Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture

• Published in: Journal of African history Vol. 51; no. 1; p. 107
• Main Authors: PEEL, J D Y, Olupona; Rey, Jacob K ; Terry
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01-01-2010
• Subjects: Christianity; Culture; Globalization; Islam; Nigeria; Religion; Religious traditions; World religions; Yoruba; Zoroastrianism; Americas; Benin; United States > US; Europe; South Carolina; Africa
• ISSN: 0021-8537; 1469-5138
• DOI: 10.1017/S0021853710000083

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Comprising a selection of the papers given at a 1999 conference on Yoruba religion as a global phenomenon, this massive volume has given the editors the usual headache in such cases, of how to give a focus to a very heterogeneous field. There is a certain ambiguity in just how the subject is to be conceived: are we talking of, as in the subtitle, 'Yoruba religious culture' (most of which is nowadays realized through Islamic or Christian forms); or of its most distinctive form, the orisa cults, as a globalized phenomenon; or, as the editors suggest in the Introduction, pushing ahead of any of the contributors, of orisa devotion as a world religion - that is, one which, if not up with the 'big three' of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, might at least be compared with the second tier of faiths such as Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, or Jainism. Since 'having a history' is one of the key criteria here, the division of papers between 'Yoruba religious culture' in Africa and beyond Africa has potentially an analytical point, for history connects them. The cultural complexities that result from the interaction between Latino (including exiled Cuban) and African Americans are explored in two papers that highlight what is perhaps the cardinal choice faced by the orisa tradition in the Americas: whether it is to be primarily a vehicle for black consciousness or to spread itself as truly a 'world religion', which means emancipating itself from race.