Voodoo bewitches Batson

“There’s something going on in the bayous that’s not completely explainable,” said Dustin Batson (Religious Studies, Foreign Affairs ’03). His feeling was compelling enough that he took two weeks of his winter break to revisit the Gulf Coast region where he grew up — on this trip as an investigator.

Batson already knew there was something different about the area. Time spent in Spain and Nepal “really distilled what was American, what was Southern, and what was distinct in my family. I realized that things that I thought were normal are in fact unique.”

In his travels, Batson sometimes sought solitude in cemeteries if no church was available. “There’s no quieter place than a cemetery,” he explained. “But on my last visit to New Orleans, it struck me that there was something in the cemeteries there that I wasn’t at peace with. I started looking back at what I knew about my family, the Gulf Coast and New Orleans that’s different. And I thought, well, maybe it’s this Voodoo thing.”

Batson takes “this Voodoo thing” very seriously. The sensationalized or even racist tone he found in his initial research of Vodun (Voodoo is popularized jargon) disturbed him. Looking past the superstitious public face of Vodun, such as voodoo dolls, he explored its more private face — its core beliefs.

Originating in West Africa, Vodun is a pantheistic religion brought to the New World by slaves. As Batson explains, followers believe in one holy force or god that manifests itself through deities. To avoid persecution, the Africans incorporated their beliefs into Christianity, particularly Catholicism. “Vodun deities bear remarkable resemblance to Christian saints,” said Batson.

He is quick to say that Vodun is not a thing of the past. A common attitude, Batson said, is, “I’m not sure I believe in it, but man, I’d hate to be wrong.”