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Jacob Olupona - Professor of African and African American studies at the University of California, Davis.

In January, 2003, it was announced that African religion scholar Dr. Jacob Olupona had been given more than $500,000 from the Ford Foundation to help America see what he calls its most invisible immigrants.

Until 2006, Mr. Olupona of the University of California, 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.

The study is documenting the effect and transnational importance of Africans in America, in terms of how they continue to affect politics and economics in their home countries. Using his own scholarly lens of religion, Dr. Olupona is studying how immigrant identities and communities are shaped in a context of North American religious landscapes, civic engagement and social change. He is focusing on African communities in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Dr. Olupona has pointed out that Africans participate in a variety of religions: Islam, evangelical Christianity and indigenous African religions. He stresses that 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. He adds that 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.

He 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 Dr. Olupona $98,000 to map the diversity of African religious communities in the nation. He received another $414,000 Ford grant in December '03 to continue his research, coordinate national African religious community researchers and hold the 2005 leadership conference.

In 1999, he convened in Miami, a major international conference on the Orisha devotion as a world religion.

Dr. 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.

Source: Dateline UC Davis - faculty and staff newspaper for the University of California, Davis.

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