2016 Carr C Lynn A Year in White Cultural Newcomers Lukumi Santeria

Beyond Conversion: Socio-Mental Flexibility and Multiple Religious Participation in
African-Derived Lukumi and Ifa

Author(s): C. Lynn Carr
Source: Sociology of Religion, Vol. 78, No. 1 (SPRING 2017), pp. 60-80
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2017, 78:1 60-80
doi: 1 0. 1 093/socrel/srw053
Beyond Conversion: Socio-Mental Flexibility

and Multiple Religious Participation in
African-Derived Lukumi and Ifa1
C. Lynn Carr*
Seton Hall University
Despite recent attention to issues of religious diversification, mobility, and multiplicity , few sociologists
have attended to the socio-cognitive dimensions of multiple religious participation. Sociologists have long
suggested that the socio-mental processes involved in the addition of new religions differ from those found
in religious conversion, but more work is needed to fill out this process. In particular, we need to move
beyond seeing religious addition as simply a partial or lesser version of conversion. Analyzing narratives
of people who include religious participation in African-derived traditions alongside other religious in-
volvement may be particularly instructive in this regard, as they have an extensive history of multiple
religious involvement. In the present article, I draw from interviews with Lukumi and Ifa multiple
religious participators in the United States, noting three patterns in the narratives that display a socio-
mental "style" that may distinguish multiple religious participators from converts more generally.
Key words: American society; conversion; identity; methodology; Voodoo/Santeria; African
Americans.
Despite cross-disciplinary buzz around issues of religious diversification, mobil-

ity, and multiplicity - e.g., in political science (Putnam and Campbell 2012), reli-
gious studies and theology (Hall 1997; Cornille 2002; Rajkumar and Dayam
*Direct correspondence to: C. Lynn Carr, Seton Hall University, Department of Sociology,
Anthropology & Social Work, 400 South Orange Ave., South Orange NJ 07079, USA; E-mail:
c . lynn . cari©shu . edu .
interviews analyzed in the present paper were obtained from a project that was reported
upon in C. Lynn Carr (2015) A Year in White: Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santería in
the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), though the publication did
not address in any detail participants' experiences with multiple religious participation. A prior
version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Academy of
Religion, Atlanta, GA, November 22, 2015.
© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for
the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.
permissions@oup.com
60
BEYOND CONVERSION: AFRICAN-DERIVED LUKUMI AND IFA 6 1
2016), and sociology (Ammerman 2007, 2013; Wuthnow 2007; McGuire 2008;
Sigalow 2016) - few sociologists have attended to the socio-cognitive dimensions
of multiple religious participation.2 Multiple religious participation involves the
addition of new religious practices, beliefs, and/or identifications while (some) for-
mer religious practices, beliefs, and/or identifications are retained. Sociologists
have long suggested that the socio-mental processes involved in the addition of
new religions differ from those found in religious conversion, where the latter com-
prises a swap of one singular religious involvement for another, but more work is
needed to articulate this distinction. In particular, we need to move beyond seeing
religious addition as simply a partial or lesser version of conversion.
Analyzing narratives of people who include religious participation in African-
derived traditions alongside other religious involvement may be particularly in-
structive in this regard. Practitioners of African-derived religions in the United
States have an extensive history of multiple religious participation. This history
may offer its practitioners cultural and socio-mental resources that enable or en-
courage multiple religious participation. In the present article, to illuminate socio-
cognitive dimensions of multiple religious participation more generally, I draw
from interviews with newcomers to (Yoruba-derived and Cuban-created) Lukumi
and/or Ifa traditions who were also involved with other religious traditions. In par-
ticular, I note three patterns in the narratives, illustrating a socio-mental "style"
that may distinguish multiple religious participators from converts.
Examining narratives of multiple religious participators involved in Lukumi
and Ifa religious traditions in the United States - all of whom were newcomers to
the African-derived traditions, having begun their involvement in adulthood - I
find that although the narratives of these religious "adders" may conform in many
ways to the stories of "converts," the former display a distinct socio-mental style.
Like those describing conversion, Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participants
speak of religious transformations, healing change, feeling as if they had "come
home," seeing "the light," and having found their destined path (cf. Carr 2015).
Yet, they are less likely to describe the religious realm - and their place within it -
in terms of discrete binary oppositions (cf. DeGloma 2014), and are more likely to
depict relatively fluid boundaries regarding religious categories, identification pro-
cesses, and temporal dimensions of the religious.
RELIGIOUS MULTIPLICITY IN CONTEMPORARY PLURALISM
In the context of increasing acceptance of religious diversity (Ch

traffic between and among religious traditions has become common
United States, with increased switching and adding of religious com
2Given the range of possible practices, mixing of beliefs, identifications, an

