The New Orleans Spiritual Churches constitute a distinctive African American belief system. Influenced by Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Spiritualism, and Voodoo,

the way the sacred is acted out within an African-American aesthetic. During worship, members may be filled by the Holy Spirit, as in Pentecostal churches, or "

Modern American Spiritualism blossomed in the 1850s and continued as a viable faith into the 1870s. Because of its diversity and openness to new cultures and re

At the core of African American religion’s response to social inequalities has been a symbiotic relationship between socio-political activism and spiritual re