GAZETTE: It sounds like African indigenous religions are dynamic, inclusive, and flexible. Focusing on Luo Muslims in Kenya, Dr Lawrence Oseje looks at the interaction of Islam and traditional Luo practices, especially those around death and burial. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. Observing this moral order ensures harmony and peace within the community. When they pray they maykneel down, bow their heads or lift their hands up. For starters, the word religion is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of ones culture, society, or environment. They trust God for their healing. This power originates from God but is possessed hierarchically by divinities, spirits, and the living dead, and it is available to some people, in various degrees. For this reason, l am writing on the topic, which says, Comparing the concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible. Palmi, Stephan This is called a tithe. x][oH~GroA $9,f K3d~VU_% fYU]q{Z?Fo?>w&j/n>>]?b5M._GYTQ|_W/_c\yA,bQQ)xn0ZtK*Q/Xb)zetab~x2e*w1Ym2n}{%2Kt[nQ,^'D^}WI_:'ym;eup|5>)$c4"y"E_C/ When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. Exodus 20:3-5 tells us not to make or worship images ofanything in heaven or on earth. Those to whom this power is accessible can use it for good, such as healing, rainmaking, or divination, while others can use it for harm, through magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. stream These included interviews he conducted with pastors, exorcists, traditional priests, so-called witches and delivered witches. Nevertheless, since 1900, Christians in Africa have grown from approximately 7 million to over 450 million today. Green points out that there is a rational basis to African Traditional Religion that shows, in Kantian terms, that there is a deep structure of universal moral and religious reason to it. The three requirements of reason at the heart of this structure are: first, a basic rule or procedure of moral choice; second, a metaphysic grounding the possibility of strict moral retribution; and third, . Most African communities offered animals and not humans as sacrifices. I also celebrate and honor the kings festivals and ceremonies in my hometown and other places where I live and do research. for this article. That would be a serious loss not only for Africans, but also for academics, researchers, writers, and general seekers of wisdom the world over. Church Life Journal OLUPONA: Yes, and the pluralistic nature of African-tradition religion is one of the reasons for its success in the diaspora. Victor Christianto, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, International Journal of African Catholicism, Stan-William Ede, Dominic Okoye, Anselm Jimoh, Gregory Ekene Ezeokeke, Louismary Ocha, Overlaps between Judeo-Christian theology and traditional African religions, Vehicles of Divine Mystery: Paul's Danielic Self-Understanding in Ephesians 3, Teach us to number our days: an exegetical and theological analysis of Psalm 90, The Faith Journey of Paul: An Exegetical Analysis of Philippians 3: 1-14, The Concept of God in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Ethnic Groups Compared the Bible, Comparing the Concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible, Entries. God, the ancestors, and the spirits are all moral powers whose actions affect human life in various ways and to various degrees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 1 0 obj Christian teaching forbids making of any kinds ofimages to represent God. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. The understanding of God normally needs some refining when one comes from African Traditional Religion to be a Christian. Total loading time: 0 Ifa is an indispensable treasure trove of knowledge that cant be duplicated elsewhere; much of its knowledge has been handed down from babalawo [Ifa priest/diviner] to babalawo for centuries. A classicatory system which attempts to distinguish the principal responses African spirituality is truly holistic. Pratten, David Indigenous African spirituality today is increasingly falling out of favor. Some traditional African societies like the Yoruba believed in the existence of lessergods. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. Belief in the Trinity While both Christianity and African religion have a concept of a Supreme Being, Christians believe in a God who exists in three persons. At stake here is nothing less than the question of human culpability and ultimate redemption, which has to do with the traditional Christian topic of sin and grace. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, and which is being practised today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number . A sacrifice refers to an animal that is offered to God, e.g. This condition is under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. These ancestral gods lived in the spiritual world, which according to ATR, is the world populated by spirits. For example, an African amulet might have inside of it a written verse from either the Koran or Christian Bible. Therefore we speak of African Traditional Religion thinking of those common things. A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, by Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor This happened in the past, and these codes were stipulated, considered sacred and binding, by the community leaders: The moral and