Post Blog on Black Religion

The Black Religion in a Broader Perspective
Black religion, as a concept or an idea, started gaining traction through stories of Europeans who traveled to sub-Saharan Africa. This was either on expeditions or as explorers or missionaries. Initially, the religion was associated with idolatry. Afterward, in the wake of the mass trafficking of millions of African people to America, the Europeans now portrayed the blacks as heathens. They alluded their religion as being witchcraft. At the height of it, they refused to acknowledge that the religion of Africans was a religion at all. In the next few paragraphs, we delve deeper and look at the black religion from a broader perspective.
Characteristics of the Black Religion…
As the black religion gained more popularity and started to become widely known, the three distinct characteristics that defined it were: the preacher, the frenzy, and the music (Drake, 2017). The preacher conducted preaching that emphasized strong belief and the need to let the Holy Spirit flow into your heart and soul. The frenzy was manifested by strong physical possession of the body by spirits. It led to rapid mental agitations and bodily movements. The music, on the other hand, was very rhythmic. It incorporated calls and chants that were responsorial. This included powerful psalms and emotional exhortations that evoked dancing and chants that also summoned the spirits in one’s body.
As African divination…
The African divination comprised complex indigenous traditions with natural and ancestral deities that the African race believed in. These included the sun, moon, or the planets that were greatly worshipped at the time (Drake, 2017). Even though the European missionaries and explorers labeled the African religion as non-existence, the African religion was divine. This is merely because they had believed in it for a long period. They even had their special ways to communicate to their deities whenever they needed anything, be it rain or protection from adversaries. Deliberate efforts by the Europeans, such as forceful baptism into Christianity and banning the practice of the religion, to kill the African religion, bore little fruit. All this is evident in the fact that it manifested itself in various forms abroad. Examples include its adoption into the Catholic denomination, voodoo in Haiti, and Orisha in Trinidad and Tobago (Kanu, 2019).
The role of race and slavery…
Slavery had adverse effects on the African race. They were the most trafficked across the Atlantic between the 16th and the 19th centuries (Rhodes, 2018). Millions of Africans were transported mainly to the Americas. This mass transportation of people from one particular race created a conducive environment for them to bond. It is from these bonding sessions that they came up with various ways to cope with their predicaments such as song, dance, and worshiping of deities that they had known since birth. Rhodes (2018) discloses that the personal space that the Africans and their descendants managed to build greatly helped the black religion take root. It is also worth noting that, the circumstances that they each faced greatly impacted how they practiced their faith. This is mainly because they were able to tai...