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Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo

Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo · Chapter IV: Louisiana Voodoo

The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans and Mother Leafy Anderson

The Spiritual churches of New Orleans: Mother Leafy Anderson, the spirit of Black Hawk, saints and candles, prophecy and healing, and their link to Voodoo.

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The Spiritual churches of New Orleans are a family of African American Christian congregations, founded from about 1920, that combine Pentecostal-style worship, Catholic saints, Spiritualist contact with the dead and the devotional practices of the city's older Afro-Creole religion. Their best-known founder was Mother Leafy Anderson, and their most distinctive figure is Black Hawk, a nineteenth-century Sauk war leader honoured as a protecting spirit.

Origins: Spiritualism, Pentecostal Fervour and Mother Leafy Anderson§

The movement grew out of the meeting of two currents. American Spiritualism, which since the 1840s had taught communication with the spirits of the dead through mediums (see Spiritualism), had attracted African American followers in Northern cities. At the same time, the Holiness and Pentecostal movements of the early twentieth century were spreading ecstatic worship, speaking in tongues and divine healing among Black Protestants.

Leafy Anderson, born probably in the late 1880s, had led a Spiritualist congregation in Chicago before moving to New Orleans around 1920. There she founded the Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Church and began to teach and ordain ministers, many of them women, who went on to found congregations of their own. She preached a Christian Spiritualism centred on the Bible and on the guidance of spirits, offered healing and prophecy, and attracted Black and some white followers. Contemporary accounts describe her as a forceful and charismatic leader. She died in 1927, but by then her pupils had spread the movement through the city.

Scholars such as Hans Baer, in The Black Spiritual Movement (1984), place the New Orleans churches in a wider national network of Black Spiritual congregations in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and Nashville. New Orleans, however, gave the movement a particular colour, because of the city's Catholic culture and its long Afro-Creole religious history (see Louisiana Voodoo and Marie Laveau).

Black Hawk: The Sauk War Leader as Spirit Guide§

The most unusual feature of the New Orleans Spiritual churches is the veneration of Black Hawk. The historical Black Hawk (Makataimeshekiakiak, about 1767–1838) was a leader of the Sauk people who fought against the United States in the Black Hawk War of 1832, was captured, toured Eastern cities as a prisoner and dictated an autobiography. He had no connection to New Orleans.

Native American spirit guides were common in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism, and Leafy Anderson is generally credited with introducing Black Hawk as a spirit of protection to her New Orleans followers, probably from her Chicago Spiritualist background. In the churches he became a "watchman" and a spirit of justice who fights for the oppressed, and congregations hold special services in his honour. Plaster statues of a Native American warrior, often a figure originally made as a cigar-store or decorative piece, stand on altars and are dressed with feathers and offerings.

Jason Berry, in The Spirit of Black Hawk (1995), argues that the figure spoke to members because he represented a defeated people who resisted, a symbol of struggle that African Americans living under Jim Crow could claim as their own. Berry also explored possible links with the Black Masking Indians of New Orleans carnival, another African American tradition that honours Native Americans, though the connection remains a matter of interpretation.

Saints, Candles and Altars: Catholic and Afro-Creole Elements§

Unlike most Black Protestant churches, the Spiritual churches embraced the imagery of Catholicism. Their sanctuaries are filled with statues and pictures of the Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary, Saint Michael, Saint Joseph, Saint Anthony and other saints, often with candles burning before them. Many congregations build elaborate St Joseph's altars around 19 March, a New Orleans Catholic custom of Sicilian origin in which food is offered and distributed in thanksgiving.

Candles have a special place. Members may be given candles of particular colours to burn for specific needs, and church leaders give instruction about prayer with candles, oils and incense. Such practices overlap with the charms and candle work of hoodoo and rootwork, and some churches historically sold candles, oils and religious goods. Church leaders usually present them as aids to prayer and faith rather than as magic, and describe their purpose as spiritual help alongside, not instead of, medical care and practical action.

Worship, Prophecy and Healing§

Services resemble those of other African American churches in their preaching, hymns and gospel music, accompanied by organ, piano, drums or brass, and members may "shout" or be filled with the Holy Spirit. What distinguishes them is the role of prophecy and mediumship. Ministers and gifted members deliver "messages" to individuals in the congregation, revealing hidden troubles, warning of dangers or giving advice. Private consultations with a minister or "spiritual adviser" are also common.

Healing is central. Ministers lay on hands, anoint with oil and pray over the sick, and testimonies of healing are a regular part of worship. Claude F. Jacobs and Andrew J. Kaslow, in The Spiritual Churches of New Orleans (1991), the standard study, describe a religion with a strongly practical orientation: it addresses health, work, family conflict and danger, and it gives women in particular roles of authority as bishops, mothers and prophets that they could rarely hold in other churches. The photographer and folklorist Michael P. Smith documented these congregations in Spirit World (1984).

Mother Catherine Seals and the Women Who Led§

Women dominated the early movement. Besides Leafy Anderson, the most famous was Mother Catherine Seals (died 1930), who founded a religious compound in the Lower Ninth Ward known as the Temple of the Innocent Blood. She is remembered for sheltering women and children in need and for healing the sick, and she attracted large crowds of both Black and white visitors. Her temple was filled with statues, pictures and religious objects, and she was revered after her death.

Zora Neale Hurston visited Mother Catherine's compound during her New Orleans fieldwork and wrote a vivid essay about her, later collected in The Sanctified Church (1981). Hurston's portraits of the city's Spiritual leaders and conjure practitioners, discussed in Zora Neale Hurston and Hoodoo, remain important early descriptions, though she shaped her material for literary effect.

The prominence of female leaders connects the Spiritual churches with an older pattern in New Orleans religion, where women such as Marie Laveau had held public religious authority in the nineteenth century. Scholars are cautious about drawing a direct line, but the parallel is often noted.

Spiritual Churches, Voodoo and the Question of Labels§

Journalists and some observers in the twentieth century described the Spiritual churches as "Voodoo" because of their saints, candles, spirits and healing. Most members and leaders strongly rejected the label and saw themselves as Christians, and some leaders preached against hoodoo. Jacobs and Kaslow argue that the churches are best understood as an African American religion in their own right, formed from Spiritualism, Pentecostalism, Catholicism and Afro-Creole tradition, rather than as disguised Voodoo.

At the same time, historians of Louisiana religion see the churches as one of the channels through which elements of the older Voudou world survived after it declined in the late nineteenth century: devotion to saints as powerful helpers, attention to the spirits of the dead, ritual healing and the authority of women. Many congregations were damaged or scattered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but the churches continue and remain a distinctive part of New Orleans religious life.

Frequently asked questions§

Who was Mother Leafy Anderson?§

Leafy Anderson was a Spiritualist minister who moved from Chicago to New Orleans around 1920 and founded the Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Church. She trained and ordained many ministers, especially women, and is regarded as the founder of the New Orleans Spiritual church movement. She died in 1927.

Why do New Orleans Spiritual churches honour Black Hawk?§

Black Hawk, a Sauk leader who resisted the United States in 1832, was introduced as a spirit guide by Leafy Anderson. He is honoured as a protector and a spirit of justice, and scholars suggest that his story of resistance resonated with African Americans under segregation.

Are the Spiritual churches Voodoo churches?§

Members regard themselves as Christians and generally reject the label. Scholars describe the churches as a distinct African American religion that draws on Spiritualism, Pentecostalism and Catholicism, while preserving some practices found in older New Orleans Voodoo.

Sources and further reading§