Based on the fieldwork, the author shows that African people have been agents of their own religious, ritual, and theological formation, and examines the African-derived and African-centered traditions in Jamaica: Myal, Obeah, Native Baptist, Kumina, and Rastafari, and draws on them to forge a new womanist liberation theology for the Caribbean.
Studies of African-derived religious traditions have generally focused on their retention of African elements. This emphasis, says Dianne Stewart, slights the ways in which communities in the African diaspora have created and formed new religious meaning. In this fieldwork-based study Stewart shows that African people have been agents of their own religious, ritual, and theological formation. She examines the African-derived and African-centered traditions in historical and contemporary Jamaica: Myal, Obeah, Native Baptist, Revival/Zion, Kumina, and Rastafari, and draws on them to forge a new womanist liberation theology for the Caribbean.
Intellectually ambitious and conceptually and methodologically sophisticated, this is a work of monumental importance, one that completely redefines and reorders our understanding of the religious histories and experiences of Jamaica and successive generations of Jamaicans. It will undoubtedly exert a profound influence on the scholarship in this field for years to come.
