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Reviewed by:
  • Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction by Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, and: Afro-Caribbean Religions: An Introduction to Their Historical, Cultural, and Sacred Traditions by Nathaniel Samuel Murrell
  • Solimar Otero
Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez. 2010. Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction. New York and London: New York University Press. 269 pp. ISBN: 0-8147-2234-2.
Nathaniel Samuel Murrell. 2010. Afro-Caribbean Religions: An Introduction to Their Historical, Cultural, and Sacred Traditions. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 432 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4399-0041-3.

Anthropologist J. Lorand Matory said of the history of Afro-Atlantic religious cultures that, “[the] lifeways, traditions, and the social boundaries they substantiate endure not despite their involvement in translocal dialogues, but because of it” (Matory 2005:1, emphasis in original). This focus on the dialogic nature of the creation of the [End Page 223] Afro-Atlantic religious world can be extended to our understanding the complexities that create the living religions of the Caribbean. Two books, Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, Caribbean Religious History (New York University Press, 2010), and Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, Afro-Caribbean Religions (Temple University Press, 2010), seek to do comparative work on the historical dialogue revealed in the analysis of the multi-layered traditions of the vernacular religions of the region. In this vein, other volumes have attempted to bring a historical and cultural introduction to the religions of the Afro-Atlantic world that includes a distinct focus on the creole traditions of the Caribbean. For example, Carolyn Morrow Long’s Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and Commerce (2001), gives us a view of the religions’ economic diaspora that expands the idea of the region’s reach to places like New Orleans and Spanish Harlem through the study of spiritual sundries sold in botánicas, yerberías, and root shops. Another volume that looks at the religions of the Caribbean comparatively through the lens of Queer theory is the experience-centered Spiritual Traditions: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Participation in African-Inspired Traditions in the Americas by Randy P. Conner and David Hatfield Sparks (2004). Along these lines, Creole Religions of the Caribbean by Elizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Margarite Fernández-Olmos (2003) also provides an introduction to the diverse array of traditions found in Caribbean religious life. The task of providing an introduction and overview to such a complex and layered set of phenomenon is one fraught with difficulties as it is the very specifics of vernacular religions that create their texture and context. Thus, the very generalizing that is required in initiating such projects also must be guided with a very specific topical focus and grounded with a clear theoretical trajectory. In this regard, works like Kamari Maxine Clarke’s Mapping Yorùbá Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities (2004), serve as useful models to navigating the complexity of the transcultural work that goes into the construction of Caribbean religiosity. In this regard, Edmonds and Gonzalez, as well as Murrell, give their readers a mixed look at the history of the religions of the region in terms of the trajectory and scope of their volumes.

In Caribbean Religious History, Edmonds and Gonzalez offer nine chapters plus a conclusion that include a refreshing consideration of Amerindian, Afro-Christian, Islamic, and Asian influences on the creation of religious cultures in the region. They emphasize the processes of “accommodation, adaptation, and transformation” in examining Caribbean religions like Cuban Santería, Trinidadian Spiritual Baptism, Jamaican Rastafarianism, and Haitian Vodou, to name a few examples (p. 1). The organization of the vast terrain of Caribbean religious culture that the volume seeks to both describe and put into historical perspective [End Page 224] reminds one of how perhaps Émile Durkheim or Melville Herskovits would order the comparative analysis of such diversity. The authors explain different theories of understanding religious admixture in the Caribbean, from detailing some the components of George Beckford and Orlando Patterson’s plantation theory, to describing mestizaje, as well as explaining creolization as understood by Edward Braithwaite, among other approaches (pp. 8–12). Even within the consideration of these disparate perspectives, Edmonds and Gonzalez aptly recognize the wisdom of allowing specific...

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