Many economic forecasts predict the rapid growth in the African Market. /* Must be below squarespace-headers */(function(){var e='ontouchstart'in window||navigator.msMaxTouchPoints;var t=document.documentElement;if(!e&&t){t.className=t.className.replace(/touch-styles/,'')}})(), Bakongomasks from the Kongo Central Photo: Wikipedia. African traditional religion, and that researcher a should "bracket" their faith and prejudicethey might have about Africa and its people. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Rather, institutional religion continues to grow in relevance and in the national imagination, whether its invocations are part of conversations concerning nation building, Maitatsine and Boko Haram violence, the secularism debate, the Sharia debate, the question of Islamic banking, or the role of the Organization of Islamic Conference. Especially if you have never been to Africa. Ceremonies of naming, rites of passage, death, and other calendrical rites embody, enact, and reinforce the sacred values communicated in myths. These oral sources are intricately interwoven into arts, political and social structure, and material culture. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL Whatever it is, the assumption that Africa is lacking innovation is laughable. Little wonder John Mbiti, a famous African theologian said, Wherever the African is, there is his religion. All rights reserved. . Since growth and innovation come as a pair, it is impossible to say that African countries are growing without being innovative. The orthodox Easternize it. Your email address will not be published. His many publications include African Religions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014); City of 201 Gods: Il-If in Time, Space, and the Imagination (University of California Press, 2011); and Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals (Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991), which has become a model for ethnographic research among Yoruba-speaking communities. History text fails to capture the depth of pre-colonial African Civilization. Indigenous traditions continue to define the African personality. Required fields are marked *, Hello my question is how can I find a list of African countries that offers citizenship. d. politics, everyday life. Each transition has a function within the society. In my work, I consider civil religion in Nigeria as a central galvanizing feature that brings together different aspects of religious beingness under the banner of sacred kingship. 3. And why should our work in critical theory not begin from indigenous hermeneutics before we invoke Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, or Jrgen Habermas as platforms for interpreting our own worldview and society? Many people have bought into the narrative of African traditional religious beliefs as something untrue and based on delusions, but they have also forgotten that all religions have the same thing in common. According to theologian Tony Evans, W. E. B. The African religion was condemned by the Early European scholars, travelers, investigators and missionaries. .p-summary {display: none !important} For instance, the Asante people of Ghana see twins as sacred beings. All over the continent, cosmological myths describe a complicated process, whether the universe evolves from preexisting objects or from Gods mere thought or speech. Most of these aids go into building infrastructures like schools and hospitals. those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts pre sented by Eurocent . Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. It argues that the best interpretation of the Constitution requires laws that address cross-cutting issues of recognition and redistribution relating to religion/culture and gender, and that the best . As with myths the world over, African mythology includes multiple, often contradictory, versions of the same event. Header Photo:Traditional African Necklace Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Copyright 2016-2022, The Interfaith Observer | Site by FaithlabTIO is part of the Religica Theolab inside the Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement (CEIE) at Seattle University, Donna Bollinger Tapped to Lead Religions for Peace-USA, Interfaith Themes in Sub-Saharan African Tales (for Kids), Interreligious Literacy and Why It Matters, Religious Literacy & the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Thou Shalt Not Hate: The Role of Religious Actors in Addressing Hate Speech, When Wiccans & Evangelical Christians Become Friends, The Interfaith Rainforest Initiative: A Case Study of Religious Literacy, The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng (and what Ive learned from them), Reimagining Interfaith: Taking Our Lead from Kids. This misconception has, in some scholars, matured into prejudice and resilient skepticism about the African's ability to grasp the concept of God. Benin Is Getting Back 26 Of Its Looted Artifacts from The Colonial Era. Female circumcision is a hotly contested practice condemned by many global organizations and lumped together under the category of female genital mutilation. Few have much clarity or knowledge on what is actually involved. More so, myths encode the traditional settings of the African and their belief system. Please confirm you want to block this member. In the primordial era, various forms of ethnic indigenous religions spread across the African continent, providing cohesive foundations of nations, peoples, and religious worldviews. Gradually, many Africans began to buy the narrative. The