ABSTRACT
The Yoruba Religion has become a growing part of the Black Community of New York and other urban centers. It has gained enough of an identity in the minds of its practitioners to differentiate it from Santeria. Clifford Geertz considered changes in the same religion in his book Islam Observed in which he discussed the differences in Islam as it is practiced in Morocco and Indonesia. He sees the changes in Islam as practiced in both these societies as resulting from their respective social structures and cultures, conceptualizing change as macro-historical at the level of the state. The denial of the legitimacy of domination and the moral worth of upper strata suggest fundamental differences in the values attributed to selves of and by different strata. The development of cults in the urban north put into question not only mainstream Christianity but the Christianity of the Black Church.
