Review
Reviewed Work(s): Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora by Joseph
M. Murphy
Review by: ANNA PETERSON
Source: Method & Theory in the Study of Religion , 1995, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1995), pp. 207-
211
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23549598
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Book reviews MTSR 7-2 (1995) 207
gambling, travel, finding a mate, and having children. It shows that from his
special original appeal, the god Wong has become "a generalist" (87); he
has "become available for all of the kinds of problems which face ambitious
but insecure urbanités" (88) in rapidly developing Hong Kong. That makes
it unnecessary for worshippers to pray to other gods.
The information provided in these two chapters was based on question
naires and interviews and is an important innovation in fieldwork research.
Chapter 6 focuses on one of the main temple activities today: the con
sultation of the temple oracles, and their interpreters, the fortune-tellers. The
Wong Tai Sin temple is unique all over Asia for its large number of divination
stalls, housed in a building near the temple. Here worshippers can go to have
their "temple oracles" explained to them, but other divination techniques,
such as palmistry, astrology, etc., are available as well. This chapter is also
very new in its approach. Together, chapters 5 and 6 have a more universal
significance, in that much of the analysis can easily be applied to temples in
many other parts of China.
Chapter 7 deals with offshoots of the Hong Kong shrine. It is historical
and descriptive and, for me, less interesting than the previous two chap
ters. Discussed are a small shrine in Macao, a private Wong Tai Sin temple
in Kowloon, a shrine in New York City, and new shrines established in
Guangzhou, especially one erected in Leung's original village of Rengang.
Chapter 8 recapitulates some of the issues discussed in the book and again
analyzes the reasons for the success of this Wong Tai Sin cult. In broad terms,
the cult flourished because it was available at the right time, at the right place,
and provided the right assistance when people needed it.
University of Saskatchewan JULIAN F. PAS
Joseph M. Murphy, Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. xiii + 263 pp. ISBN 0-8070-1220-3. $25.00.
In his previous book, Santería: African Spirits in America (1992), Joseph
Murphy focused on a particular religious tradition. With Working the Spirit:
Ceremonies of the African Diaspora, Murphy expands his scope to include
five African-based religions in the Americas: Voudou in Haiti, Brazilian Ca
domblé, Cuban and Cuban-American Santería, Revival Zion in Jamaica, and
African-American Protestantism in the U.S.A. The result is an accessible and
engaging (and eminently teachable) introduction to African-based religions
in the Americas.
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208 Book reviews MTSR 7-2 (1995)
Murphy describes the book's goal as "to understand a spiritual tradition
from the outside in" (1), or to explore "the way in which each tradition
constructs and develops a code of relationships between human beings and
'spirit' " (3). He seeks, in other words, not just to offer portraits of five related
religious traditions, but also to show the similarities among the five traditions.
Despite important differences, he argues, shared rituals and relationships to
the "spirit" link the various diaspora religions. Further, he claims, African
based religions differ collectively from European traditions. To support this
thesis, Murphy seeks to demonstrate that the diaspora traditions share under
standings of three themes - community, service, and spirit - which justify
speaking of a diasporan spirituality, common to African-based religions and
decisively different from European-based traditions.
His examination of this spirituality begins with Voudou, which Murphy
calls "the oldest, most famous, and least understood of all diasporan religions"
(10). This section is strengthened by Murphy's insistence that Voudou has
been decisively shaped by Haiti's political history, meaning not only its col
onization by France (rather than Spain, Portugal or England), but also by
its experience of revolutionary struggle against slavery, more militantly and
earlier than the rest of the Americas. Voudou, Murphy points out, emerged
from that struggle and cannot be understood apart from it. Thus the original
"community" of Voudou was inextricably linked to the black Haitians who
fought for national independence and freedom from slavery, and the com
munity of Voudou today continues to be shaped by the spirit of the Haitian
revolution.