belonging, for the purposes of this article, I will employ Theologian Thatam
broad terminological suggestion: "multiple religious participation."
62 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Examining the 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, researchers from the Pew Forum
on Religion and Public Life report that "all [religious] groups are gaining and losing
individual adherents." Approximately, "44% of Americans now profess a religious
affiliation that is different from the religion in which they were raised" (Pond et al.
2010:3, 1). Political scientists Putnam and Campbell (2012) describe great fluidity
in the religious lives of U.S. Americans and significant movement of religious
identification from an inheritance to a chosen status. Theologians grapple with
the implications of multiple religious belonging (e.g., Cornille 2002; Rajkumar
and Dayam 2016). And scholars in a variety of disciplines focus on "lived" or "ev-
eryday" religion, describing religious practice as complex, with religious practi-
tioners often drawing from several traditions (Hall 1997; Ammerman 2007, 2013;
McGuire 2008). Religious participants in contemporary pluralist societies may
draw upon elements from a variety of cultures and traditions (e.g., Lyon 2000;
Partridge 2004) in manners that have been variously described as "bricolage"
(Lévi-Strauss 1966), "religious code-switching" (McAlister 1998), being able to
"think" in one religious language while "speaking" in another (Murphy 1988), and
eclectic religious or spiritual "shopping" (Wuthnow 2007). As travel between,
through, and among religious commitments intensifies and as more people add
and switch to new religious practices, beliefs, and identifications, sociological at-
tention to multiple religious participation becomes more important.
Heeding this need, Sigalow (2016:6, 7, 11, 14) proposes a general sociological
theory of religious syncretism that focuses on the individual level, defining reli-
gious syncretism as "the process by which an individual mixes religious elements
(including beliefs, practices, communities, rituals, etc.) from different religious tra-
ditions in his or her everyday life." Drawing primarily on a U.S. -based ethno-
graphic study of people who blended Judaism and Buddhism, she suggests that: (1)
those who identify with more than one religious community are "more 'culturally
available' to joining socially similar religious groups than dissimilar religious
groups"; (2) people are more likely to "borrow . . . the practices, ideas, and beliefs
from religious groups that they do not experience as having historical tensions
with their own"; (3) syncretizers will find it easier to incorporate religious practices
and tenets from traditions they believe to be "compatible" with already held tradi-
tions; and (4) religious groups differ in the constraints upon and encouragements
for religious syncretism.
Sigalow provides an excellent sociological analysis of who might choose which
religious practices to borrow or mix, but she leaves open questions within the
socio-mental realm. How do multiple religious participators conceptualize the reli-
gious and themselves, and do they do so in different manners from those who have
switched their religious participation from one tradition to another? How do peo-
ple who participate in more than one religious tradition understand their varied
involvement? How do they reconcile distinct traditions? My focus here is not on
the conditions of multiple religious participation, but on the socio-cognitive realm,
questions often considered by sociologists of religious conversion.
BEYOND CONVERSION: AFRIC AN-DERI VED LUKUMI AND IFA 63
SOCIO-COGNITIVE CONTRIBUTIONS- MOVING BEYOND

CONVERSION
Several sociologists have focused attention on the socio-cognitive el

religious conversion, mostly viewing it as a kind of Kuhnian "paradigm
the individual level.3 Building on the phenomenology of Alfred Schu
(1963) and Berger and Luckmann (1966) describe religious or secular c
as a type of "alternation," a major change in worldview requiring radi
zation at the social and cognitive levels. Similarly, Jones (1977:253, 26
alternation as a "process of transformation from one worldview to an
that involves changes to self-perception, roles, norms, beliefs, refere
and indeed, "all aspects of culture." In this early formulation, alternat
as a relatively total, yet temporary relocation of a person's Weltanshau
cess of alternating back and forth between logically contradictory yet
rated meaning systems" (Pilarzyk 1978:382).
Sociologists have long suggested that the social-psychological
mental processes involved in conversion differ from those in the relig
generally present in multiple religious participation. Changing prior te
usage, Travisano (1970) compared the radical transformation of "conve
what he believed to be a more reversible and less comprehensive "alt
Pilarzyk (1978:384) continued along these lines, distinguishing between
conversion" and "cultic alternation" with the former demanding "dras
in life, meaning and identity" and "negation of former 'mundane iden
the latter involved only "a transitional change in life, meaning and ide
with "an extension of or minor break with former identity." Where co
volved a "prior period of unrest or confusion," alternation only requi
unrest or confusion." Alternation thus came to be conceptualized as
complete conversion - applicable to religious addition that did not in
abandonment of prior religious participation.
In a recent cognitive-sociological analysis of "awakening stories,"
clude religious conversion, DeGloma (2014:13, 14) describes a narrativ
(1) "a past state of 'darkness'"; (2) a tale of "discovery and personal tr
tion"; and (3) an accounting for a "current state of 'light.'" Drawing
cultural resources, awakeners tend to situate their stories of conceptu
gious) resettlement within series of binary oppositions, including "a p
cognitive constraint (a false or deluded mental state) with a more curr
cognitive emancipation (a newly enlightened mental state)" (DeGloma 2
17, 18), as well as "asleep versus awake," "darkness-versus-light,"
3Such widespread understandings of "conversion" presume voluntarism in spi

spread history of coerced "conversion." The latter, such as that found historically
titioners of African-derived religions in the Americas, should not be expecte
complete rejection of one belief set for another (cf. Rambo 1993).
See also Snow and Machalek (1984) for similar distinctions made by theolog
versus-sight," and "lost-versus-found." According to DeGloma (2014:18),

"Individuals use these metaphoric contrasts to describe the process of acquiring
new cognitive norms - to express a sociomental migration between different
worldviews." Awakeners tend to talk as if they had a "temporally divided self,"
contrasting their past "asleep" self with their "awakened" current personhood, in a
process DeGloma (2014:128, 129) likens to Mead's (1967 [1934]) "internalized
conversation" of the "I" and the "me," Thus, "awakeners articulate who they are
by undermining and invalidating who they were . Establishing a direct link between
worldview and identity, they base their newly established selves on the active por-
trayal and negation of their former selves." DeGloma depicts converts as employ-
ing oppositional dichotomies to maximize distinctions between their former and
current religious selves in a manner that cognitive sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel
might describe as employing "rigid" boundaries when discussing the religious,
themselves, reality, and truth. Drawing from diverse examples (including gender,
art, language, sex, food, and play), Zerubavel (1991) outlines three ideal typical
socio-mental styles by which people and cultures conceptualize reality: "Where
'rigid minds' emphasize order and stasis, insisting on categorical purity through
strictly drawn mental boundaries, 'fuzzy minds' stress amorphousness and dyna-
mism, transcending the barriers that provide the former with meaning." "Flexible"
minders fall in between the two. "Ontological, classificatory, and temporal 'rigid-
ity'" is displayed in the "rigid mind" by a preference for "categorical purity, order,
and mutual exclusivity," while the "'flexible mind' emphasizes the fluid erection of
overlapping and transient borders" (Carr 1999:10, 3).
DeGloma has outlined a socio-mental blueprint that applies to converts, but
what about multiple religious participators? If sociologists assume the stories of the
latter are simply partial or incomplete awakenings ("conversion lite"), we risk
overlooking important aspects of multiple religious participation. Dismissals of reli-
gious mixers as "seekers" (Roof 2001), "tinkerers" (Wuthnow 2007), or even
"shoppers" (Lyon 2000; Wuthnow 2005) - presumed to be idiosyncratic and hap-
hazard blenders (see Sigalow 2016) or religious transients who lack the religious
commitment making them worthy of study (Carr 2015) - may cause sociologists
to miss intricacies within religious identification processes that are increasingly im-
portant in contemporary pluralism.
AFRICAN-DERIVED LUKUMI AND IFA
Although there are strong arguments for a recent upsurge of complexi

gious identification within an increasingly diverse religious "marketp
ralist contexts such as the U.S., multiple religious practice and identif
long history among practitioners of African-derived religions in the
(Brandon 1993; Hucks 2001; Pérez 2015). To the extent that devotees
derived religions exemplify a cognitive style that permits or encourag
religious involvement, attending to their narratives may be particularly
to sociologists considering issues of multiple religious participation in the United

