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African American Religions

Yoruba

From an online catalog of an African Art exhibition kingship at the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria, Illinois in 1994, background information on Yoruban art.
Kingship discussed alongside examples of fabric and beadwork.
Of the Orisha, there is a statue of Eshu, and a full page about Sango with photos of shrines, and statues of Sango and priestess.
Religious information appears in the context of wood and metal work examination. These visual cues appear few other places, they provide critical association. While the materials photographed are rich, the photographs are few and small.

An extended plaintext authorless file on African Religion Syncretism describes both Vodun and Santeria in an attempt to .

In short there is >no< comparison between Voodoun and Santeria other than their common African origin that can be easily syncretized.
The African origins and the early development of each is studied in comparison, what happens when these believes hit the new world.

OrishaNet

OrishaNet is comprehensive and pedagogical. Written and maintained by Efún Moyiwá a priest of Obatalá in Seattle, Washington, he purposefully pitches his material towards the unitiated.
He actively works to combat common misconceptions: trance possession is not "a thing of evil such as portrayed in movies like "The Exorcist" nor does anyone spit pea soup." He sez these conceptions are mighty prevalent, I saw little trace of them on the net.
He provides an overview of Santería with separate pages covering the Orishas, He mentions the Bembé, but the sound sample, in .wav format, wouldn't play with the default software provided on the computer center systems.

A more clinical studied perspective of Santeria available from the Ontario Centre for Religious Tolerance. A brief survey of beliefs, including a short Orisha/Saint correspondence chart, practices, and conflicts with the law:

Santeria: animal sacrifice

Most modern misconceptions on Santeria are born of animal and human sacrifice controversy that's come up through the courts in recent years. This is the only trace I've found of religious narrow-mindedness directed at practioners of syncretics

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals mention Santeria in their Factsheet on Animal Sacrifices: Cruel Rituals. They're pissed off about the Supreme Court Ruling concerning the practice of Ebó (Sacrifice) in the Santerian tradition.

Slight mention of Candomble on a language and religion page at a Brazil in Brief site. How Africans acclimated their religion to local Catholicism, in a paragraph.

Remembering Ourselves, Letter to Yoruba priest and poet Akindele Akinde, by Kenneth Carroll. A hiply-worded call for affirmation of ancestor worship - he traces patterns of African spirituality through mainstream African American religions.

Carribean Religions coordinated by Caribe.Com has:

The Voodoo Server with succinct Origins of Voodoo.
Focus on altars, an article exploring the ethno-symbolic religious art history of ritual worship space creations.
Information on Santeria with little besides pictures of two altars and promises of further information.
Seven Orishas from the Yoruba Pantheon: a paragraph on each of Eleggua, Oloddumare, Oshun, Oya, Yemalla, Shango (with altar photopage) and Obatala (with an altar photopage).
From the perspective of an outsider has put together a thorough study of second hand materials, her Vodoun Information Pages. This is research overview, with aged reproduced black and white photos supplementing. The astonishing volume of links lead mostly to a tersely-worded but lengthy glossary.
She addresses the issue of Black Magic acknowledging that those practices "are not really considered to be vodoun by legitimate practitioners of the religion."
Her photosource the Rolling Stone's web site, they have a collection of voodoo pictures.

Personal photographs of Voodoo in New Orleans - feels like tourism.

British perspective: Voodoo, the occult and Santeria from A-Z of cults. They're trying to be cutesy - the information is only semi-critical exploration of the sensationalist myths and fears of human sacrifice and exploitation.

Baptists

There are many Baptist Churches home pages online - not so many of them African American.
Beth Eden Church of Oakland California. Friendly emphatic - these folks made their own few web pages, colourful and "We praise God for your being here!" punctuates welcoming throughout.

Michael Schwarz photo

Only a few materials from the Union Temple Baptish Church - a scanned pamphlet about the pastor and statements of principle, covenant specific to this particular church.

A few photographs of Religion in the South, some of African American church goers - Baptist and Santeria.

Not much depth of material, but if you crave visuals...

Islam

Formal German overlook, the World Wide Virtual Library: Islam

Ibrahim Shafi has coordinated and digitized quite a number of unique articles, as well as coordinating web wide extensively.

Islamic Architecture in Isfahan, one of ten cities designated by UNESCO as a universal heritage.

Muslim Student Association at the University of Buffalo has done much by way of coordination of local resources, as well as making searchable religious texts. They'll introduce you to Islam and being Muslim punctuated with relevant links. They've done a global search of Muslim resources and coordinated them international geographically, and extensive internetedly.

Million Men Marching By comparison, the Nation of Islam page doesn't even cover their own information well, let alone the information of the world. A few articles from a four month old issue of the Final Call Newspaper, and the Million Man March listed as an upcoming event.

Someone actually defaced the Nation of Islam web site. Common media frenzy knee-jerk, they are labelled a hacker.

African American Links


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