This political history provides the context for a discussion of Voudou's
spiritual dimension of the spiritual "service" which defines membership in
the Voudou community. Service is performed through a variety of rituals,
including dance. Murphy highlights the role of dance by his reliance on the
observations of the American dancer Katherine Dunham, who studied Voudou
in Haiti in the early 1940s. Dunham's commentary provides an engaging, if
restricted, window on the relationship between dance, ritual, and spirituality
in Voudou. Murphy's use of Dunham's material highlight two characteristics
of the book as a whole: a preoccupation with ritual and detailed use of limited
sources. Both features bring strengths as well as weaknesses to the overall
project.
The next chapter addresses Candomblé, one of the most important of nu
merous African-based religions in Brazil. The section on Candomblé draws
from a wider range of sources, including Murphy's own observations, ethno
graphic and journalistic reports, and a 1978 film on initiation rites. His por
trait of Candomblé is thus more nuanced than his description of Voudou.
Unfortunately, Murphy skips over the important issues of "Africanness" and
"reafricanization" in Candomblé. "The question of the pureza ['purity'] of
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Book reviews MTSR 7-2 (1995) 209
Bahian practice in relation to African standards continues to stimulate the
most lively debates among the houses [of Candomblé]", he writes (49), with
out giving any more information about these debates, about the meaning of
"purity" in relation to changes in African cultures since the slave trade, or
about the political implications of "reafricanization". He also plays down the
influence of Portuguese Catholicism, arguing that "[wjhile it may borrow
elements of protocol from the ... ceremonials of Roman Catholicism, the
candomblé terreiro ['center'] faithfully carries on the royal traditions of Ketu,
Oyo, Ijesha, Oshogbo, and many others." (74) While Candomblé practitioners
struggle consciously and often successfully to maintain or return to African
traditions, they also draw on Iberian Catholic and native American elements.
Murphy's stress on "Africanness" leads him to gloss over the unique blend
of cultures at the core of Candomblé, which in the end is a Brazilian and not
an African religion.
The next chapter discusses Santería, the topic of Murphy's previous book.
As in the section on Candomblé, Murphy draws on a wide range of sources,
although curiously he relies on a film rather than his own field work for
detailed discussion of rituals. The main point of confusion in this chapter
concerns the location and national origin of the Santería rituals and practi
tioners. Although the chapter is titled "Cuban and Cuban American Santería",
the bulk of ethnographic detail comes from a film shot in Puerto Rico. Unfor
tunately, however, Murphy does not clarify the differences between Puerto
Rican and Cuban Santería. Further, in his focus on the "second diaspora"
of Cubans in the U.S.A., he ignores the racial and class differences between
Santería practitioners in Cuba and Cuban immigrants in the U.S.A. As at a
few other points in the book, careless generalizations here lead to confusion
for the careful reader.
In the chapter on the Revival Zion church in Jamaica, Murphy confronts
the meeting of Christian and African traditions more directly than at any
previous point. Although he emphasizes the ways that the Revival churches'
community structure, ritual (or "service"), and guiding spirit reflect African
origins, he uses ethnographic and first-person reports which reflect the cen
trality of biblical language and values. In discussing the "Spirit", he high
lights the churches' conception of the relationship between the spiritual world
(Zion) and the temporal one. Particularly interesting is his discussion of "dup
pies", good and evil "shadows" or spirits; the evil ones are "those who lack
community" (144). We see clearly the way the Zion church links individual
believers' souls (in the Christian sense) and African notions of community
and "spirits".
The Revival Zion church seems less clearly "African" than Voudou, San
tería, and Candomblé, although no less politically or culturally significant for
its African-American members. Here, as in other chapters, Murphy dwells
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210 Book reviews MTSR 7-2 (1995)
on the African and not the "American" nature of diaspora religions. This re
flects the book's focus on commonalities stemming from African roots, and
thus is partly justified. At several points, however, the lack of emphasis on
non-African elements of the various traditions robs the discussion of depth
and authenticity.
The last diaspora tradition Murphy addresses - the Black church in the
U.S.A. - bears similarities to the Jamaican Revival Zion church, insofar as it
is clearly Christian and biblical, and not always so clearly African. Murphy
uses the term "the Black church" to refer to a wide variety of primarily
Protestant traditions and communities in the U.S. He notes from the start that
these churches include a great deal of diversity, but that certain commonalities
make it possible to speak of them as a single tradition. Defining this tradition,
he writes, are two sources: a universal knowledge of racial oppression and a
less widely diffused link to the African roots of black spirituality (146).
