# Spirituality  
Studies of diaspora religions are shaped by theories developed at least one century ago and concerning cultural encounters and their results. They can be categorized into two superficially conflicting options: one, the retentionist perspective, emphasizes what Africans were able to keep from their original traditions; the other, the creolization approach, focuses on the changes Africans went through as enslaved people in the Americas. This dichotomy has been shown to be unproductive. Present-day historiography seeks to identify transformations achieved in African contexts, as well as in the diasporas, considering the absence of pure cultures or cultures that remained stagnant during the diaspora formation processes.  
Sylviane A. Diouf's analysis of Muslim resistance in the Americas shows that the large presence of Senegambians was an important ingredient in the revolts aboard slave ships and among slave societies in the Americas. In this sense, enslaved African Muslims from Senegambia were connected by their faith, knowledge of Arabic and religious networks. Her chapter, just as the one written by Reis, points to the revolutionary potential of Islam.  
Lucilene Reginaldo looks at the religious brotherhoods dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary in Angola, Portugal and Brazil. Beginning with an Atlantic angle, her piece shows that Catholic brotherhoods were important spaces for association and served to propagate black devotions, both in Central Africa and  
the Atlantic diaspora. For Reginaldo, devotion to the rosary was not part of the agenda of colonial power, but rather the result of the people's experience with Catholicism in Angola and the Congo. In the context of the Middle Passage and the diaspora, the Angolans created an identity in which the brotherhood had specific African meanings for both new and old divinities, in the Old and the New World. Thus, Our Lady of the Rosary was transformed and associated with water spirits such as Kalunga, who could protect devotees at sea and beyond.