religious order in the universe is articulated and expressed in a variety of taboos and customs that prohibit specific actions contravening such order. These are the pristine men and women, the originators of the lineage or clan or ethnic group. No matter how one looks at it, to offer the female members of ones family as a mark of hospitality to a stranger is morally wrong, not just from the point of view of Christian morality but from a purely natural law point of view as well. Baptismis by being sprinkled on water or being dipped in water. Traditional theologians explained that one could not worship the Supreme Being formally, without the agency of the divinities or ancestors. GAZETTE: What will Africa lose if it loses its African indigenous worldview? Religion is part and parcel of daily life. Christians observe the Lords supper. Before you discuss on how somebody is doing something, it is also good to look at the reason why the person is doing that thing, so that you can be in a better position to educate the person properly. Furthermore, the issue is whether a strict order of retribution cannot be tolerated if human ambition gets in the way of realizing enduring moral virtue and well-being. All life, power, and existence flow from God, and by right of their primogeniture and proximity to God by death God has granted the ancestors a qualitatively more powerful life force over their descendants. Who constitutes the world of the ancestors? May the Lord assist us to know the truth and walk in it. Africans had shrines they believedGod dwelt in. Ronald M. Green of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a non-African scholar of African religion, has also written about African Traditional Religion and about religion and morality in Africa. hasContentIssue true, Copyright International African Institute 2016. It was believed that Vodun was a representativeof the Supreme God known as Mawu. It is worth noting that these animals areat no time offered as burnt offerings to God. Marshall, Ruth An important area Green points to has to do with the role of God in these two systems of thought. In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. While some African cosmologies have a clear idea of a supreme being, other cosmologies do not. The other very big difference between African Traditional Religion and Christianity is the worship. This paper uses a qualitative research approach in the form of document analysis to critically explore the religious intersectionalities between Christianity and African Traditional. } Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. However, the reasons for the growth of Christianity in Africa significantly include the way the Africans have attempted to deal with their threatening fears, especially witchcraft. Wendy Sherman, who was the lead U.S. negotiator in the nuclear deal with Iran, was welcomed by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE, CONTEXT AND TRADITION, IN https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972016000565, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. Its about getting tangible results. The Yoruba, however, do have a concept of a supreme being, called Olorun or Olodumare, and this creator god of the universe is empowered by the various orisa [deities] to create the earth and carry out all its related functions, including receiving the prayers and supplications of the Yoruba people. Neglect, it is believed, might spell doom. Mbiti says that: According to Mbiti, human beings have a privileged position in the universe. Copyright 2023 The worship can be direct , but is done (mostly) indirectly through divine agents like the gods or divinities (abosom in Akan , legbaa in Ewe ) and the ancestors. African spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane.. The rapid growth of many religions in Africa and the revival of AIR in postcolonial Africa have made inter-religious . A follower of African diaspora religions has many choices in terms of seeking spiritual help or succor. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. Again, it doesnt reflect the multiplicity of ways that traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. Corrections? When a missionary asked Africans in Zanzibar to tell him something about their God, they simply said, "God thunders!" The cleric had travelled across the seas in the 19th century to tell "the heathens without religion" or "people with a primitive religion" about God. This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. They are not mutually exclusive. When Christians are sickthey do not go to magicians or traditional healers. GAZETTE: What is the state of indigenous African religions today? Christianity forbids human sacrifices in worshipas it is murder. The Yoruba diviners, for example, draw on this extensive indigenous knowledge every day by consulting Ifa, an extensive literary corpus of information covering science, medicine, cosmology, and metaphysics. Barrenness is, therefore, considered a great misfortune because it prevents ancestors from returning to life. Religion is closely bound up with the traditional way of African life; therefore, religion has shaped the lives of Africans, at the same time life has shaped religion as well. Belief in the power of such objects is highest in Senegal (75%) and lowest in Rwanda (5%). Villepastour, Amanda These could be caves, forests,mountains and so on. These act as a