A reprieve from those Western epistemological formulations of spirituality, this essay unpacks how the Ewe, an ethnic constituency in Ghana,…
On category-mistakes and androgynous divinities
indigenous religions
Secularism and the Animist Indigene
In the prompt that we sent to the authors participating in this forum, Vincent Lloyd and I asked a series of questions…
Indigenous protective occupation and emergent networks of spirited refusal
The spirited refusal of conceited and deaf forms of state secularity is on stark display in many contemporary protest movements. This is…
Sacrality, secularity, and contested indigeneity
Indigenous peoples articulate their indigeneity within the political and legal language of secularism, even as it renders certain claims to…
The river is not a person: Indigeneity and the sacred in Aotearoa New Zealand
Earlier this year, the New Zealand Parliament passed a remarkable piece of legislation declaring the Whanganui River to be a…
Secular Christian power and the spiritual invention of nations
In the Americas, missionary colonialism prospered on the sharp edge of secular Christian power. Cutting up land with a blade…
Is the “native” secular?
Headlines scream of burgeoning populism around the world, but the shift in politics today could also be described as a…
A tale of two burdens
In his landmark essay, Nomos and Narrative, the late legal scholar Robert Cover wrote about the jurispathic function of…
Traditional, African, religious, freedom?
I have been observing and analyzing religious trends in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa for several decades, with a particular…
Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa
In his new publication, Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa, David Chidester explores South African indigenous religious heritage…