SOURCE : Ndoki bueno ndoki malo: Historic and contemporary Kongo religion in the African diaspora

The religious traditions of Central Africans have been less a focus of attention than those from West Africa. Despite being often more widespread in the American diaspora, these traditions are often overlooked by academic studies or characterized as witchcraft rather than religion. The critical appraisal of Congo religions by scholars has often been affected by the view that they represent degenerate traditions. This is largely due to the mixture of Spanish and Congo in the religious liturgy, which has been perceived as a corruption of a “purer” linguistic form. Congo religious traditions, whether in Brazil, Cuba or the United States tend to lack well-defined and detailed pantheons and mythologies. The presence of these within West African traditions in the Americas led scholars to assume that their absence from Congo traditions represent a sign of social decay rather than of different cultural models.

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