States.
The present article draws on interviews from a larger, multi-methodological
project (Carr 2015) investigating diverse English-speaking Orisha5 devotees in the
United States, most of whom were newcomers to Lukumi and Ifa traditions.
Similar to converts, they were not raised with African-derived religions but
adopted them later in their lives. In contrast to much that is described as conver-
sion in sociological literature, serving the Orisha does not generally require that
one abandon one's prior religious beliefs, identifications, or commitments (Clark
2007).
Lukumi - also known as Regla de Ocha, Santería, Lucumi, and Ocha - is a
variant of Orisha worship that passed - through voluntary and forced migrations,
slavery, and revolution - from Yoruba6-speaking people in areas now called
Nigeria and Benin to endure and evolve in Cuba. Also Yoruba-derived, Cuban
variants of Ifa are devoted primarily to the Orisha Orunmila, the diviner. Within
Cuban-descended religious communities, practitioners vary in how strongly
Lukumi and Ifa worship is connected. Adherents in the United States may also
trace their religious lineages directly to West Africa; these practitioners commonly
use the term Ifa as a synonym for Yoruba Traditional Religion. Estimates of Orisha
devotees in the United States range from 22,000 to 5 million (Ontario
Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 2005), and some "suggest that there are more
practitioners of the Orisha traditions in the United States than in either Cuba or
Nigeria" (Clark 2005:8). In the United States, although Lukumi and Ifa originated
with Cuban immigrants; the traditions now include devotees from many ethnic
and religious backgrounds (Curry 1997; Mason 2002).
METHODS
The present project draws on in-depth interviews to examine the na

cultural newcomers to Lukumi and Ifa religious traditions who retained
gious involvement. In 2006-2007, 1 began interviewing people in perso
the phone that I knew to be cultural newcomers to Orisha worship in t
States. Those participants referred others, culminating in an initial 40 i
terviews. In 2009, I conducted 12 additional interviews with people wh
dergone priestly initiation ceremonies in Lukumi religious traditio
5In West African, and specifically Yoruba-derived religious contexts, Orisha

stood to be "specialized forms of the one Supreme God . . . , governing] different
universe" (Edwards and Mason 1985:1). They are the "knowable aspects of Olod
great eod behind the gods," believed to be more approachable than the latter (Cl
Although Yoruba culture is generally understood to be the origin of Orisha r
ditions in the Americas, it is important to note that the label "Yoruba" is both et
dates the movement of Orisha worship to the Americas (Palmié 2013).
interview participants open-ended questions about their experiences in their new

and former religious traditions, seeking a religious "life-history."
I selected interview participants who were at least 18 years old, involved in
Orisha worship in the United States, fluent English speakers who had not been
raised in Orisha-worshipping families. I specifically sought those who were "cul-
turai newcomers" to Orisha worship, having begun their participation as adults.
Because my initial contacts were mostly involved in Lukumi religious practice,
most of my subsequent interviews were also conducted among those with ties to
Lukumi communities. Interviews were transcribed, and ranged from 30 minutes to
just under 3 hours long. Interview participants resided in 19 U.S. states or holdings.
Twenty-six identified as White or non-Hispanic Caucasian, 13 as Black or of
African descent, 11 as Latina/o or Hispanic, and 2 as multi-racial. Participants
were 27-62 years old, with a mean of just under 40. (See Table Al for selected de-
mographic information on participants quoted in this article.)
RESULTS
All but four of my 52 interview participants discussed non-Orisha r

practice or identification in some way or another. Most of those describe
religious participation, accepting their prior religious identifications in p
whole, and/or continuing some of their former religious practices. Alth
Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators in my sample often told stori
conform in many ways to classic conversions or "awakenings" - tales of d
growth, and transformation that conform to the sudden change of De
(2014) "socio-mental express elevators" or to the more gradual, incremen
lutions of "socio-mental staircases" - they often displayed in their narrat
nitive flexibility (and occasionally a "fuzzy-mindedness") distinct from t
binary oppositional thinking characterizing awakening or conversio
Specifically they tended to blur boundaries between and among: partic
gious traditions, inherited and chosen religious participation, and religiou
more generally. Some also merged the symbolic content within their reli
ditions. Exhibiting a socio-mental style distinct from "converts," multipl
participators: (1) understood religious participation to be additive or accu
instead of exclusive; (2) conceptualized former and current religious trad
similar or the same, sometimes incorporating symbols from one religi
tion into another; and (3) viewed their religious heritage as significant
current religious involvement and their lives. Each of these overlapping
can be seen as influenced by the particular cultural and historical cont
Lukumi and Ifa.
Viewing the Religious as Additive and Accumulative