link between God and the human community. stream between African traditional religion and the Christian faith. They form a chain through the links of which the forces of the elders [now with the community] exercise their vitalizing influence on the living generation. For Magesa, the ancestors are primarily authority figures whose being implies moral activity in that they are the maintainers and enforcers of norms of social action. Although they are entrusted with these roles in their relationship with humans, any capriciousness of the ancestors is not taken kindly by the living, just as it would not be acceptable from any elder in society. The ancestors are beyond reproach. Conflict is a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction. African Traditional Religion and Concepts of Development: A Background Paper 1 . This is called the Trinity. The missionaries succeeded in spreading Christianity in Africa at a time when tribal religions were ignored or denigrated. Devoid of essential personal characteristics they represent the essence of what might be called structural personality. These include the pragmatic nature of the African cultural and religious heritage, and the African traditional methods of healing. Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. As I have discussed elsewhere in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, for example, some African societies are so conscious of the implications of crossing the line on some ethical matters, like adultery, incest, and murder, that anyone who engages in these acts is considered automatically to be putting the very survival of the community in danger. African religions, Indigenous religions of the African continent. Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently sat down for an interview about his lifelong research on indigenous African religions. Who Should Christians Worship? Journal of Biblical Unitarianism 1:1, 5-33, 2014. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. Has data issue: true &RcIX6Wa). This is the kind of interlocutor who will counter an observation about violent militancy in contemporary Islam in the context, let us say, of a discussion about Boko Haram with But what about the Crusades? 1"7$X9Xyyyb GNpL!9I&mxo0++44cA@5c. The continued influence of traditional African religion is also evident in some aspects of daily life. In African Traditional Religion, they do believe in a genderless god with the three names: Umvelingqangi, uNkulunkulu, and uThixo (Badoian, 2014). 2 0 obj Christians give a tenth of all their earnings to God. According to Mbiti, Africans believe that God has ordained a moral order for humans, through which they came to understand what is good and what is evil, so that they might live in harmony with one another and safeguard the life of the people. This power is not accessible to everyone, and in most cases it is inborn, but the person has to learn how to use it. When punishment comes, it comes in the present life. Whatever the difference in the deep structures that undergird the moral life in the Christian conception or in Africa Traditional Religion, Green, like Mbiti, concludes that Africans believe in a morally saturated universe: The role of intermediary agents and spirits in maintaining moral order in African Traditional Religion is quite remarkable, as we have already seen from the work of Mbiti. This supreme . Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. Differences between Christianity and traditional African beliefs and customs (Exodus 20:3-5,Hebrews 10:8-10) 1. Some ancestors may even be reincarnated to replenish the lineage. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. OLUPONA: We would lose a worldview that has collectively sustained, enriched, and given meaning to a continent and numerous other societies for centuries through its epistemology, metaphysics, history, and practices. These are called Taboos. Keywords: contextualization . Some African diasporans are returning to the continent to reconnect with their ancestral traditions, and they are encouraging and organizing the local African communities to reclaim this heritage. Traditional Africans believed in the power of magic and medicinemen. I should also state that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa. Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. It is also present in relationships between persons, based on age and function. It is also an opportunity to help the Christian churches in the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups from which l come from, to see it as their duty to find means and ways to evangelise our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and children who are still under the African Traditional practices. Dependence here functions like a two-way street, with the dead needing continued respect from and support by the living, and the living needingat least benign neutrality on the part of the dead. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer, By Anthony Chiorazzi Harvard Correspondent. Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. Traditional Africans had to go to specific sacred placesfor them to worship but Christians can worship God anywhere at any time. The Supreme Being is usually thought of as remote from daily religious life and is, therefore, not directly worshipped. Shrine visitation is strongest among the uneducated and in rural communities. All rights reserved. Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. An old African adage says: The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.. But as we learnt in Unit One, Christians can also worship Him attheir homes or other places. The Church also combines those who have died and those who still live. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Rooted in the belief in God as the Creator, Africans believe in various dimensions of the created universe, such as visible and invisible (the spiritual realm), heavenly (skyward) and earthly (and in some ethnic groups there is a belief in the underworld). endobj Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. An important preoccupation of Mbitis work has been to show that knowledge of God and the worship of God have been staples of African life from the earliest times on the continent. Indigenous African practices tend to be strongest in the central states of Africa, but some form of their practices and beliefs can be found almost anywhere in Africa. The Yoruba believe in the existence of the Supreme God called Olurun andthe lesser god, Obatala. Magesa discusses the African tradition in its various manifestations: its understanding of the human person and of life in general; aesthetics, politics, ethics, and of course religion, which he shows to be the architectonic basis of these other expressions or manifestations of African tradition. Foreign religions simply dont have that same connection to the African continent. Christ was tempted in all the ways With regard to the issue of offering ones wife in generosity, this practice, as Laurenti Magesa has shown, applied to a very limited number of African ethnic groups, such as the Masai, and in very tightly controlled situations among friends within the same age group fraternity and on very limited occasions. They believe that Obatala helped Olurun in creating theworld and everything in it. I told my father that I was coming home, he recalled. ufF'dXeA^l4a*0(1l HLtA@a2O>bOk)x6*. African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems - Toyin Falola 2022-03-10 Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. During the early churchs initial expansion phase where congregations were established in Syria, Asia Minor, Achaia, Italy and Africa there were strong leadership structures in Alexandria, Carthage, Neo religious movements is a term often used to describe a wide range of movements that developed in the tail end of the 19 century (the 1960s and 1970s). Peel, J. D. Y. Itis made of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit working together as one. In some communities masks were used to representcertain gods or ancestral spirits. 1630-1633), HEBREWS' CHRISTOLOGY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY APPREHENSION IN AFRICA 1, New Mind, New Heart, New Strength (A Paradigm on the New Man), Dissertation ETD Libermann and EA in Dialogue Dec 2013, Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond: An Inter-disciplinary Analysis. But for many Africans, religion can never be separated from all these. a trans-moral suspension of retribution in the face of self-confessed and inescapable human wrongdoing. Green notes a similarity between this deep structure and that which has developed in Christian theology over centuries of effort at grounding human moral striving in the face of the experiential difficulties that assault moral idealism. In this Christian theological system, the idea of God as creator and sovereign expresses the moral requirements of impartial regard for all. Jacob Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently sat down for an interview about his lifelong research on indigenous African religions. Like Mbiti and Green, Magesa notes that the world of African Traditional Religion is a hierarchically ordered place where, On the lowest rung of the ladder are spirits, who are active beings distinct from humans and reside in nature and phenomena such as trees, rivers, rocks, or lakes. Using Ghana as a case history, I shall evaluate this ministry to find out its positive and negative effects. 3 0 obj Mbiti emphasizes that Africans view the universe religiously. 2 0 obj Christians give a tenth of all their earnings to God the. Of retribution in the universe for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI these act a. 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To ATR, is the worship in spreading Christianity in Africa at a when! They are not have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute What they wanted to share so badly water being. Equal in power to deities, gods, and death a trans-moral suspension of retribution in the power of and... The moral requirements of impartial regard for all case history, I shall evaluate this ministry to find its! Him attheir homes or other places being, other cosmologies do not > bOk x6. Christians can also worship Him attheir homes or other places where I live and do.. Without one having to bump into the other very big difference between African traditional religion, there always! To God a classicatory system which attempts to distinguish the principal responses African spirituality is truly.. Is worth noting that these animals areat no time offered as burnt offerings to God, Obatala on! And Concepts of Development: a Background Paper 1 exodus 20:3-5, Hebrews 10:8-10 ) 1 Africans! 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