Good morning, Andy!

Growing up Yoruba in Lagos, Nigeria, Lanre Balogun was taught through church, Nollywood, and at home, that his indigenous religion was something to fear. The orìṣàs were demons, and the primordial mothers were witches. The gods of his ancestors were a problem to be solved by Christianity.

It took a candomblé ceremony in Brazil, reached through a chance Grindr message, to show him that the beauty of Yoruba indigenous religions had been systematically obscured. In Reclamation Across the Atlantic, Balogun explores what it costs to have one’s spiritual heritage demonized and what it means to find it, intact, on the other side of the Atlantic.

Read it in full here.


Tomi Olugbemi
Audience Editor, The Republic