Practitioners of African-derived religions have long considered the
realm as additive rather than exclusive. In late eighteenth- and nineteent
BEYOND CONVERSION: AFRICAN -DERIVED LUKUMI AND IFA 67
Cuba, the Orisha devotion that would become Lukumi religion was practiced in a
Catholic context, in which the latter was the only officially accepted religion, and
into which slaves were only partially socialized (Brandon 1993; Olmos and
Paravisini-Gebert 2003). Scholars differ about the extent to which the Catholicism
of slaves and free Blacks in Cuba, among whom the religion originated, was merely
cover for the practice of African-derived Orisha worship, and the extent to which
their African-derived practices remained separate from or enmeshed with the reli-
gions of their captors. Nevertheless, it was not uncommon for those involved in
Orisha devotion to participate in more than one African-derived tradition as well as
Catholicism. In nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cuba, those engaged in practices
of Yoruba derivation may also have been initiates in Regla de Palo traditions of
Bantu/Congo origins (Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2003). From nineteenth century
onward, many also became involved in Spiritist practices (Pérez 2011; 2015), which
have become widely grafted onto Lukumi practice (Brandon 1993; Pérez 2012).
Multiple religious participation was also common among Protestant African
Americans in the United States, with many cultivating "extra-church orienta-
tions" (Long 1986) such as Conjure, Hoodoo, and Voodoo (Hucks 2001). Pérez
(2015:73, 80) asserts that the history of African American "cults and sects" often
arising in storefronts during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century
"fostered a strategy of ambiguation, or tolerance for diversity, among African
Americans that met their pressing need to balance conflicting social relationships
and associations." She further suggests that "Ambiguation has also opened a way
for Afro-Atlantic traditions such as Lucumi to make significant inroads among
African- Americans" in the late twentieth century. Hucks (2001) describes "reli-
gious coexistence" and "dual or multiple religious allegiance," involving fluid reli-
gious boundaries, that she attributes to African- American women in particular, as
a means for meeting their needs. Hucks suggests that these patterns continued
across centuries; enslaved African- American women and contemporary African-
American women who practice(d) both Christianity and African-derived tradi-
tions both conceptualize(d) the two religions as complementary, with each
religion providing different benefits. For example, Yoruba traditions provide "a
profound affirmation of . . . blackness and femaleness," that late-twentieth century
African- American women did not attribute to Christianity (Hucks 2001:95).
Today, multiple religious participation persists among many engaged in
African-derived religions in the United States, crossing ethnicity and gender.7
7In a survey of Orisha priests (predominantly based in the United States), I found that of
the 147 "who indicated . . . that they were raised in a religion other than Lukumi, Ifa, or
Yoruba religions, fifty- eight (39 percent) reported that they continued to practice the religion
in which they were reared (most often Catholicism), whether occasionally or more often. In
response to the question 'Do you still practice the religion in which you were raised?' Otto . . .
said that he believed that 'all santeros [Orisha priests] have masses said and attend'" (Carr
2015:170). Although Otto overstated the case, such sentiment is also Doxa among practi-
tioners of Haitian Vodou who commonly joke that Haitians are 15 percent Protestant, 85 per-
cent Catholic, and 100 percent Vodou (Brown 2011 [1991]).
Black or White, Hispanic or not, woman, man, or transgendered, it is not uncom-

mon for Lukumi and Ifa practitioners to identify as both Catholic and as Orisha
devotee, as well as practice Palo and Spiritism. Such an additive and accumulative
conception of religious practice and identification differs from those described in
conversion or "awakening" accounts, which tend to display "contentious dialogical
orientation[s] toward the proponents of a rejected worldview (one that the awak-
ener has left in the past)," and "a critical-deprecating dialogical orientation toward
his or her past self" (DeGloma 2014:19, 20).
The Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators that I interviewed tended
to describe the religious realm and their involvement within it as additive or accu-
mulative instead of singular and exclusive. Some explicitly described picking and
choosing elements of religious practice and belief. Marcos8 considered himself a
"non-traditional" or "ethnic Catholic." He defined this as being able to draw from
"traditional Catholicism" while being free to choose among the religious practices
and objects that best "meshed . . . with who . . . [he] was spiritually." Elements he
retained included "Catholic iconography" which gave him a sense of "comfort,"
and attending mass, both of which complemented the Spiritism that he practiced
alongside Lukumi tradition. Understanding his religion of birth as foundational to
his later religious practice, Raimundo rejected an exclusivist model: "I just look at
it as what I am learning is adding on to what was already taught to me." Similarly,
Georgia viewed her religious participation as a process of accumulation that did
not require subtraction: "There is a part of me that is Wicca, there is a part of me
that is Lutheran that I will never give up." Patricia explained that in her Mexican
community, it was "typical ... to have another religion besides Church. To go to a
curandero ." She was thus primed to view the religious realm as additive. Michael
explained similarly, that "no matter what you believe in or believed in prior to
coming to the Orisha, you don't have to give all that up ... . I still have Jesus
Christ and Archangel Michael and, you know, these deities that I grew up with
that I always had a sense of connectedness with; those didn't have to be shut out
to have the Orishas in my life."
Similarly, Jordan explained, "I can do everything in the Ifa/Orisha world and
still be Catholic." Believing in the efficacy and permanence of initiation, both
Christian and African-derived, Jordan reasoned that an accumulative approach
was necessary: "Once you undergo initiation, you can't stop being that thing."
Thus, for Jordan, baptized Catholic, he will always be in some sense Catholic, de-
spite his later ritual inductions into Lukumi and Ifa.
Lani described an interesting manner of ritually embodying an incremental
conceptualization of the religious. Her Lukumi god sister - a tattoo artist - inked
the image of the Orisha Oya on her right shoulder: "Where I come from - one of
my ancestral things is what you are born with is on your left or your non-dominant
side. And what you acquire ... is on what your dominant side is. So I have my
8I have changed participants' names throughout to ensure confidentiality.
Celtic background on my left shoulder, and I have Oya on my right, because that
is what has made me what I am today." In these manners multiple religious partici-
pators engaged in African-derived traditions described adding chosen religious
practices and identifications to those that were ascribed through birth and familial
socialization. Instead of viewing the religious realm as limited to a singular expres-
sion, they understood religious participation to be accumulative.
Seeing Similarity, Sameness, and Continuity

