Afro-Caribbean

New York inmates are suing to watch solar eclipse after state orders prisons locked down

April 2, 2024

NEW YORK -- Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday's total solar eclipse.

The suit filed Friday in federal court in upstate New York argues that the April 8 lockdown violates inmates' constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.

The plaintiffs are six men with varying religious backgrounds who are incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne. They include a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-...

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Virgin of Charity unites all Cubans — Catholics, Santeria followers, exiled and back on the island

March 18, 2024

Ramon Nieblas fixed his tearful eyes on the small golden statue, a beloved icon of Cuba's patron saint. Whispering, he asked the Virgin of Charity of Cobre for a miracle: Please save his sick son.

"I came to pray for his health," said Nieblas, a Cuban living in Brazil who traveled thousands of miles to the basilica in eastern Cuba, a pilgrimage site nestled in the shadow of the Sierra Maestra mountains.

He sat in Mass, wrapping his arm around 26-year-old Hernando Nieblas, a physician undergoing treatment for leukemia. They were among the thousands who visit the...

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Documentary on Black millennials depicts wide range of religion, rebellion

October 24, 2023

 

A member of the second-oldest Black Catholic order in the United States.

A voodoo priestess.

A gay atheist woman.

A new documentary from the National Museum of African American History and Culture explores the range of faith and spiritual expressions of Black millennials and the choices they have made to reject — or embrace — the religious rituals of their childhood.

Source: https://religionnews.com/2023/10/24/documentary-on-black-millennials-depicts-wide-range-of-religion-rebellion/

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Haitian Americans Reclaim the Traditions of Vodou from Centuries of Misperception

June 29, 2022

Though Alain Pierre-Louis grew up in a Haitian family that attended Catholic church services most Sundays, he always felt a spiritual pull toward something else. Vodou, a Haitian religion rooted in ancestral remembrance, nature, healing, and justice, was embedded everywhere in his Boston childhood—in the traditional rasin, or “roots,” music blaring from the living-room speakers, and in the Haitian-folkloric-dance performances he would go to with his relatives. But though the art influenced by Vodou was celebrated, the religion itself was considered taboo and a nonstarter at...

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How to make a thousand witches with one Supreme Court decision

June 6, 2022

“No wonder this stuff’s getting so damn popular,” exclaims Shirley to her friend Joan at the start of George Romero’s 1972 film “Hungry Wives.” Joan and Shirley, two neglected middle-age suburban housewives, are on their way to a tarot reading.

What’s getting “so damn popular” is witchcraft.

“The religion offers a retreat” for repressed women, Shirley notes, adding, “Christ, what other kind of women are there?”

Source:...

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TikTok witches are accusing each other of being toxic, gatekeepers, and misinformation spreaders

April 16, 2022

Last October, a TikToker uploaded a short instructional video in which she claimed to teach a technique to "make someone think of you 24/7." All a person needed to do was follow a few simple steps: Write the name of their unrequited love on a piece of paper three times, fold the paper three times, and put it under their pillow. Subsequently having a dream about them would mean it had worked, she said.

The TikTok, which is one of hundreds on her account teaching followers simple "spells," has since been viewed more than 20 million times and received 1.4 million likes, but the...

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Black women entrepreneurs are finding their niche in spirituality-inspired businesses

February 19, 2022

In 2020, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic changed the way many Americans worked, as companies closed their doors to limit workplace contamination. The uncertainty around Covid-19 caused people to seek hope in religion and spirituality, resulting in industry growth. For many Black women, like Shontel Anestasia, the current spiritual boom is not only a way to connect to one’s higher self, but also a means of making money.

Anestasia, owner of the...

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'Endurance to thrive': Yelaine Rodriguez uses costume to defy stereotypes of Afro Latinx and Caribbean religions

August 26, 2021

Yelaine Rodriguez is used to people making assumptions about her identity and what she does.

A first-generation Afro Dominican American born and raised in the Bronx, the now-30-year-old artist remembers the backhanded compliments she would receive as a teen and young adult -- comments like, "Oh, you don't seem like you're from the Bronx," weren't uncommon.

Even after Rodriguez started teaching at her alma mater, Parsons School of Design, some parents of her students seemed surprised by her background: "Your parents must be so proud of you," she can recall being told...

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