Religion is truly a lived experience. In today's volatile world, with world events hinging on various interpretations of religious texts perhaps more than in any other time in human history save, perhaps, during the Crusades, humanity is increasingly aware that religion is not a stoic object of study. Rather, it is a living breathing force in which we live and which inhabits us, whether we seek it or not.
Robert Orsi's edited work, "Gods of the City," provides vivid evidence of how and why religion is a lived experience. The best example of this, perhaps, lies in Karen McCarthy Brown's "Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitian Vodou." Here, Brown chronicle the unique religious subtexts and culture of Haitians living in New York.
Mama Lola, a Brooklyn Vodou priestess I have worked with for more than fifteen years, originally thought that her move away from Haiti would be a move away from the Vodou spirits as well. At that time, she said, 'I don't think I'm going to need no spirit in New York.' Yet whenever she tells this story, she quickly adds, 'And I was wrong!' Mama Lola found that the same pain and struggle that required the help of Vodou spirits in Haiti were present in New York, although in different forms, and if the problems were there, the spirits had to be there too. But how could the spirits be active in New York if they were tied to the particular spaces and places of Haiti? Mama Lola's solution to this cosmo-logistical problem is, on the surface at least, deceptively simple. 'The spirit is a wind,' she says. 'Everywhere I go, they going too... To protect me.' (Orsi, 79)
Here, Brown provides a perfect example of the nature of the force Orsi tries to compile into his volume. The spirit of religion transcends space entirely. Mama Lola thought she had no need for religion when she moved from Haiti to New York, but she found immediately that she was wrong.
In fact, perhaps she found a greater need for Vodou away from her homeland, now living in her newly adopted homeland. In New York, she resumed her connectivity to religion by becoming a Vodou priestess. Here, Brown illustrates the fact that yes, perhaps religion transcends issues of space, but perhaps more accurately, humans create their own sense of space with religion, their own sense of community.
For Mama Lola, the Haitian spirits easily convert to her new York life as they, like the wind, follow her to protect her. But rather than comment only on the spiritual, Brown notes the practical effect that religion has had on a sense of community in Haitian circles in New York:
There is another, perhaps more important, way in which Mama Lola and many other Haitians living in New York remain in touch with the spirits: they return to Haiti. While Haitians in New York may suffer the melancholy that comes from being away from home, they do not suffer the trauma of cosmic proportions that their African ancestors did when they realized that home was irrevocably lost. Even the sizeable number of Haitians in New York City who are undocumented aliens, and therefore cannot at the present time travel back and forth between New York and Haiti, have reason to hope that this will not always be their condition." (ibid)
In the exploration portion of this paper, the paper will further examine how exactly religion impacts every day life and how it maintains a sense of the past.
Essay 1b
Robert Orsi's compilation truly demonstrates how religious activity sustains an understanding and awareness of the past. For Orsi and the authors in "Gods of the City," the importance of religion is not so much to find a pathway to eternity, or a route to salvation; rather, it is a method to ground oneself in one's past, to sustain a belief in culture more than in any group of deities.
In order to explore this idea, this paper will closely examine Karen McCarthy Brown's "Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitian Vodou" chapter of Orsi's book. We may begin with a critical paragraph:
The significance of the earth is, in the final analysis, its ability to connect human beings with their ancestors and with the Vodou spirits. The soil, which contains both the bones of the ancestors and the seeds of the next harvest, provides the context for exchange among the living, the dead, and the spirits. The living need the spirits to come from Ginen, the watery world below the earth, and to possess their "horses" in order for those spirits to gain voice and body. The living need the...
Religion -- Books of the Old and New Testaments The Bible contains many types of genres, themes, events and characters illustrating the seeds of Christianity in the Old Testament and the Old Testament's fulfillment by Jesus and the young Christian Church of the New Testament. Using the genres of epic and simple narratives, law, prophecy, wisdom, pastoral letters and apocalyptic expression, both Testaments show the struggle of ordinary people trying to
Religion and Society Religion is defined as an organized collection of belief systems, views about the universe, or cultural systems that humans use to relate spiritual and moral values to their lives. Many religions have symbols, traditions, and histories that explain the origin of life, the way the universe works, and the moral, ethical and legal ways to organize human life (De Vries, ed., 2008). While the exact origin of religion
A key celebration in the village invites a festive dance in which the performers fall into a stupor and try to stab themselves with knives (Heinrich, 2005 p. 78). Rituals in life are pertinent events for religious display and artistic expression. Events of puberty, marriage life and burial offer opportunities for Balinese to express their notions regarding statuses, society and the afterlife. The Balinese denomination organizes their faith in a
Religion Qualifications of the divine and the nature of supreme reality are core concepts of any religious tradition. Hinduism and Buddhism conceptualize the divine and the nature of reality in complementary yet distinct ways. Buddhism emerged from Hinduism, in a manner not wholly unlike the way Christianity emerged from Judaism. Therefore, there are several core similarities in the cosmologies and the conceptualizations of divine reality between these two faiths. Moreover, the
Religions of Rome Throughout history, religion has been having a major impact on the societies around the world. In the case of the Romans, they had numerous religions that were practiced throughout the reign of the empire. To fully understand these ideas requires looking at the chapter titled Sol the Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome. This will be accomplished by summarizing the various points and discussing a broad
Both faiths ascribe to a heaven and a hell, belief in angels and the devil. Moreover, Islam and Christianity teach against crimes against humanity to include violence, gambling, adultery, lying, theft and murder. Both teach that children are to respect their parents and husbands and wives are to be respected. Both Islam and Christianity teach against same sex marriage, homosexuality, fornication, and vulgarism. Both teach of modesty in presentation
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now