Colonialism, Race, and Black Religious Repair
Week 1: Introduction and “Sinners”
Big Question: How did colonialism shape the idea of “Black religion”?
Religion functions as a political tool of empire, defining who is considered human, rational, or civilized.
Core Logic: Colonialism → Race → “Black Religion” → Fetishism/Primitivism → Dehumanization → Hoodoo as Repair → Sinners reclaims sacred meaning. (Johnson notes that Afro-Euro trade beginning in 1441 marks the origin of racialized religion.)
Key Scholars
- Drake: Europeans labeled Africans with terms like “fetish” or “superstition.” Religion was used to racialise bodies, leading to the logic: “No religion equals need to rule.”
- Johnson: Colonialism is the engine of race. The U.S. functioned as an internal colony, where freedom and oppression coexist. “Race = Politics.”
- Long: Meaning moves across the Atlantic. The Diaspora is a continuous sacred exchange; the Atlantic world is a religious site, not merely a backdrop.
- Chireau: Hoodoo or Conjure combines African cosmology with Christian symbols for healing and justice. This reframes “superstition” as a sacred science of repair and survival.
Key Terms
- Saltwater Fallacy: Colonialism is not solely overseas; it exists inside the empire.
- Primitivism: The “backward” ranking of African religion, which formed the European binary of “civilized vs savage.”
- Negro Church: A 19th/20th-century sociological label for Black Christianity that reduced Black faith to “folk sociology.”
Sinners Connection
The collaboration between Coogler and Chireau mirrors Chireau’s claim: the practice is about survival and dignity. Hoodoo and the Blues are sacred, communal, and ancestral—a religion of repair, not horror.
Essay Anchors
- Drake + Johnson: Focus on “Religion as racial technology.”
- Internal Colonialism: The colonized status of African Americans challenges the U.S. “freedom narrative” (Johnson).
Week 2: Creation Stories & African Indigenous Religions (AIRs)
Big Question: How did AIRs shape early Black religious worldviews, and how did colonialism distort them?
Core Logic: AIRs are sacred, adaptive, and communal. The colonial gaze interpreted them as “superstition,” “fetishism,” or “witchcraft.” Religion was used to define who was human. The Middle Passage transformed AIRs, leading to Conjure, Hoodoo, and the Blues.
Key Scholars
- Olupona: Religion is a life practice where ritual outweighs belief. AIRs are living, dynamic systems rooted in community and nature, challenging the Western idea that religion is private belief or text.
- van Beek: “Indigenous” is not static; traditions adapt to social change, countering the stereotype of “frozen tribal faith.”
- Johnson: The 1441 Afro-Euro trade marks the birth of the religion-race link. Colonialism created race and a moral hierarchy, building freedom upon domination.
- Drake: “Fetishism” is a colonial misreading of sacred matter; Europeans used religion to mark Africans as irrational.
Islamic Influence
West African Islam (from the 8th century onward) represents early global religious contact and explains musical and devotional continuities in the diaspora.
Key Terms
- AIRs: Communal, ritual faith rooted in nature; the foundation of Black religion.
- Porous Boundary: Spirit and material worlds are interwoven, carrying into Hoodoo and Vodou, rejecting the Western sacred/secular split.
- Cyclical Time: A life–death–rebirth continuum that sustains ancestor presence, serving as spiritual resistance to slavery’s “social death.”
- Fetishism / Superstition: Colonial labels for AIR practices that turned sacred objects into “irrational idols,” making religion a tool of racialization.
- Nature / Sacred Ecology: Land and elements are living sacred forces, the root of “roo2rk” (rootwork). The environment is a partner in survival and healing.
- Myth (Cosmogonic): In AIRs, sacred stories explaining origins and moral order function as moral history, not fiction.
- Ritual (Primary Mode): Religion lived through doing, not believing. Ritual kept faith alive through slavery and forms the basis for Conjure and the Blues.
- Witchcraft: In AIRs, this meant the antisocial misuse of power. Colonialism flattened the term, labeling all African spirituality as evil, demonstrating how language criminalized Black religion.
Essay Connections
- Religion = Power (Johnson + Drake): Colonialism defined “real religion” to define humanity; AIRs reclaim that humanity.
- Survival + Adaptation: Olupona + van Beek show how ritual and community survived the Middle Passage.
- Reframing “Primitive”: AIRs are rational and evolving, challenging European hierarchies.
- Ecological Theology: Nature is a sacred ally, connecting to Hoodoo and environmental repair.
- Continuity: AIR cosmology (ritual, sacred ecology, ancestors) survives the Middle Passage and reemerges in Hoodoo, Vodou, and the Blues.