Vodou and Interfaith Efforts

Is Vodou compatible with other religions? The true answer is "Yes, but".

Vodou, like most other religions, have many conceptual similarities. Almost all religions advocate for behaviors that harmonize society and proscribe behaviors that are deleterious to good relationships between people and groups of people within a society. So similar reactions to issues such as theft, murder, pregnancy, and child rearing should be observed.

So where does the "but" part come from? Most modern faiths have an imperial perspective, that it is the most accurate faith and that all other faiths should accept its obvious perfection and reduce themselves to a misunderstanding of the imperial faith's tenets. Vodou, like Judaism, Shinto, Shamanism, and other indigenous practices sees itself at the root of these religions and respect the good these faiths both intend and accomplish. Vodou is also mindful of their errors and the harms these traditions inflict internationally.

Universally, imperial religions obliges the rejection of your own ancestors and replaces them with their patriarchs and prophets.

Imperial faiths first act is to write you out of the Creator's work. "Your dead are dead and cannot hear or help you, and He never spoke to them." Every belief system that asserts its superiority to other systems, from Soft Atheism to Salafist Islam, does this.

This is antithetical to most indigenous traditions in general and Vodou in particular not because the practitioners of imperial faiths have optioned to abandon their ancestors. That's their business. It is because imperial faiths believe it's their responsibility to make us do the same.

We can work with other religions because we don't want anything from them. We don't want their followers or lands or anything like that.

We live in the same spaces and would want to keep good relationships between groups in these spaces but that's the extent of our interest.

On the other hand, imperialists are obliged to undermine and replace religions not their own. Most regard other faiths as adversarial agencies that want to harm them and reserve religious violence as a possible response.

Vodou is a religion of power but also responsibility. We have an obligation to promote harmony but we must never be anyone's victim.

Whether God is with the imperialists or not is immaterial; Vodou has God, our Ancestors, and the vodous and we can never forget that that.