Across Brazil, a growing number of Black practitioners are speaking out against what they call a new wave of religious colonization , the increasing dominance of white Brazilians in the practice, leadership, and academic study of the Òrìṣà religion.
“They forced Jesus upon us during slavery,” says one elder Bàbálòrìṣà from Bahia, “and now, after centuries, they have taken our Òrìṣà too.” What was once a living spiritual legacy of African resistance , born in the terreiros of enslaved Yorùbá, Fon, and Bantu people , has now become, in many places, a space dominated by people of European descent. In states like Rio Grande do Sul, where more than 98% of the population is white, the number of registered Òrìṣà temples surpasses those of traditionally Black regions such as Bahia and Pernambuco.
The irony runs deep. From Ifá divination studies to Yorùbá language courses and academic programs on African religions, the majority of students and recognized specialists are now white Brazilians. They attend congresses, publish papers, travel to Nigeria and Benin for initiation, and return to Brazil as authorities in a tradition once punished by law when practiced by Black people.
Even within the sacred houses, white dominance is visible. “The Bàbáláwos and Ìyálòrìṣàs with financial resources to study abroad are mostly white,” explains a cultural researcher from São Paulo. “They are the ones who can afford initiation fees, ritual materials, and international travel. The poor Black descendants of the enslaved, who carried these traditions in their blood, are often left outside looking in.”
This imbalance extends beyond practice into performance and representation. Today, many white devotees dress in the traditional garments of Yorùbá ancestry , flowing agbádás, white ọjàs, and cowrie bead necklaces , and even invoke ancestral spirits in public rituals, saying “In the name of our ancestors.”
“It’s painful to watch,” laments a Black Bàbálòrìṣà from Rio de Janeiro. “They dress like our forefathers, speak Yorùbá with accents, and say, ‘In the name of our ancestors,’ as if they carried the same history of pain, chains, and survival. Meanwhile, our own people are in the churches that were used to erase our gods.”
Indeed, while white Brazilians increasingly occupy spaces of religious prestige, most Black Brazilians remain in the pews of Catholic and Evangelical churches , still distanced from the ancestral religion that their forefathers preserved through slavery and persecution. Generations of demonization have made Òrìṣà worship appear foreign, even to those whose lineage once kept it alive.
For many Afro-Brazilian leaders, this is not simply a cultural shift — it is the continuation of a historical theft. “First, they took our freedom, then our names, and now, when our spirituality is recognized and respected, they take that too,” says another priest from Salvador.
As universities and cultural institutions open new programs in Yorùbá language, Ifá philosophy, and African cosmology, the faces filling those classrooms are, once again, overwhelmingly white.
To the remaining elders and priests of African descent, the call is urgent:
“We must reclaim what is ours , not through hatred, but through remembrance. The Òrìṣà are not property, but they are our heritage. If we do not honor them, others will, and they will rename what we once called sacred.”
In a country still haunted by its colonial ghosts, Brazil now faces a new form of spiritual colonization, one that does not come through chains or whips, but through appropriation, privilege, and the erasure of memory.
