The commitment to theory, 2. 2 0 obj God, the ancestors, and the spirits are all moral powers whose actions affect human life in various ways and to various degrees. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, "for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions." But as we learnt in Unit One, Christians can also worship Him attheir homes or other places. (I myself have consulted with several diviners for my research on specific academic topics regarding African culture and history; consequently, if we were to lose Africas diviners, we would also lose one of Africas best keepers and sources of African history and culture. Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975. Whenever. This is the function of Gods providence and sustenance of the universe. 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. degree at Harvard Divinity School. The Igbo traditional religious worldview maintains a polytheistic religious view, unlike the monotheistic outlook of the Christian religion. Everywhere he went in southwestern Nigeria, he never opposed or spoke out against African culture including initiation rites, festivals, and traditional Yoruba dress as long as it didnt directly conflict with Christianity. Human beings are the link between the heavens and the earth, between the visible and the invisible universe. This leads him into the whole area of theology of religions, in which the relationship between Christianity and other religions is currently the focus of lively debate. Such activities include the making of sacrifices and the pouring of libations. Thus, to assert as Mbiti does that there are no secret sins or that something or someone is bad or good only according to outward conduct is too careless a statement to make. 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 . 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. 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. In the Ewe thought they are called Vodou (Vodu or Vudu in Benin and Togo; also Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, or other phonetically equivalent spellings. A Background to Religion and Magic in Western Thought Our modern usage of the term 'magic' derives from the Greek magike, This dissertation will attempt to explore how deliverance ministry has replaced the anti-witchcraft shrines and the exorcistic activities of the African Indigenous Churches. Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond, A Critical Analysis of Byang Kato's Demonology and Its Theological Relevance for an Evangelical Demonology, INITIATION IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Kirsteen Kim, Amos Yong: Interdisciplinary and Religio-Cultural Discourses on a Spirit-Filled World, Encounter - Journal of African Life and Religion, 12 (2017), REGNUM STUDIES IN MISSION Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity An Edinburgh Centenary Reader, Van Rheenen, Gailyn: Missions - biblical foundations. Both have religious leaders or priests whopresent the peoples requests to God. From this view point, Ill begin to say that African Traditional Religion (ATR) involves the belief and worship of the Supreme Being known and revered all over Africa as Onyame in Akan, Mao in Ewe, Chineke in Igbo and Oludumare in Yoruba etc. For this reason, they can come to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ through the teaching of the Word of God because it is home going time. Second, Africans believe in a moral order given by God, stipulated by the ancestors in the past. GAZETTE: What else would we lose if we lost traditional African Religions? Green opines that although superficially regarded, this may seem to be a minimal moral relationshipmore like a kind of egoism on one side and fearful propitiation on the otherit also shows, however, the profound role that respect for age and for the fulfillment of lineage and familial duties play in this traditional setting. To understand African tradition, one needs to understand the position of African Traditional Religion on God, the human person, and creation. Ritual functionaries include priests, elders, rainmakers, diviners, and prophets. Nevertheless, since 1900, Christians in Africa have grown from approximately 7 million to over 450 million today. Published online by Cambridge University Press: The ancestors are believed to be the most immediate link with the spiritual world, and they are thought to be constantly near, observing every thought and action of the living. <> Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax 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. In this paper, Ill bring the understanding of African traditional adherents into the light of the Holy Scriptures; to explain what the Bible teaches about soul and spirit in relation to God and man. Commonly, God is believed to dwell in the skies. hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. It evolved through many centuries, before the westerner come to Africa. 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. The conviction that people will be reborn in this world again and again tends to be more common among Christians than Muslims. Both have places of worship. GAZETTE: How have ancestors played a role in traditional societies? Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvardnews. Acknowledgements, Introduction: Locations of culture, 1. the other in tradition poses a serious dilemma for both Christianity and tradition in Africa. endobj Christ Jesus, God's own son, takes the "groaning" of humans to God. 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. OLUPONA: Thats a mixed bag. They consultedtraditional healers who used various herbs and charms to cure diverse illnesses. Rituals are aimed at maintaining a harmonious relationship with cosmic powers, and many have associated myths that explain their significance. I should also state that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. 1 0 obj The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. But after braving that first blizzard in a land far from his native Nigeria, Olupona stuck it out and earned his Ph.D. He has useful insights to add to our discussion and in many ways corroborates the statements other scholars like Mbiti have made about African religion. 