Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism

Foreword

xiii FOR E WOR D THIS TEXT CONTAINS two interrelated and overlapping travel narratives . One of the narratives is in the form of a travel in time—the history of ideas, meanings, symbols, and images of Africa in African American culture; this narrative contextualizes the second one. The second narrative tells the story of a young African American male from Detroit, Walter Eugene King, and his journey from Detroit through a variety of times, spaces, and imaginations to his emergence as Oba Efuntola Oseijeman Adefumi I in the new space of the Oyotunji Yoruba Village in South Carolina. It is in fact this story that evoked the necessity for the larger historical narrative that encompasses it. Both narratives are concerned with the image and symbol of Africa as a religious orientation. The first narrative traverses historical time, describing and explaining the meaning of Africa in the life and culture of black folk and especially in African American nationalist ideology. Because the narratives are concerned with religious quests, we are immediately reminded of the religious rite of pilgrimage. The encompassing historical narrative takes us through the passages of time, space, actions, and thought of persons and communities of African Americans from their initial enslavement in North America to the present. Within this fulsome narrative we are made aware of the significance, power, and necessity of a “place to be called home” for millions of persons of African descent who were separated from their original homeland and denied authenticity as human beings in foreword xiv North America. The continent of Africa, their place of origin, was remembered , invented, symbolized, and remade within the new spaces and times of North America as a foundation for their humanness as well as a vision for a viable human future. The prominence of religious journeys in this study brings to mind the religious rite of pilgrimage, especially in the research of Victor Turner.1 The quest of the young Walter Eugene King, which takes him from Detroit to New York, Haiti, Europe, Africa, and Cuba, corresponds to the liminal phase of the pilgrimage phenomenon as described by Turner. The liminal phase of the pilgrimage is that period between the pilgrim’s departure from home and familiar circumstances until the arrival at the sacred site that is the goal of the pilgrimage. Turner analyses the new social relations and identities that are formed during this phase and time. In addition, during the liminal period tensions, contrasts, and critique of the reigning social order come to the fore. Victor Turner’s other pertinent term of analysis, the notion of communitas, fits well with the kind of knowledges of Africa and the various practioners of African-derived religions King met and consulted with during his pilgrimage and the founding of Oyotunji Village in South Carolina as what Turner might have referred to as a “normative mode of communitas.” Now while this text is a biography of Walter Eugene King’s bildungsroman as a religious pilgrimage, it is much more than this. It is at the same time a descriptive and critical history of African American nationalism as a religious phenomenon. It shows how the image and symbol of Africa becamethebasisforanalternateauthenticityforthecommunitiesofAfrican Americans in North America. From this discussion we are confronted with the broader issue of the meaning of religion in the contemporary world. The text employs a variety of methods ranging from ethnohistory, history , history of religions, and political science. In so doing, the issue of theory and method in the disciplines of religious studies is raised. Tracey Hucks as the narrator and author of the biography of Walter Eugene King/ Oseijeman Adefumi I and the interwoven narratives of African American nationalism suggests a hermeneutical position that parallels the role of a novelist. This novelistic tonality refers us back again to the thematic and stylistics of religious pilgrimage—pilgrimage as the sources of knowledge that combines both the larger context of the history of African American nationalism and the biography of Walter Eugene King. Such a procedure foreword xv in method is reminiscent of an older meaning of pilgrimage as not only the visit to sacred sites, but equally pilgrimage as the mode for the acquisition of knowledge—pilgrimage as theoria. It is at this juncture that we should remember that our word “theory” is from a Greek term that means “spectacle”—seeing, sight. Seeing here refers to knowledge and knowing. Echoes of this older meaning were...