Syncretism and Africana Religions in the U.S. Legal System

• In Event: Black Religious Systems and Thought in the United States

Abstract

In 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court heard its first case about the free exercise of religion, Reynolds v. United States. In this appeal of a Mormon man’s criminal conviction for marrying multiple wives, the Supreme Court determined that the proscription of plural marriage did not violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, in part because “polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon church, was almost exclusively a feature of life of Asiatic and of African people.” Over one hundred years later, in 1993, the Supreme Court extended first amendment protection to the Afro-Cuban faith known as Santeria/Lukumi, explaining that its contested practice of animal sacrifice has “ancient roots” in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Although the outcomes of these cases were polar opposites, the logic of the Court was the same— first amendment protection of minority religions hinged on whether analogous beliefs and practices existed in majority faiths. My paper examines how minority religions, in particular African diaspora belief systems, are forced to conform to Western concepts of acceptable religious practice in order to achieve legal recognition. In particular, it focuses on how the controversial concept of syncretism has been introduced to the legal system through the expert witness testimony of academic researchers, as practitioners of African diaspora religions strategically underscore the purported European origins of their faiths to defend their religious freedom.

Author

• Danielle N. Boaz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte