A research project covering the Mexico-Belize border underpins an exploration of nodal elements of the theocratic identity of Jehovah's Witnesses. Conception & form of behavior are documented in religion, society, & family, generating an image of a scenario where many of the social relations in the religious group are reproduced
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.: Gordon and Breach Publishers.
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
417 p, Although the religions of the Caribbean have been a subject of popular media, there have been few ethnographic publications. This text is a much-needed and long overdue addition to Caribbean studies and the exploration of ideas, beliefs, and religious practices of Caribbean folk in diaspora and at home. Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research in a variety of contexts and settings, the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between religious and social life. Whether practiced at home or abroad, the contributors contend that the religions of Caribbean folk are dynamic and creative endeavors that have mediated the ongoing and open-ended relation between local and global, historical and contemporary change.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
360 p, Traces development of the churches from the monopolistic state-church of the Spanish empire through the arrival of Protestant colonies w/ their 'planters' church' & missions to the African slaves before Emancipation & the freed people afterward. (Amazon)
A recent editorial in the Trinidad Express quotes V.S. Naipaul in describing the idea that "if people cannot live in the day they would live in the night", as indicated in the greater willingness of people to cross the fine line between legitimate religion and superstition as life becomes more complex and challenging. The `mental darkness' to which the author was referring is the result of "the inevitable accompaniment of social marginalization and economic hopelessness in which so large a part of our population lives." From Montreal to Toronto to New York and the Caribbean there would seem to be a proliferation of new churches (38 in one small Toronto community), and ministers with questionable credentials promising solutions to all problems (`miracles' to be more precise) including childlessness, drug and alcohol addiction, impotence, disease, release from `spells', and depression. All for a price, of course. Two recent cases involving the deaths of teenagers in Trinidad can also serve to highlight the extremes to which this new `religion' has gone. In the first case a 17-year-old girl who became sick at her parents home was taken to her late grandmother's house (apparently a well-known Baptist woman in South Trinidad) where her body was kept for three days after her death (in spite of decay and flies) in the hope that the spirit of her dead grandmother would resurrect her back to life.
