Convince is a term used for a branch of African religion found in the Americas, namely in Jamaica and the southern United States. It denotes a uniquely African diasporan form of African religion that takes the spiritual elements most closely associated with transformation into the culture of the African Americans. Where some of the mythology that relates to the specific African context may be changed or modified, most of the concepts that may be called spiritual are used in the new American context. This relationship to Africa is a cosmological connection based on the memory of ancient African ideals.

Indeed, the diversity of African expressions in the Americas attests to the strength of African cultural forms in religion. One sees Convince in Jamaica and the southern ...