Most of the Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators I interviewed mini-
mized the margins between their ascribed and achieved traditions, conceptualizing
them as similar and compatible. Those raised in traditions of folk Catholicism, in
which interactions with saints as intercessors to the divine resemble the petition-
ing of Orisha, may have done so with greater ease, given long established cultural
scripts for mixing the two. In Catholic societal contexts, los santos have been
historically mapped onto specific Orishas in a process some have described as syn-
cretism (Herskovits [1941] 1990; Bastide [1960] 2001)? It was in the eighteenth-
century Cuba's urban clubs and religious fraternal organizations for Cubans of
African descent, cabildos and cofradías , that the connections between Saint and
Orisha veneration likely began (Murphy 1988; Brandon 1993). Centers of "Afro-
Cuban" social life, these organizations were targeted by Catholic clergy for "guided
syncretism," meant to better indoctrinate African Cubans into Christianity.
Prohibited by Cuban law from holding dances and carnival processions except on
Sundays and on Catholic feast days, as well as from displaying African insignia,
"Orisha came to be called santos (saints), and each Orisha came to be identified
with a particular saint" (Brandon 1993:71, 7 6). 10 For example, the Orisha Shango
is associated with Saint Barbara and Yemaya with the Virgin of Regla (Brandon
1993:77). With some variation, these correspondences persist today.
Conceptions of similarities and continuities between and among various reli-
gious worldviews historically employed by multiple religious participators can be
contrasted to the stark comparisons described by awakeners or converts, which
9There is a great deal of debate surrounding the use of this term. Bastide ([I960]
2007:260), for example, discusses the Yoruba-derived religious tradition of Brazilian
Candomblé as a "marriage between Christianity and the African religions, in the course of
which . . . the two partners would change more or less radically as they adjusted to each other."
Many recent scholars critique the term for labelling minority religions as syncretic while pre-
suming Christianity to be a pure original; this is contrary to contemporary thought which
views all religion as "havfingl . . . svncretistic elements" (Clark 2007:146).
How deep the associations ran, is a matter of scholarly debate. Palmié (2013:129) sug-
gests that the use of Catholic images in Lukumi religion was and still is largely limited to the
symbolic realm, with Lukumi practitioners observing "a relatively clear-cut praxeological dis-
tinction between 'African' and 'Catholic' cultural forms." Examining household shrines in late
twentieth-century Houston, Clark (2001) similarly suggests that the syncretism of santos and
Orisha is overstated, that the Catholic terms are simply translations for Yoruba constructs.
Nevertheless, there is a history in Lukumi practice of including Catholic elements, for exam-
ple, requiring recently initiated Lukumi priests to visit churches and honoring Orishas on their
associated Saint feast days (Sandoval 2006).
typically employ metaphors of binary opposition, such as in John Newton's "I once
. . . was blind, but now I see," expressing a "sociomental migration between two
different worldviews" (DeGloma 2014:17, 18). Conceptions of sharp distinctions
between religious traditions within conversion accounts may be encouraged by
cultural norms of providing testimonials which confer the "implicit or explicit re-
quirement to reinterpret one's life, to gain a new vision of its meaning, with new
metaphors, new images, new stories" (Rambo 1993:138).
Among those who interviewed with me, many spoke of the similarities be-
tween various religious practices and identifications. Raised Catholic, Ines' interest
in Lukumi first piqued upon reading a book that discussed the historical associa-
tions between Orishas and saints: UI resonated with it . . . [and it] was easy for me
to make that switch [from saint to Orisha]." Gabriel explained that his adopted
Lukumi religion "wasn't totally new" because he grew up in "a Mexican Catholic
family," which shared a number of correspondences with Lukumi, including, "the
offerings, the bread, the day of the dead, the candles and incense." Many cultural
newcomers to Lukumi and/or Ifa understood aspects of Orisha devotion as similar
in structure or form to the Catholicism in which they had been raised.
Lukumi and Ifa multiple participators also described consonance with non-
Catholic religious traditions. For Sofia, the bridge came through Spiritism11: "My
grandfather used to . . . play - there is this CD that a lot of spiritualists in misa
blanca are involved in, and they sing to the Orishas. My grandfather would play
that." Lani saw areas of overlap between her Celtic-flavored Neopaganism and
Lukumi: "I find many correlations between [the goddess] Bridgette and [the
Orisha] Oya." Jasmine saw commonalities between the animal sacrifices of Lukumi
and those practiced by her father, a Muslim imam. Dawn, who was raised in a
metaphysical religious science tradition, believed that the attitude she had learned
from the religion of her parents helped her to accept Orisha devotion as the next
step in her journey of faith: "I feel that religious science left that open for me -to
seek spirituality, to seek higher consciousness, a higher vibration." In these ways,
multiple religious participators spoke of their new and former religious traditions as
alike or congruent, contributing to the ease by which they reconciled old and new.
Some not only softened the boundaries between religious categories, but also
transported meanings or symbols across religious borders. Those who continued to
attend the religious services of their families sometimes discussed understanding
the symbols or rituals differently from when they were growing up or from how
they believed they were supposed to. Hector explained that when he prayed in
church, he was often attempting to commune with Orisha that have been
Pérez (2012:361) explains that Spiritism (or Espiritismo), was among the most popular
"religious formations to have crystallized during the transatlantic slave trade." She contends
that it serves as a "theater of conversion" that prepares participants - especially in Cuban and
Puerto Rican communities - for induction into Lukumi practice. In Espiritismo, a misa blanca
is a "spiritual mass" involving prayers, during which departed spirits may offer messages to the
living.
BEYOND CONVERSION: AFRICAN-DERIVED LUKUMI AND IFA 7 1
historically syncretized with Catholic saints. Sometimes when he attended church,

