A Growing Afro/Cuban
Religion in the USA
James Perkinson PhD, Denver University
April 2 , 11AM
Beneath the Saints--Santeros!
This workshop will examine the Cuban-originated spirituality
of Santeria--part of a family of Afro-diaspora practices that enabled slave
and ex-slave communities to survive their oppression by linking African spiritual
forces with Christian saints, so that Christianity could serve as a new vocabulary
for an old memory. Today Santeria has crossed oceans and boundaries to become
a multicultural practice harboring ancient intuitions. With other such African
spiritualities, Santeria poses an on-going question of the role of developing
complex forms of identity ("possession") and openness to shamanic
energies of various sorts in living spiritually in our postmodern world.