African religion scholar Jacob Olupona has been given more than $500,000 from the Ford Foundation to help America see what he calls its most invisible immigrants.
Over the next three years, the UC Davis professor of African and African American studies will be working with African immigrant religious communities in major U.S. cities to develop ethnographic and historical pictures of their lives.
"This project challenges the notion that there are no Africans in America," Olupona says. "People think there are only African Americans here – there is no identity at this point for African immigrants, although they are a sizable number and have a number of different issues that need addressing."
The study will also look at the transnational importance of Africans in America, in terms of how they continue to affect politics and economics in their home countries, Olupona says.
According to the U.S. 2000 census, about a million Africans immigrants live in the United States. Half of those have arrived since 1990. The census also shows that, with 49 percent of African adult immigrants holding a bachelor degree, they are the most educated among all American immigrants.
Using his own scholarly lens of religion, Olupona will be looking at how immigrant identities and communities are shaped in a context of North American religious landscapes. He also wants to document their civic engagement and social change. He will be looking at African communities in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Olupona points out that Africans participate in a variety of religions: Islam, evangelical Christianity and indigenous African religions. These groups differ from other American spiritual communities in that many worship in native African languages; emphasize African dress, performance, dance and rituals; or use indigenous African symbols and metaphors.
African immigrants are also spiritual leaders for others who practice New World religions with African roots: the Orisha tradition, affiliated with vodou in Haiti; Santeria practiced among Afro-Cubans; and Candomble, developed among Afro-Brazilians.
Olupona has already found one subject that resonates among the religious leaders in African immigrant communities: faith-based community service.
"They are providing day care, funding the poor and helping the homeless and think that these faith-based initiatives should be recognized with support by the government," Olupona says.
Olupona will coordinate a small research group already working on religion and immigration in African communities across the nation. They will travel to UC Davis for conferences to share information and ultimately create strategies for publicizing and promoting their policy conclusions to government and interested non-profit agencies.
Olupona is also planning a conference of African religious leaders who will meet at UC Davis in 2005 to form an action plan that addresses issues affecting their communities.
Two years ago, the Ford Foundation gave Olupona $98,000 to map the diversity of African religious communities in the nation. He received another $414,000 Ford grant in December to continue his research, coordinate national African religious community researchers and hold the 2005 leadership conference.
Olupona teaches and studies religions of the sub-Saharan Africans and the African diaspora.
In 1999, he convened in Miami a major international conference on the Orisha devotion as a world religion. Olupona has authored and edited more than eight books including "Kingship, Religion and Rituals in a Nigerian Community." He is the president of the African Association for the Study of Religion.