Sacred Spaces in Africana Religious Thought

"For ten years I have been interested in the lakou "a kind of vital space, a place of multidimensional life where several families or rather, an extended family shares all aspects of life (spiritual, economic, cultural).  In fact, the lakou has three functions: preservation, protection, and renewal." 

~Mimerose Beaubrun, Nan Domi: An Initiate's Journey into Haitian Vodou

Photo Credit: Lakou Souvenance, Gonaives Haiti

 Lakou  Souvenance is one of the rare places in Haiti where the dance and  ritual traditions of the former Kingdom of Dahomey have been preserved  in one of their most intact forms. Founded in 1815, reportedly by a  Royal Dahomean figure, Jean Baptiste “Papa Bwa” Bois, this lakou stands  today as a symbol of cultural survival, where African spiritual systems  were not erased but maintained, structured, and transmitted across  generations.  (Source)

"The Negro Church is the only social institution of the Negroes which  started in the African forest and survived slavery; under the  leadership of priest or medicine man, afterward of the Christian pastor,  the Church preserved in itself the remnants of African tribal life and  became after emancipation the center of Negro social life. So that today  the Negro population of the United States is virtually divided into  church congregations which are the real units of race life."

~ WEB Dubois, Report of the Third Atlanta Conference, 1898

Photo Credit: Charles Street AME Church, Boston MA

 In  1818, a small group of African Americans began meeting on Sunday  mornings for Christian worship in a small house on Beacon Hill. This  weekly gathering gave birth to what eventually became the Historic  Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. For two hundred  years, this activist-congregation has faithfully served as a center for  Black religious and civic activities in Boston.  (Source)