토니 모리슨의 다중 종교적 시각

Toni Morrison’s Multi-Religious Perspectives: from the Viewpoints of African Americans’ Syncretic Theology

This study discusses Toni Morrison’s religious perspectives from the viewpoints of African-Americans’ syncretic theology. Morrison demonstrates her African American perspectives of religion through her characters, such as Baby Suggs of Beloved and Consolata Sosa of Paradise. In the novels, Morrison leads her readers not only to the origin and process of African-Americans’ syncretic religion but also the theism and soteriology of its theologies and sects, such as liberation, womanist, humanist, messianic-nationalist, conversionist, and thaumaturgy. In Beloved, Baby Suggs becomes an unchurched preacher who personifies African-Americans’ syncretic religion. While instructing the African-American community spiritual survival strategies in the Clearing, she uses not only Christian sermon and gospel but also African-Americans’ traditional rituals, such as ring shouting, circular dancing, and crying. Furthermore, she espouses a doctrine of self-love and self-determined grace which is counter to a Christian ethos, and celebrates flesh as a coequal of spirit. In Paradise, Consolata Sosa is the amalgamation of Christian mercy, womanist theology, and heretic occultism. Consolata heads the convent which is transformed into a woman-centered place. However, under her direction, the convent is open to everybody regardless of racial-sexual-cultural differences. With a heretic message on the fusion of spirit and flesh that is over Christian theology, she leads the convent visitors to share their traumatic experiences and to open the interconnections between them.