African American Religion

To understand the history of African religion in the colonies, the first thing you need to know is that there wasn’t just one African religion. As people from different regions of the continent were transported to servitude, they carried with them the faiths of their homelands: monotheistic, polytheistic, nature-based, saint-centered, and more.

Historian Harvey Bakari describes some of the dogmas that met in the colonies, how they merged, diverged, and most importantly, sustained a people through a time of terrible grief and tragedy.

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