Umbanda

A significant number of people of African ancestry have a profound propensity for a spiritual way of life or passionate religious expression that is parallel with their worldview, ethos, and cultural location. The extreme physical and psychological conditions to which the Africans were subjected during the African Enslavement Holocaust, including the brutal imposition of Christianity, did not manage, however, to totally dislocate them from their various West African traditional spiritual systems or religious expressions. Millions of African Brazilians are an example of people who resisted and retained many sacred aspects of their West African traditional religious system. They creatively embodied and eclectically mixed the religions of Kardecism, Yoruba, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the spiritual system of Brazil's indigenous people. The synthesizing of various religious practices in Brazil, primarily Kardecism with Angolan and Yoruba centered cultural and spiritual systems, in the 1950s developed a religious phenomenon labeled Umbanda.

In 1885, Parisian Leon Rivail reported that after a séance he started receiving messages from a Druid Spirit announcing itself as Allan Kardec. Psychographic and spiritual communications occurred for 15 years between Rivail and Kardec, and the outcome established the foundation for the philosophical, scientific, and religious expression of Kardecism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the early 1900s. Initially, Kardecism appealed to the Portuguese-Brazilian intellectual and upper-class population, but when West African ritual and belief elements of the preexisting Yoruba centered Candomble Orixas pantheon was synthesized with it, the working-class and economically poor African Brazilians became devoted practitioners of the new religion. In addition, with some ritual and belief elements of Kardecism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the spiritual system of Brazil's indigenous people, they created a complex spiritual expression.

Umbanda is mystically centered on a system of beliefs in spirits and spirit transcending as a channel to connect with the spirit world. The supernatural entities are believed to be benevolent, and when summoned they can positively intervene in human affairs. The supernatural entities provide Umbanda followers with practical advice, positive results to personal tribulations, and spiritual reinforcement in their worship places and spiritual spaces. Umbanda rejects any negative spiritual methods to project harm on a human. Although Umbanda was brought forth and developed as a positive and unique spiritual way of life that was synthesized with some established religions, it still suffered a fate of oppression and illegal status in the two largest states of Brazil. A twofold attack emerged from ignorance and fear toward the new religion of Umbanda. The two main carriers of those attacks were a prejudiced police force in the 1930s and the Catholic Church in the 1950s in Rio de Janeiro (as well as in Sâo Paulo).

For example, government police harassed, extorted, and shut down worship houses and [Page 679]destroyed spiritual artifacts. In addition, the local police imprisoned followers of Umbanda for chanting and drumming in the late evening hours and labeled the Umbanda religion as “black magic” and a “hotbed” of communist sympathizers. The Catholic Church's attack on the religion of Umbanda was just as vicious as the Rio de Janeiro police force's, if not more so. The Catholic Church undertook a well-organized campaign to misrepresent, discredit, and undermine primarily African Brazilians from their preaching pulpits and through mass media channels to the point of excommunicating those who displayed a dual religious affiliation.

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