Despite the often submerged nature of the Black church's African roots
and the diversity within it, Murphy argues that "the spirit of the Black Church
in the United States arises out of the service of its community" (147). In other
words, Black Christian communities in the U.S.A. share with communities
of Voudou, Candomblé, and other diaspora traditions a distinctly African
understanding of community, service, and spirit. Murphy acknowledges that
making these claims requires a certain level of "generalization and ahistori
cism" (146), but in the end he insists that the black church's "construction
of ceremonial space and time" reveals "its orientation to the African past"
(170).
In the end, that is Murphy's claim for all the five traditions. In his con
cluding chapter, titled "Working the Spirit", he acknowledges the differences
among the various religious groups, and then proceeds to highlight what he
perceives as "the elements of a spirituality that runs through each of the tradi
tions" (177). These elements include an orientation to the lost homeland, the
reciprocity of spirits and humans, and the notion of service to the community
(and the spirits).
Proving a common "spirit" among African-based religions is a complex
task, given the numerous variables involved in the study of diaspora religions,
including (but not limited to) the differences among cultures of origin in
Africa and among the Western traditions that Africans encountered in the
Americas (i.e., French, Spanish, and Portuguese Catholicism, Anglo and U.S.
Protestantism), and the varied political conditions under which Africans lived
iri the Americas.
Amidst this diversity, Murphy wants to describe a distinctly "African"
identity that survives distance from country of origin, varied types of op
pression, and the effects of time. He recognizes the complexities inherent to
his project. At numerous points, particularly in his discussions of the differ
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Book reviews MTSR 7-2 (1995) 211
ent political histories of African populations in slavery and freedom in the
Americas, he does justice to the complexity while also achieving brevity and
coherence. Sometimes, however, he glosses over important details. For exam
ple, he understates the role of European and Amerindian cultures in shaping
African-based religions in the Americas. He also short-changes the diversity
of the places of origin of most Africans in the "new world". In the introduc
tory chapter, he summarizes this issue with one sentence: "The founders of
diasporan religions came from Western and Central Africa where certain con
ventions of worship obtained over wide geographic areas." (1) Subsequent
chapters do not offer much more detail concerning the particular African tra
ditions from which diaspora religions evolved. While common practices and
beliefs unite many African cultures, Murphy too often speaks of "Africa" as
though that vast and diverse continent contained a single religious tradition.
Murphy also fails to define some of his central terms very clearly. Most
notably, he never provides a sufficiently precise explanation of what consti
tutes or characterizes the "spirit" to which the title and most of the narrative
refers. This ambiguity contrasts to the rich detail given to descriptions of
ritual, one of the book's main strengths. Unfortunately, few of his discus
sions of ritual come from first-hand observations. In this, Murphy is simply
following the lamentable religious studies custom of relying on careful at
tention to other people's reports. This is curious, given his obvious personal
familiarity with several of the traditions. When he does use his own field
work - as in his description of a service at a black church in Washington -
his observations are sharp and nuanced. While more of that type of research
might well have been impracticable, it would have added enormously not
only to the content of the book, but also to its contribution to methodological
innovation in religious studies.
Overall, the book's methodological and theoretical contributions are mod
est. Scholars may find Murphy's categories of community, service, and spirit
useful in organizing their knowledge of African-based traditions. His term
"working the spirit", while provocative, is employed too generally to be of
much use except as a starting point. Generality and lack of fieldwork, which
would constitute serious flaws in a book on a single tradition, can be ex
cused if one reads Working the Spirit as a general and initial overview of
five different religions. The book's chief value is that it brings together gen
erally reliable information about various traditions in one well-written and
concise volume. For non-specialist scholars and teachers of religion, the book
succeeds admirably as an introduction to African traditions in the Americas.
ANNA PETERSON
University of Florida
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