he did so in honor of his ancestral dead. When in church, he expounded, "I am re-
ally praying to . . . Orisha." Hector also occasionally attended church in response
to advice or requests from the dead via Spiritist ceremonies. At times they asked
him "to go to a mass or give a mass to them," bringing a distinctly different under-
standing to the Catholic service from that held by those without Lukumi and
Spiritist lenses.
Raimundo also mixed and merged symbolism across categorical borders. He re-
called explaining to his mother that he associated Jesus with the Orisha Obatalá,
allowing him easily to reconcile his involvement in both religions: "I still do be-
lieve in Jesus," he told her, though his understanding of Jesus had morphed.
Similarly, Jordan associated Jesus with Orunmila, the Orisha of divination to
whom Ifa priests (babalawos) are especially dedicated. In the Ifa divination system,
babalawos may consult with Orunmila when in need or on behalf of a godchild or
client through determining which of the 256 odus (patterns) is relevant to the situ-
ation. "Each odu is associated with specific memorized verses and stories, situations,
advice, rituals, and liturgies that have been passed on orally over time" (Carr
2015:213). Jordan explained, "We talk a lot in Ifa, [that] there are odus who speak
about Jesus Christ." In this way, Jordan's experience demonstrated that not only
can Christianity be expanded to include Orisha devotion, but Christian under-
standings may also percolate through conceptions of Ifa. In these ways (and more),
Orisha devotees displayed a socio-mental flexibility, participating in more than
one religious tradition by incorporating the symbols of one religion into the realm
of the other.
Some in my sample pushed beyond socio-cognitive flexibility. Although for
the most part he appeared to accept distinctions between the religious traditions in
which he participates, viewing them as porous and penetrable, Eduardo flirted
with the chaotic creativity that characterizes the boundless territory of the fuzzy
mind. He discussed his Catholic identity as something into which he had been ir-
revocably inducted, and that he continued to embrace, in part, through adapting
his understanding of it to incorporate his notions of the divine from Lukumi tradi-
tion. When his daughter questioned how, as a Lukumi practitioner, he could still
consider himself Catholic, he told her that Catholicism: "is so embedded in me -
so deep. When I was a kid . . . the first thing I learned how to draw was an image of
the sacred heart of Jesus." The emotional power of that icon stuck with Eduardo
even through his initiation into the Lukumi priesthood, allowing him to see a mys-
tical continuity within his spiritual journeying that outsiders might view as two
disparate paths: "When they took me to the church [after the Lukumi initiation] -
You know what church they took me to? ... . The Sacred Heart of Jesus .... And
when I knelt in front of the altar, all I saw was Olofi [a Lukumi name for the
Supreme God], the crucifix, just sitting over my crown - to the point I thought I
was going to break down." While Eduardo's conceptions of religion and spirituality
had been irrevocably shaped by Catholicism, he incorporated new layers of sym-
bolism upon those foundations, viewing his traditions of birth and choice not
simply as compatible, but as relaying different emanations of a singular notion and

experience of divinity.
Vincent also hinted at a cognitive fuzziness, reclaiming the Catholicism in
which he had been raised by insisting on conceptualizing it on his own terms. He
suggested that he understood his two religious traditions to be the "same" -
whether in values or goals or in honoring identical beings with different names, he
did not say. He explained to me that when a famous Lukumi drummer and priest
died, he had a big Catholic mass in his name. Vincent took this as meaning the
two religions were joined, so much that he felt that "We [Lukumi] are almost like
a subdivision to the Catholic Church." Vincent also understood other African-
derived religions as being compatible and even "the same." When he visited the
grave of the famous "Voodoo priestess" Marie Laveau in a Catholic cemetery, he
learned that she did most of her spiritual work in Catholic churches, further sup-
porting his notion that the spiritual and religious realm was unified. Erasing the
lines that distinguish one tradition from another, Vincent went beyond the blur-
ring of boundaries that characterizes socio-cognitive flexibility.
In these ways, Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators conceptualized
porous or nonexistent borders between religious traditions in a process, which
Zerubavel (1991) describes as both "lumping" as well as denying the "splits" be-
tween categories that others might consider to be distinct. These nonexclusive
Orisha venerators tended to conceptualize various aspects of the religious realm to-
gether in a manner that - at its extreme ("fuzzy") pole, all religious traditions were
seen as the same - and in its more common ("flexible") style, religious traditions
were seen as compatibly similar.
Honoring Ancestors - Merging Biography with History

Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators also evidenced a socio-mental
flexibility by blurring the bounds between the religion of the physical world of the
living and the spiritual realm of the ancestral dead. Lukumi practice in the United
States has long been seen as a means for its participants to connect with the cul-
tures and gods of their progenitors; it has historically been understood by its partic-
ipants as offering strength by connecting them to those who came before -
particularly among those of Hispanic and/or African ancestries who constitute the
majority of Orisha devotees. Practicing Lukumi or Ifa is one way for Hispanic-
Americans to express and maintain their identities as Latin American or Cuban;
the rich liturgy, art, music, and lore can provide "important media through which
they experience and interpret the meaning of Latinidad or 'Latin-ness' as well as
affirm the African contribution to Latin American cultures" (Gregory 1999:xi).
Some suggest that the large numbers who embraced the religion only after migrat-
ing to the United States indicate the power of Lukumi to provide much-needed
connections to a familiar cultural past (Brandon 1993; Andrews 2004). Similarly,
since the late 1950s in the United States, African Americans have located in
Lukumi a means for linking with African roots, honoring their forebears, practic-
ing religion in a manner compatible with Afrocentric philosophy, and resisting
assimilation into the U.S. cultural mainstream (Gregory 1999; Lefever 2000;
Hucks 2001, 2012).12
Drawing on flexible temporal conceptions connecting history with biography,
narratives of Lukumi and Ifa multiple religious participators differ from those of
awakeners or converts who described sharp splits between the religions of their fa-
milial pasts and a more enlightened present. DeGloma (2014:128) describes a
socio-mental pattern of temporal division found among converts and other awak-
eners during which extant and prior selves and communities are carefully distin-
guished. For example, the narrative of the apostle Paul illustrates a "temporally
situated duality of identity," establishing a "license to undermine the lifestyle of
those who persecute Christians while contrasting that lifestyle with his current
persona as a Christian missionary." Yesterday's devotion is rejected as incompatible
with today's truth.
A number of cultural newcomers to Orisha devotion who interviewed with
me were drawn by the fact that Lukumi and Ifa were of African derivation.
William viewed Lukumi as fulfilling his "need to find a spirituality that was reflec-
tive of who . . . [he] was, and . . . [his] ancestry and people like . . . [him]." He was
attracted to African-derived religion in part because it gave him a sense of pride
that his African heritage had a positive impact on the world. Andre shared a simi-
lar desire to view his personal heritage in a wider context: "I really wanted to un-
derstand what was the legacy of my ancestors, not just my personal ancestors - but
what was the legacy of the African presence in the diasporas." Similarly, Opal
"wanted something that was closer to my African heritage, and a way to be able to
explore or give homage to that part of my heritage." For many of the African
Americans I interviewed, participating in African-derived culture provided a sense
of connection to and pride in their ancestry.
The African origins of Lukumi and Ifa also drew several participants as part of
larger political critiques of European colonialism, Eurocentrism, or racism. Silvia
was angered by depictions of Jesus as a white guy, when she was certain he was
African; she preferred the unashamed "Africanness" of Ifa. Her resentment was
fueled by the belief that African contributions to the world had been purposefully
and systematically erased from popular consciousness. Jordan discussed his attrac-
tion to the African derivation of Orisha religion as very much a part of his political
critique of the intersection of racism and colonialism. This critique led him not
only to view with suspicion the popular negative associations with Orisha religion,
but also to seek out the truth behind the pejorations: "I was political enough by
that point to know . . . that anything practically that Europeans had to say to me
about African religions was not interesting to me at all." For some, underlying po-
litical critiques and hunger to bond with the culture of one's ancestry, was a sense
12Regardless of their ethnicity in these diversifying traditions, most practitioners in the

