Religion : as an Unified System of Beliefs and Practices

Religion, according to Emil Durkheim can be defined as “ an unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set into one single moral community called a church ,all those who adhere to them.’’   Within the Caribbean,   religious belief systems have flourished from the time of the first Amerindian settles to the present day . The faith that there is a deity or deities more powerful and bigger than the trials we face as mere mortals has giving individuals the strengths to push against adversity and oppress.But is   it safe to say that   faith in the God(s) of these systems come without a sacrifice? Is it safe to say that these forces of power really do give freedom and liberty to their loyal ,hardcore believers? Does it give religions the right to proclaim to be the choosen religion of God or to damn those who don’t believe in it ?Isn’t it more important to serve by following the ten simple rules left for us in the Bible? These questions will be discussed with reference to Catholicism and Voodoo.
      During the great ‘’Sugar Revolution’’ millions of African souls were traded into captivity placed on ships and transported to Caribbean to work on the plantations . Though slave owners used captivity and humility as tactics to try to break their spirits, enslaved blacks continued to find ways to keep there roots alive and one those ways was in the form of African spirituality. Voodoo,is one of   many spiritualities brought to the region by the enslaved blacks however spiritual practices of the slaves were prohibited by the planter class as a continuous form of oppression.Despite this the eslaved   still discretely performed rituals   to their various deities to keep their spirituality alive. As if to add ‘insult to injury’ at the end of the 18th century, missionaries came to the Caribbean, though planter class essentially did not accept the missionaries and religion they agreed on one thing, that the slaves most be kept under control...