Roots of Haiti's Vodou-Christian Faith: African and Catholic Origins

This book traces the development of Haiti's combined Vodou-Christian religion from 1500 to the present and explains how this combination of distinct faiths coalesces in a coherent belief system.

• Provides a history of Haiti's unique religious tradition that explains how Spanish and French colonizers established Catholicism in Haiti and identifies how the connections between Vodou and African indigenous religions formed over the past five centuries

• Proposes seven "principles of accommodation" that enable Vodou-Catholicism to be regarded as a cohesive, rational system by the vast majority of Haitians

• Presents information culled from hundreds of references from the professional literature as well as interviews with two university professors who are both authorities on Haitian Vodou-Christianity and practitioners of the faith