United States today honor both spiritual kinships - "initiatory genealogies reaching back to
the African founders of these traditions in Cuba" - as well as biological ones, tracing spiritual
descent through the "godparents" who performed their religious initiations (Palmie 2013:26).
that such connection was a matter of survival. William explained that "this reli-
gion offers salvation. It's sort of an oasis, a safe haven in a world that is very diffi-
cult to be Black in." In these ways, many were drawn to African-derived religions
to join their biographies with proud histories.
Just as some of the cultural newcomers to Orisha veneration I interviewed un-
derstood their new religious traditions as linking them to their ancestral pasts;
others described needing to maintain their old religions for similar reasons.
Deceased relations had a strong hold on many of these practitioners of traditions
which place a great deal of importance on respecting the familial dead. Samuel
opined, "You need to honor the places you came from. If you're a baptized
Christian you need to continue going to church .... You would dishonor your an-
cestors to turn your back on the ways that they raised you." Ines explained that she
continued to identify as Catholic to maintain relations with her egun> a Yoruba
term referring to the dead, often specifically to one's forbears: "I was told at my Ifa
[ceremony] to not abandon the religion I was brought up in. My egun is Catholic,
very Catholic. You have to recognize the ancestors and what they like." To the ex-
tent that those who practice multiple religions are either constrained from doing
so or encouraged to do so by their particular religious institutions (cf. Sigalow
2016), it is common among Lukumi and Ifa practitioners to support practicing an-
cestral religion alongside devotion to the Orisha.
Some who had left their religions of youth spoke of returning to them, at least
in part, due to their involvement in African-derived traditions which insist on
honoring ancestors. Although she did not quite identify as Catholic, Patricia
shared that her religion of choice was bringing her back to her religion of birth, es-
pecially through the Christian- inflected Spiritism that is often included in Lukumi
practice. Although Shawna no longer considered herself Episcopalian or partici-
pated in the sacraments, she elucidated, "You have to maintain some connection
. . . because that is what your ancestors did - So I go to church a couple of times
during the year in order to appease my ancestors." To revere or placate those who
had come before, Lukumi and Ifa practitioners discussed maintaining former reli-
gious obligations.
Instead of describing a complete break between past and present selves and
traditions, an exchange of new for old, most Lukumi and Ifa participants portrayed
multiple religious participation as a means of incurring spiritual or psychological
advantage from blurring boundaries. In opposition to "rigid-minded" discrete lines
between past and present, living and dead, they conceptualized relatively "flexible"
boundaries in return for the comfort, grounding, and spiritual power they under-
stood to accompany connecting to both chosen and ancestral practices.
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
Instead of understanding their new religious state as a singular tr

the relinquishment of prior practice, belief, and identification, mu
participators involved in Lukumi and Ifa conceptualized religious participation as

an accumulative process, one that is additive instead of exclusive. Rather than
viewing themselves as having left behind the false religion of the past for a current
righteousness, they generally conceived of transient, intermittent, penetrable parti-
tions between and among various religious traditions, seeing them as similar (or
the same), and sometimes incorporating symbols from one religious tradition into
another. And instead of constructing thick walls distinguishing a dark, asleep, past
state and an awakened, enlightened present, along with enforcing borders between
the past and present, dead and living, they viewed the religious lives of their ances-
tors as essential to their current and future religious identifications, as a means of
rooting themselves in the practices of the past, honoring those that came before,
and gaining psychological and/or spiritual healing and power. Narratives of multi-
ple religious participators are not simply milder versions of conversion tales; they
display an important socio-cognitive difference, one embracing fluid boundaries
and minimizing differences between categories - a distinction between "rigid" and
"flexible" cognitive styles. Sociologists of religion should consider multiple reli-
gious participation as more than partial or incomplete conversion.
In the present project, I focus on the narratives of cultural newcomers to Ifa
and Lukumi traditions, largely without regard for gender or race. Some of the
socio-mental distinctions between multiple and singular religious identification
and practice I have proposed may be attributable instead or in addition to African
Americans (Pérez 2015) or more specifically to African- American women (Hucks
2001). This raises questions concerning the effects of minority status on cognitive
style and conceptions of the religious - questions worthy of greater study. Future
research should examine the socio-cognitive styles of singular and multiple reli-
gious participators holding various racial, ethnic, and gender statuses.
The study also raises questions of socio-mental style and individual difference
in religious expression. Are individuals who lean toward flexible and fuzzy cogni-
tive styles more likely than their more "rigid" counterparts to engage in multiple
religious participation? While this deserves further study, Zerubavel (1991) sug-
gests that his socio-mental classifications should be seen less as personality types
than as ideal types , in the Weberian tradition of constructing rational abstractions
to which empirical examples may be compared. In this way neither the socio-
cognitive typology nor the contrast between socio-mental styles underlying multi-
ple religious participation and conversion is meant to describe classes of people or
comprehensive worldviews. That there are differences in socio-mental style in nar-
ratives regarding the religious realm is not to imply that converts are necessarily
"rigid minded" or that multiple religious participators are consistently "flexible."
Socio-cognitive style in the spiritual arena may or may not correspond to the sex-
ual, emotional, familial, educational, or gastronomical realms. It is possible also
that a person may display socio-cognitive rigidity in certain aspects of religious
practice or identification and flexibility in others.
Other important questions raised by this study concern the generalizability of
the findings to religions that are not African-derived. Is there something particular
to African-derived religions that promote multiple religious participation or cogni-

