Backtime Religion in the Danish West Indies: Africana Heritage Religion Beyond Obeah

(Hardback)

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During the era of slavery in the Danish West Indies, a distinct Africana heritage religion was developed by the enslaved population that relied on performative expression, and Gregory Carter traces this heritage.

This spiritualty shared many attributes with other African heritage religions throughout the African Atlantic, including belief in spirit powers, the veneration of ancestors, polyrhythmic music, dance, costumed masquerade performance, reliance on herbalism and spirit mediumship. Simultaneously, they also incorporated Evangelical Lutheran/Moravian Christianity and the practice of altaration. Backtime Religion in the Danish West Indies: Africana Heritage Religion Beyond Obeah contends that the altaration of the human body is key to conceptualizing how enslaved Africans and their descendants contended with the terrible conditions inherent to slavery, the dislocation of spiritual connections from Africa, and built a renewed and living spiritual understanding on the Danish islands. To prevent loss of cultural knowledge and spirituality, the Danish West Indian enslaved community adapted to life on the islands with immediate pragmatism and took in every available means to regain connection to spiritual power available, containing and hiding this spirituality within living human bodies. Through in-depth research, Carter provides insight into how this religious practice, African heritage, and culture continue to impact the present-day Virgin Islands.

Reviews

This well-research book investigates the comprehensive awareness of the survivability and thriving in contemporary arts and sciences of West Afrakan cultural heritage. Backtime Religion in the Danish West Indies is an exceptional analytical contribution to the body of Caribbean Studies literature on the perseverance of ancestral sacred life practices of West Afrakan spirituality, culture, and heritage that still remain, and are to be included, within the annals of historical cultural legacy research. * Chenzira Davis-Kahina, Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Director of the Virgin Islands Caribbean Cultural Center at the University of the Virgin Islands, Virgin Islands (U.S.) *
Through this landmark study of African involuntary presence and mission history in the Danish West Indies, Gregory Carter theorizes built environments, quotidian activities and spaces, and cultural performance and soundscapes as nodal sites of African heritage spirituality and religion. This critical intervention in Africana religious studies transforms how scholars can conceive of, access, and study the spiritual consciousness and lived religion of African-descended people in the Caribbean and the Americas. * Dianne M. Stewart, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies, Emory University, USA *

Author Bio

Gregory Carter is Instructional Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University, USA.