Were the Spirits Silent or Silenced? A Study of Literature on Black Spiritualism in the United States

This paper, “Were the Spirits Silent or Silenced?” argues for the return of the spirits to the study of Black Spiritualism. In doing so, it addresses three main challenges facing scholars of Black Spiritualism and Black Spiritualists in the United States. First, there exists a profound dearth of scholarship about Black Spiritualists in North America. Second, extant scholarship focuses mainly on the city of New Orleans. While this scholarship generatively explores New Orleans as a hub of religious hybridity and exchange, it obscures the fact that Black Spiritualists were transient and moving around the United States. Finally, I propose that secular progress narratives (which emphasize political liberation above other spiritual outcomes) have so dominated the field of Religious Studies that studies of Black Spiritualism are ultimately bereft of the spirits themselves. Therefore, this study of extant literature is a means by which I recontextualize and retheorize the current relationship of the field to the gods, the spirits, and other more-than-human entities.  

I argue that religion, particularly Black Spiritualism, can be about power while also not necessarily being about empowerment. It is about the power to heal (or to harm) and the power to communicate with those that have passed on. It is about the mystery of life after death. It is rarely about personal empowerment or an exercise in someone “finding their voice.” Nevertheless, scholarship on Black Spiritualism has largely served to discipline and define religious belief and praxis. For instance, scholarship has emphasized the connections Black Spiritualism has to “central religion[s]” (Catholicism and Pentecostalism) over its connections to “peripheral cults” (Voodoo and Spiritualism) (Jacobs and Kaslow 1991, 195). This disciplining impulse is inextricably linked to a second troubling dynamic – one in which correct, civilized religion is intimately tied to political liberation. This dynamic is evidenced in the work of scholars who emphasize Black Spiritualism’s potential to provoke collective or individual activism (Chireau 2003; Guillory 2018, 5). Both the secular disciplining impulse and the secular correlation between “good” religion and political efficacy are constant throughout literature on Black Spiritualism. This paper tracks both threads in order to provoke reflection within the larger field of Religious Studies regarding how the field picks up and uses the religions of racial minorities in the service of secularist “liberatory” goals.  

The political progress narrative is suffused throughout histories of Black Spiritualism in which the “spiritual pragmatism” of the spirit work tradition is hailed not as a means of intuiting the spirits themselves, but for its efficacy as a tool to capture political power. Therefore, the standard by which the efficaciousness of spirit work is measured is its functionality and utilitarianism. The spirits are not alive, not purposeful, unless they are doing something at the behest of spirit workers. For the religious studies scholar, that doing is – more often than not – bound up in a political project of liberation. If the spirits are not liberatory, then what precisely is their purpose?

This overarching preoccupation amongst scholars of Black Spiritualism with narratives of personal political empowerment (or personal political liberation) is stark – even ubiquitous – but its ubiquity has largely flown under the radar within the field of Religious Studies as evidenced by our elision of one key question: why are the religions of racial minorities only perceived as “correct” or “good” so long as they have politically emancipatory potential? It’s possible that Nat Turner was a mystic because he believed that such practices would be liberatory for his fellow enslaved people. But what if he was also a mystic because of an actual, literal divine connection? Liberation seems like a mighty (and unnecessary) burden to put on the religion of Black folks. 

Moreover, what does an emphasis on progress or empowerment foreclose to us? Are there other potentials within Black religion that have nothing to do with political liberation? It appears that secularism, with its emphasis on separating “good” religion from “bad” religion, limits one’s ability to get at the heart of exactly why people are religious beyond its politically utilitarian value. Deeming that “correct” religion is tied to its political value is perhaps even harmful to the people on the margins of “respectable” religion. After all, what does an emphasis on liberation mean for those that practice religion for reasons that have nothing to do with political empowerment? Where does the politically utilitarian view of Black religion put them? This is a modern, secular framework that has been forced onto religion in general, but particularly the religion of Black and brown people. What are the possibilities of lifting that framework? 

Relatedly, the field of Religious Studies has, until the current moment, prioritized human experience in religious practice, resulting in the expulsion of the other-than and more-than-human from the secular scholarly purview. Where is the more-than-human in scholarship on Black Spiritualists? How are the spirits within Black Spiritualism acting and being acted upon? What are their motivations, their aspirations? Where are the spirits within Black Spiritualism? The methodological implications of recognizing our “braided-ness” with the more-than-human are deeply important to future studies of spirits and spirit workers (Orsi 2005, 9). 

To be clear, the literature on Black Spiritualism examined in this paper is valuable, especially as these titles turn a spotlight on an often ignored, often misunderstood religious practice. My hope is that examining the religion of Black Spiritualists provokes scholars to consider the frameworks that they bring to the table. The study of secularism remains useful for understanding modern thinking, being, and doing. However, secularism or the “secular gaze” perhaps obscures the true potential of religion or, at least, the true reasons why one practices religion. It is no easy feat to look beyond the frameworks we are given, but I think the potential for creative, illuminating, exciting scholarship lays in the trying. Certainly, understanding the way secularism operates within scholarship about Black Spiritualism is crucial as it gives the scholar the opportunity to beckon back in the spirits. After all, they have not left the community of all things. We simply silenced them.