of thought, and to promote reconciliation, mutual respect, and friendship in the world.


The Spirits and the Law

The Spirits and the Law

Author: Kate Ramsey

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-02-07

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 0226703819

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Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.


Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture

Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture

Author: C. Michel

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-11-27

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0312376200

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This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.


Black Zion

Black Zion

Author: Yvonne Patricia Chireau

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0195112571

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This is an exploration of the interaction between African American religions and Jewish traditions, beliefs, and spaces. The collection's argument is that religion is the missing piece of the cultural jigsaw, and black-Jewish relations need the religious roots of their problem illuminated.


Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas

Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas

Author: Henry Goldschmidt

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-08-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0198034024

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This collection of all new essays will explore the complex and unstable articulations of race and religion that have helped to produce "Black," "White," "Creole," "Indian," "Asian," and other racialized identities and communities in the Americas. Drawing on original research in a range of disciplines, the authors will investigate: 1) how the intertwined categories of race and religion have defined, and been defined by, global relations of power and inequality; 2) how racial and religious identities shape the everyday lives of individuals and communities; and 3) how racialized and marginalized communities use religion and religious discourses to contest the persistent power of racism in societies structured by inequality. Taken together, these essays will define a new standard of critical conversation on race and religion throughout the Americas.


Medicine and Morality in Haiti

Medicine and Morality in Haiti

Author: Paul Brodwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-09-13

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780521575430

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Morality and medicine are inextricably intertwined in rural Haiti, and both are shaped by the different local religious traditions, Christian and Vodoun, as well as by biomedical and folk medical practices. When people fall ill, they seek treatment not only from Western doctors but also from herbalists, religious healers and midwives. Dr Brodwin examines the situational logic, the pragmatic decisions, that guide people in making choices when they are faced with illness. He also explains the moral issues that arise in a society where suffering is associated with guilt, but where different, sometimes conflicting, ethical systems coexist. Moreover, he shows how in the crisis of illness people rework religious identities and are forced to address fundamental social and political problems.