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Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World, Chapter 3: Traditional African Religious Beliefs and Practices, Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, Next: Chapter 4: Interreligious Harmony and Tensions, Chapter 2: Commitment to Christianity and Islam, Chapter 4: Interreligious Harmony and Tensions, In the U.S. and Western Europe, people say they accept Muslims, but opinions are divided on Islam, In Western Europe, familiarity with Muslims is linked to positive views of Muslims and Islam, Q&A: Measuring attitudes toward Muslims and Jews in Western Europe, Europes Muslim population will continue to grow but how much depends on migration, The Growth of Germanys Muslim Population, Size & Demographic Characteristics of Religious Groups, Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, 60% of Americans Would Be Uncomfortable With Provider Relying on AI in Their Own Health Care, The changing face of Congress in 8 charts, As Russian invasion nears one-year mark, partisans grow further apart on U.S. support for Ukraine. Interrogating identity: Frantz Fanon and the postcolonial prerogative, 3. 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. Traditional Religion as a source of African theology just as Christian theology is. This is called the Trinity. 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. The religious activities of chiefs and lineage heads are generally limited to the more routine biweekly and annual festivities, but traditional priests given their association with specific shrines are regarded as specialized practitioners through whom the spirits of the gods may grant directions. It also taps into a common lay attitude to what might be called a secular common sense, which feels impatience or distaste for all forms of what it considers religious extremism, while at the same time shying away from regarding any one religion as more prone to extremism than others. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. The reasons for this shift are varied and complex. The bottom line then is that Africans who still wholly practice African indigenous religions are only about 10 percent of the African population, a fraction of what it used to be only a century ago, when indigenous religions dominated most of the continent. We will return to these issues later in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, but for now it is enough to ask whether the similarities in the deep structure between the two religions are indeed as similar as Green suggests. Marshall, Ruth For example, in 14 of the 19 countries surveyed, more than three-in-ten people say they sometimes consult traditional healers when someone in their household is sick. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. 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, . Updated: 10 . OLUPONA: I was raised in Africa during the 1960s, when the Yoruba community never asked you to chose between your personal faith and your collective African identity. I had it. endobj Keywords: contextualization . Ancestors and numerous other spirits are also recognized as part of the cosmological order. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. Holding or maintaining to a uniform doctrine is not the essence of indigenous African religions. 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. %PDF-1.5 Everything is said to center on them. They are not mutually exclusive. So, basically, to speak of African tradition is to talk about African Traditional Religion. Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. &RcIX6Wa). African religions, Indigenous religions of the African continent. I am going to use the research reports of Opoky Onyinah , which he carried out among Ghanaian Christians between 1997 and 1999. 24 October 2016. Christians pray toGod through Jesus Christ. OLUPONA: No, this type of binary thinking is simplistic. Total loading time: 0 This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. Prayers and sacrificial offerings are usually directed toward secondary divinities, who are intermediaries between the human and sacred realms. 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? Learn more about the similarities and differences of the religious systems of Africa, including indigenous religions, Abrahamic, Islamic, and Christian beliefs of people in the region. 3 0 obj 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. These images could be of a lion or another animal carvedfrom a tree to represent a god. Christians give a tenth of all their earnings to God. Traditional Africans didnot have this practice. These are the pristine men and women, the originators of the lineage or clan or ethnic group. This article concerned itself with the modern encounter between Christianity and African Indigenous Religion (AIR) in Africa. stream Such a project, however, is only significant if it is not only executed by religious leaders, By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our. Pp. By Greens own admission, and as we shall see later, there are as many divergences on the architectonic hinge of these deep structuresGod, the human person, and the materialworldas there are similarities. 1xxp~I7m#MWjxAqN,PT2^]R6C3Y'K~Bwv4-xwE@;5 The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions. It is therefore very important for African theology to ascertain the meaning of African Traditional Religion, both because of the service this tradition renders to Christian theology as a dialogue partner, and because the very self-awareness of the African theologian and of African theology itself to a large extent hinges on a proper articulation and appreciation of Africas pre-Christian past. They claimed or argued strongly that in the light of the more objective or scientific study of religions, ATR can no longer be justifiably characterized as stupid, since the worshippers do not worship the said material objects per se, but the Spirit of the Creator reflected in them. There are untold millions, which are outside the fold who need to come into the saving knowledge of Christ. x + 306. "The success of Christianity and Islam on the African continent in the last 100 years has been extraordinary, but it has been, unfortunately, at the expense of African indigenous religions," said Olupona. Traditional African religion does not show any belief in the Trinity. The idea is that the traditional African practitioner who constructed that amulet believes in the efficacy of other faiths and religions; there is no conflict in his mind between his traditional African spirituality and another faith. endobj Some ancestors may even be reincarnated to replenish the lineage. Mission Manual Pages Section A Biblical Basis of Mission 1 20, E-journal of Religious and Theological Studies, TITLE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SALVATION IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY: TOWARDS DEVELOPING AN EVANGELISTIC MODEL IN SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TUENSANG DISTRICT CHAPTER ONE, Baptism and Original Sin in the Early Church : contributions of Tertullian, THE UNIQUELY CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW - Ethington Book, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN KUMASI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Department of General Art Studies, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY @BULLET An Introduction to Bible Doctrine @BULLET, Monotheism in the Qur'an and in the New Testament: Comparative Theological Explorations of the Role of Prophets and the Covenants. The numerous traditional African religions have in common the notion of a creator god, who made the world and then withdrew, remaining remote from the concerns of human life. L_}mB)b7h; uZ4 QI,^ID-*Rj" xx>@9lCQr [GE1Hz:Aj3>^5T-FPD5|. Updates? Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one. They believe that Obatala helped Olurun in creating theworld and everything in it. For the full article, see, New religions, independent churches, and prophetic movements, https://www.britannica.com/summary/African-religions. These could be caves, forests,mountains and so on. 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. Villepastour, Amanda 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.. ), Heritage of Faith: a history of Christianity in Nigeria, The carpenter's revolt: youth, violence and the reinvention of culture in Nigeria, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi and corporate agency, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: crusades, jihads and modernity, False Prophets: the clash of civilizations and the global war on terror, Christianity, Modernity and Development in Africa, Social mobilization and collective violence: vigilantes and militias in the lowlands of Plateau State, Central Nigeria, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: the Tablighi Jamaat, Cambridge University Press for the International African Institute, Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria: a study of the Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition, Pentecostalism, Islam and culture: new religious movements in West Africa, Christianity and Social Change in Africa: essays in honor of J. D. Y. Peel, The search for security in Northern Nigeria, Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, Political Spiritualities: the Pentecostal revolution in Nigeria, Sects and Social Disorder: Muslim identities and conflict in Northern Nigeria, Ethnic vigilantes and the state: the Odua People's Congress in south-western Nigeria, Pentecostal presidency? 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. This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. However, to them, the entire universe is filled with spirit such as trees, rocks, and rivers. Mbiti emphasizes that Africans view the universe religiously. He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. The data also will include a survey he conducted in 1999 of 1201 participants across Ghana concerning the belief in the traditional spirit-world. This includes five countries (Cameroon, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Senegal) where more than half the population uses traditional healers. Omissions? This bitter conflict has led to wanton destruction of lives and property, and this has become a source of great worry to the writers. 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. Furthermore, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice that totally pleased God and there is no need for any other. ), In addition to expressing high levels of belief in the protective power of sacrificial offerings and sacred objects, upwards of one-in-five people in every country say they believe in the evil eye, or the ability of certain people to cast malevolent curses or spells. Differences between Christianity and traditional African beliefs and customs (Exodus 20:3-5,Hebrews 10:8-10) 1. In lieu of these traditional African ways of defining oneself, Christianity and Islam are gradually creating a social identity in Africa that cuts across these indigenous African religious and social identities. The rapid growth of many religions in Africa and the revival of AIR in . ^xH&M'YZ7EDi%qN^K For instance, in a few years time, I pray that I will be participating in an age-grade festival for men around 70 years of age called Ero in my native Nigerian community in Ute, in Ondo state. In the end, I believe that Africans can make room for a plurality of religious points of view without one religious point of view excluding or compromising the other. Priests undergo vigorous training in the arts of medicine, divination and other related disciplines and are, therefore, consulted on a more regular basis by the public. Traditional African religious influences on the church and the Bible It is worth noting that Cameroonians ferociously resisted foreign religions in the 18th century to maintain their traditional religions when Christianity entered Cameroon (Betoto, 2012). Islam has experienced a similar rapid growth. 3 0 obj Thus, everythingis not completely unpredictable and chaotic because of this order. This is called a tithe. One of Jacob Oluponas earliest memories in Massachusetts is of nearly freezing in his apartment as a graduate student at Boston University during the great snowstorm of 1978. %PDF-1.5 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. They are thus moral agents. It is the ancestors, however, the custodians of tradition, who determine the way these agents act, and it is tradition that supplies the moral code and indicates what the people must do to live ethically. African traditions carry out their role as ethical guides in many ways, including myths and rituals. endobj 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. OLUPONA: The role of ancestors in the African cosmology has always been significant. All rights reserved. Traditional Africans worshipped in shrines. When one becomes a Christian he/she is baptised. When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. 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. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. When Christians are sickthey do not go to magicians or traditional healers. 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. 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. 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. The religious traditions and beliefs of the African peoples have enough differences to merit a study of each in its own right. 4 0 obj Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. The Church is the Christian family, in which all are accompanied to one another through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ. Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. I also celebrate and honor the kings festivals and ceremonies in my hometown and other places where I live and do research. This order, according to Mbiti, is knowable to humans, by nature. And do research advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to God. Differences to merit a study of each in its own right significant research on religions. 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