Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion in Miami by Terry Rey and Alex Stepick (review)

Abstract

Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion Miami. By Terry Rey and Alex Stepick. New York: New York University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780814777091. 280 pp. $26.00.Review by Bertin M. Louis, Jr.Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith: Haitian Religion Miami, by Terry Rey and Alex Stepick, is an engaging and fascinating ethnography about practice the Haitian diaspora Miami, Florida. Miami and its surrounding areas are home to the largest population of Haitians outside the Caribbean. Haitians Miami are also very as compared to others the city who can trace their roots to the Caribbean, such as Cubans and Jamaicans. Approximately 90 percent of Haitians Miami attend church at least monthly, which demonstrates that religion plays an important and central role their lives.Important themes the text are transnationalism (specifically transnational practice), diasporic practice, healing, and the effects of US racism on Haitians. Crossing the Water and Keeping the Faith has two main arguments: (1) that there is unifying Haitian collusio that unifies Haitian difference and (2) that Haitian diasporic practice can be explained through quest for salvation goods in the form of luck (chans), magic imaji), protection, health, prosperity, and especially, worthiness (5). The text contains foreword, acknowledgments, an introduction, five chapters, conclusion and three appendices. Borrowing term from anthropologist Drexel Woodson, the book covers the religious triangle of forces Haitian society: Catholicism, Vodou, and Protestantism (3).The first three chapters cover the internal diversity within the practice of Catholicism. Most of the adherents described these chapters can be considered Katolikfran (strict Catholics) who do not mix their observance of Catholicism with Vodou practice. Through study at Miami's Notre Dame d'Haiti Catholic Church, Rey and Stepick remind us of the important role the church played serving the and political needs of its adherents. Out of the Haitian religious triangle of forces, Catholicism Miami has had the most political connection to some of the moments Haitian history that have troubled its diaspora recently (Jean-Claude Duvalier's exile, Duvalierism without Duvalier, and the 2010 earthquake, for example). The authors also shed light on the practices of Miami Haitians of the upper classes through their practice of Catholicism as well discussing the practice and impact of Haitian Charismatic Catholicism (Catholic Pentecostalism Haitian Miami), which is sweeping Latin America and, among others, immigrant Catholics the United States. The authors also attend to some of the transnational dimensions of the practice of Haitian Catholicism.The next chapter covers the practice of Haitian Vodou Miami and reveals a decline Vodouist devotion among Haitians Miami general (126). The authors opine that this decline has several reasons, including the stigma attached to practicing Vodou by US racism and the taxing financial expenses of Vodou devotions Haiti, which some avoid by converting to Protestantism (120). Nevertheless, Rey and Stepick provide ethnographic detail about the syncretic religion created on the plantations of Saint-Domingue centuries ago and its adaptations to fit the conditions of the United States. Through their research we find that Haitian Vodou the United States is still malleable the sense that it relies on the practice of other African-derived religions, like Cuban Santeria, to exist. The authors use the example of Saint Lazarus, who is central to Santeria and has recently become integral to diasporic Haitian Vodou. …