tive flexibility, or are similar patterns displayed among, for example, Jewish
Buddhists or Hindu Christians? Cultural and historical influences seem to weigh
heavy, A history of coercive "conversion" seems likely to encourage a socio-
cognitive flexibility in the religious realm (cf. Rambo 1993). Cultures also vary in
their socio-mental dispositions (Zerubavel 1991). Matory (2009) suggests that
there is an ontology common in West African cultures that is not present within
Abrahamie and eschatological traditions that conceptualizes personhood as multi-
ple and penetrable as opposed to singular and firmly bounded.13 This is evidenced
in the former by the various entities that are understood to comprise a person and
by the phenomenon of spirit possession. Such ontology is unusually open to both
multiple religious participation and "fluid" boundaries in religious identification.
Finally, the present project can be seen as heeding recent calls by sociologists
to expand explorations in the sociology of religion beyond a Christian focus
(Bender et al. 2013; Smith, et al. 2013). Sharing a long history of multiple reli-
gious participation, practitioners of African-derived religions in the United States
demonstrate that such practice, belief, and identification is not new. These devo-
tees exemplify a cognitive style that permits and encourages multiple religious in-
volvement. Attending to the narratives of African and African-derived religious
practitioners may be particularly instructive to sociologists considering issues of
multiple religious participation in the United States and elsewhere.
FUNDING
Interview transcription was supported in part by a University

Council Research Grant in 2006 by Seton Hall University and a Gra
Research Grant in 2007 by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Se
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TABLE Al. Quoted Research Participants' - Selected Demog
"Name" Residence Sex Age Race/Ethnicitya Religion(s) raised Years
Andre NY M 46 African American Baptist 24

Dawn CA F 42 Black Metaphysical 4.5
Eduardo VA M 61 Hispanic Catholic >1
Gabriel CA M 39 Mexican Catholic 12
Georgia PA F 36 White Lutheran 4
Hector CA M 48 Mexican Catholic 2
Ines IL F 58 Caucasian Catholic 12
Jasmine TX F 36 Mixed Muslim >1
Jordan CA M 39 African American Catholic/Buddhist 9
Lani TX F 37 Caucasian Methodist
Marcos TX M 34 Mexican Catholic 9
Michael CA M 38 Hispanic White Catholic >1
Opal G A F 47 African American Baptist 18
Patricia CA F 36 Chicana Catholic >1
Raimundo CA M 30 Hispanic Catholic 1.5
Samuel PA M 49 White Protestant
continued
T ABLE A 1 . Continued
"Name" Residence Sex Age Race/Ethnicitya Religion(s) raised Years

initiated15
Shawna NJ F 54 African American Episcopal 10

Silvia PA F 55 African Methodist 8
Sofia NY F 46 Puerto Rican Pentecostal 8
Vincent NY M 32 Latino-Mixed Catholic 9
William M 37 Black Christian >1
aFor answers to "race/ethnicity" and "re

view participants on written questionnaire
questions. Where necessary I edited them f
bThose without numbers were participan
ceremony.

2016 Carr C Lynn A Year in White Cultural Newcomers Lukumi Santeria

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Beyond Conversion: Socio-Mental Flexibility and Multiple Religious Participation in

African-Derived Lukumi and Ifa

Beyond Conversion: Socio-Mental Flexibility

Despite cross-disciplinary buzz around issues of religious diversification, mobil-

RELIGIOUS MULTIPLICITY IN CONTEMPORARY PLURALISM

In the context of increasing acceptance of religious diversity (Ch

2Given the range of possible practices, mixing of beliefs, identifications, an

SOCIO-COGNITIVE CONTRIBUTIONS- MOVING BEYOND

Several sociologists have focused attention on the socio-cognitive el

3Such widespread understandings of "conversion" presume voluntarism in spi

versus-sight," and "lost-versus-found." According to DeGloma (2014:18),

AFRICAN-DERIVED LUKUMI AND IFA

Although there are strong arguments for a recent upsurge of complexi

to sociologists considering issues of multiple religious participation in the United

The present project draws on in-depth interviews to examine the na

5In West African, and specifically Yoruba-derived religious contexts, Orisha

interview participants open-ended questions about their experiences in their new

All but four of my 52 interview participants discussed non-Orisha r

Viewing the Religious as Additive and Accumulative

Black or White, Hispanic or not, woman, man, or transgendered, it is not uncom-

8I have changed participants' names throughout to ensure confidentiality.

Seeing Similarity, Sameness, and Continuity

historically syncretized with Catholic saints. Sometimes when he attended church,

simply as compatible, but as relaying different emanations of a singular notion and

Honoring Ancestors - Merging Biography with History

12Regardless of their ethnicity in these diversifying traditions, most practitioners in the

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

Instead of understanding their new religious state as a singular tr

participators involved in Lukumi and Ifa conceptualized religious participation as

to African-derived religions that promote multiple religious participation or cogni-

Interview transcription was supported in part by a University

Oxford University Press.

13 Along similar lines, Addo (1997:191) describes a West African socio-mental p

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Implications. Gainesville: University Press of Florid

Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

University of New Mexico Press.

Cuban Religious Practice." Culture and Religion 13: 361-89

in African-American Religious History." In Esoterici

Future of American Religion . Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universit

TABLE Al. Quoted Research Participants' - Selected Demog

"Name" Residence Sex Age Race/Ethnicitya Religion(s) raised Years

Andre NY M 46 African American Baptist 24

"Name" Residence Sex Age Race/Ethnicitya Religion(s) raised Years

Shawna NJ F 54 African American Episcopal 10

aFor answers to "race/ethnicity" and "re

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