Abstract
Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith is not just a book for scholars in the fields of Haitian studies or religious studies. Without sacrificing theoretical explanation, this ethnography will help readers understand a range of immigrant cultural practices. Despite some shortcomings, Terry Rey and Alex Stepick succeed in presenting a model of what a holistic approach can add to the study of immigrant community life.
Drexel Woodson (1993) proposed that Haitian society and culture are saturated with a “religious triangle of forces.” Crossing the Water builds on this idea by describing how and to what extent Catholicism, Protestantism, and Haiti’s indigenous religion, Vodou, influence life in Haitian communities in South Florida. The authors weave together extensive archival research and years of formal fieldwork to demonstrate “(1) that underlying and transcending religious difference in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora there can be identified a unifying Haitian religious collusio, and (2) that Haitian religion in the diaspora is largely explicable in terms of the generation of and quest for ‘salvation goods’ in the form of luck (chans), magic (maji), protection, health, prosperity, and especially, worthiness” (p. 5).
On its face, the book may seem uneven with three chapters, out of five, on Catholicism. However, to some extent the chapter titles misrepresent the authors’ attention to deep-seated social issues, such as the challenges of class divisions and discrimination. And the table of contents only alludes to its most impressive contribution: a description of how, notwithstanding important transnational forces, religious practice is grounded in place.
As in Stepick’s other work, an important character in the story told here is the city itself and how it impacts the incorporation and adaption of Haitian immigrants. Although Little Haiti is introduced as home primarily to those “who have not been able to move up and out of the ghetto” (p. 27), the authors effectively convey its “sense of place”—how it looks, sounds, and feels in this section of Miami-Dade County. Their descriptions transport the unfamiliar reader to the 50-by-12 block neighborhood: “The Little Haiti storefronts leap out at you. Bright blues, reds, and oranges seem to vibrate to the pulsing Haitian music blaring from sidewalk speakers. . . . on NE 2nd Avenue, the Caribbean Marketplace gives one a distinct feeling of actually being in a small incarnation of Port-au-Prince’s Iron Market” (p. 26).
Many of the factors that make Miami a unique context of reception for contemporary immigrants—its proximity to the Caribbean, its location in the southern United States, and its racial and ethnic make-up—also show up in the religious lives of all Haitians. When Rey and Stepick compare middle- and upper-class Miami neighborhoods and the Haitians who live there to Haitian Catholics at Notre Dame d’Haiti (in Little Haiti), they find that although they may do religion differently, it is clear that they participate “in the same Haitian religious collusio, which transcends religious difference and social-economic class divisions” (p. 59).
Although material deprivation plays an important role in Haitian religious collusio, the authors do not fall back on the Marxist premise that religion is the opium of the people: “It does not follow that religious practice among Haitian immigrants in Miami amounts to any form of escapism, fatalism, or ‘alienation,’ as Marxist theory would suggest” (p. 18). Instead they argue cogently that religion functions to offset the racism, discrimination, and economic exploitation that Haitians experience in the United States. Accordingly, Haitian religious practice yields “demonstrable material benefits” such as “assistance from local churches’ social programs and spiritual fulfillment in the form of sacraments administered by a Catholic priest, healing hands laid upon them by a Protestant pastor, or divination performed by a Vodou priestess” (p. 18, emphasis added). But readers may hear two—at times, conflicting—voices in this co-authored work. Crossing the Water is at once richly descriptive—detailing the perspectives and experiences of Haitian immigrants—and densely theoretical, especially in its application of Bourdieu’s related notions of habitus and collusio.
Building on Rey’s earlier work, the authors claim that “Whether that habitus be Haitian Catholic, Haitian Protestant, or Haitian Vodouist, it operates according to the generalized contours of the Haitian religious collusio, ‘the collective and tacitly affirmed understanding of the ‘done thing’’ in Haitian religion conceived of holistically (Rey 2007:154)” (p. 9). However, the difference between a Haitian collusio and a cultural worldview rooted in Haitian Vodou is fuzzy. It rests on a distinction between habitus and collusio that is clearly articulated in the Introduction: “think of collusio as a kind of collective habitus” (p. 8). But by the end of the book, the distinction between a generalized Haitian religious collusio and Claudine Michel’s assertion that Vodou functions as “superstructure” in Haitian society seems more semantic than empirically significant. There is nothing in the text, beyond their repeated assertions, that refutes Michel’s claim that Vodou has transcended its religious role, becoming a spiritual discipline that infuses all other societal systems. Michel argues, “Vodou is a broadly encompassing worldview, a comprehensive system that shapes the human experience of its adepts in their search for higher grounds and purpose in life. . . . [Vodou] is omnipresent, pervasive, strong, and performs key functions in all aspects of Haiti’s social and political life” (Michel 2006:28). Put differently, collusio as a theoretical concept does not help us understand or interpret the data any better than the idea that “Haitians are 100% Vodouist” (p. 5)—a statement the authors read as a demographic claim rather than an assertion of a unifying cultural ideology or lingua franca that enables communication among Haitians who are differently positioned in Haiti and as migrants settled in the United States.
Other related contradictions follow. Despite the suggestion that Haitian religious practices are liquid and flexible, the authors seem intent on arguing, sometimes despite the lack of evidentiary support, that Vodou is declining in Haiti and the diaspora. Referring to influential work by Karen McCarthy Brown and Elizabeth McAlister, they conclude, “Our observations in Miami and Haiti lead us to believe that the scholarly literature has exaggerated the reach and pervasiveness of Vodou in Haitian society and culture” (p. 88). This conclusion may be explained in part by the authors’ scant attention to Haitian religious practice in homes and other spaces where faith takes place. The lack of basements in the housing stock of Miami may not have driven Vodou underground as it did in New York City, but it may have pushed it to backyards and private rooms that are left unexamined in this work.
In short, in its attention to differences across and within congregations, this volume is most useful for its detailed description of the Haitian American community as diversely Christian. While it is impossible to write about Haitian religion without a discussion of Vodou, this book might have been better off limiting its scope to two sides of the triangle and focusing on how Haitians have remade the Christian religious landscape of Miami. On this point, the authors deliver a valuable and nuanced contribution to the literature.