majority of Africans are hardworking and honest people. There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. Thus, I have argued that religion should be examined not only as a sacred phenomenon, but also as a cultural and human reality, all the while remembering the importance of integrating the sociopolitical dimensions of religiosity into any examination of an African state. African leaders are also investing heavily in diversifying the economy. Advocating for civil religion in a religiously pluralistic society does not require the erasure of conventional religious traditions. Such an approach should endeavor to provide not only an awareness of sociocultural contexts but also to narrate the historical dimensions of these traditions. What is fascinating about this odu (Ifa text) is that it supports a key and cardinal principle of Ifa traditionthat we seek counsel first, before we perform divination (Imoram la nda ki a to da Ifa). With exception of those who take history classes, the majority of young Africans will fail to elaborately tell the story of their origin. Human spirits represent people who have died, usually ancestors, in the recent or distant past.5 Third, the world of the ancestors occupies a large part of African cosmology. Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary . Kofi Johnson Fayetteville State University kjohnson@uncfsu.edu. Theres a globally shared perspective of Africa being full of diseases. Published. Religion creates a significant part of African life. It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. Connecting With Your Ancestors (African Spirituality Beliefs and Practices) Monique Joiner Siedlak. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade led to the growth of African-inspired traditions in the Americas such as Candombl in Brazil, Santera in Cuba, or Vodun in Hati. Mursi girl in Ethiopia. It should be noted that any attempt to generalize about the nature of "African religions" risks wrongly implying that there is homogeneity among all African cultures. However, African traditional religion is resilient which explains its continued existence after so many years. For one thing, a sizable number of African myths deal with events considered to have actually happened as narrated by the people themselves or as reformulated into symbolic expressions of historical events. They believe in One approach is to outline, in a systematic way, the essential features of these traditions without paying much attention to whether or not the traditions fit into the pattern of religions already mapped out by Western theologians and historians, who use Western religious traditions as the standard by which to measure religions in other parts of the world. Voodoo, however, is a dynamic religion with no standardized dogma. One of these errors is description of African Religion as African traditional religion' which connote a derogatory epithets: paganism, idolatry, primitive religion, animism, fetishism polytheism, etc (Omoregbe, 1993). African dance occupies central place in cultures throughout the African continent, embodying energy and a graceful beauty flowing with rhythm. The myths held by the west about Africa are mostly founded on misinformation. While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. European theorists are important, and we need to know and understand them to engage in serious global cultural dialogue, but this does not mean that we should discard our traditions as noninterpretive traditions limited merely to ethnographic illustrations. Please note: To understand Africans, one must understand the African religion. It is a well-known fact that religion continues to play a central and vital role in the lives of African people. Ifa defines Yoruba humanity, providing responses to critical issues of its communities. For Ivy Akumu '15, it sparked an interest in the history of Christianity and, by extension, of other religions. Slowly, they projected ATR as barbaric and dehumanizing. The African religious worldview is primarily indigenous, although Islam and Christianity continuously respond to its viability and strength through their transitive approaches, their theologies, and their knowledge systems. The unending political banditry and fraudulent activities by some individuals are the foundation of this stereotype. African identity and culture are preserved in African Traditional Religion. Many foreigners who come to Africa become fascinated by ancestral spirits and spirits in general, as if the mystique of African religions is the only aspect of African spirituality that can hold scholarly interest.4 There are several common features of African indigenous religions that suggest similar origins and allow African religions to be treated as a single religious tradition, just as Christianity and Islam are. This was amazingly written. Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. They certainly represent interpretive traditions, and, when carefully studied, they form a solid foundation for theoretical frameworks used to study and decode these religions in our scholarship. The ability of the Black community to call on the spirits and ways of its ancestors is crucial to its continu Religion occupies a reasonable space in the life of the traditional African/Igbo people. Fact: One-third of Moroccans and one-quarter of Algerians do not speak Arabic as their first language. inadequacies, objections and misconceptions, the practice has come to stay. African religions do not rely on a single individual to be a religious leader, but rather depend on an entire community to make the religion work. They often dictate when the community honors a particular divinity or observes particular taboos. As in the Muslim pilgrimage, it is a solemn journey to the hilltop. Elders, priests, and priestesses have served as guardians of the sacred traditions. The much-cited dictum by the doyen of African religious studies, the recently deceased John Mbiti, that Africans are notoriously religious still holds true (though I prefer to use the word deeply).1 While, officially, statistics suggest that African Christians and Muslims constitute about 80 percent of the total population, and African indigenous religion constitutes about 20 percent, these statistics do not reflect the truth of the African situation. They are less concerned with doctrines and much more so with rituals . The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. Post-colonial Africa is yet to be completely free from the mental slavery and stereotype created by the colonial masters. In my research into Ifa narratives, I showed how, in the Ifa worldview, a traditional banking system was created and made possible when Aje, a Yoruba goddess of wealth, visited Orunmila, god of divination, to seek tips on how to keep robbers from stealing her spurious wealth, for which the added task of securing it was becoming quite burdensome. The story of Mary Slessor and the killing of twins is popular. So it is the responsibility of the religious leaders in these . In the case of the Yoruba kings and their people, sacred kingship formed a sacred canopy that sheltered the followers of each of the three major traditionsIslam, Christianity, and African traditional religionforging bonds of community identity among followers of the different traditions. Religions of the African diaspora are of particular note and importance to the comparative study of African religions because of their resilience and the characteristic formations leading to their performance and expression. This is based on misconceptions that these religions are antithetical to modernity. Each has a life force but no concrete physical form. Corrupt government officials also capitalize on the generosity of the westerners to the point of looking like a panhandler. Ifa rejects the religious extremism of certain forms of radical Islam making life unbearable in todays world. When Christianity and Western civilization came and interacted with African culture and religion, misconception of beliefs, values, and terms developed. John Mbiti divides spirit beings into two types, nature spirits and human spirits. However, the Efik people of Calabar were not the only ones who believed twin children were an abomination. John Mbiti in his book African Religion and Philosophy, argued that African Religion deserves the same respect as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. 11. During the era of Western religious and cultural encounters in Yorubaland, some children were named Oguntoyibo, signifying Ogun (god of war and iron) is as powerful as the European god. Some children received names such as Ifatoyinbo, Ifa is as powerful as the white mans god. Such names and concepts illustrate the force and creative resistance of indigenous thought and its ability to engage Western modernity in rigorous debate. Therefore for these people, twins were treasures. This is the popular assumption amongst many African theologians of which Maluleke (1994) is one example. Intentional or not, this interpretation creates a distorted and misconstrued view of Africans by the rest of the world. Every tribe and culture have their beliefs and way of life. Ritual practices are central to the performance of African religion. This lack of knowledge as well as understanding of essentials has led to burgeoning of myths on African . Just as rituals are an expression of this . Gradually, there was a shift from ATR to Christianity. For African-American parents, transmitting an awareness of cultural values and norms . Correcting Misconceptions About African Traditional Religions. A porous border exists between the human realm and the sky, which belongs to the gods. Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony;. Ironically, this pivotal source of knowledge and spiritual edificethat modern-day Yoruba reject as constituting paganismis the cornerstone of global Orisa traditions in Brazil, Cuba, and the Caribbean. Here Is What You Have To Know. Myth 3: Africa Is Lacking Innovation. African Traditional Religion: A Definition (1973), Omosade Awolalu in Yoruba Belief and Sacrificial Rites and John Mbiti in The Concept of God in Africa (1970) are a few examples of postcolonial scholars of religion who have resisted and denounced colonial idea that Africans do not know God. When I was in Israel a few years ago, I stayed in a modest bed-and-breakfast inn near the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 53 offers from $9.56. In my view, these common misconceptions are due to ill representation of the African culture. A frica has 54 countries and more than a billion people. First, there is a supreme being who created the universe and every living and nonliving thing to be found within the universe. Her growing fascination led to an Emerson Foundation-funded research project this summer, titled "Demystifying African Religion." The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. Despite conversion to Islam or to Christianity, Africans continue to accommodate an indigenous worldview that occupies a vital space in the African consciousness. Most are watered-down versions of what was truly a thriving civilization. Religion also encompasses the human, cultural dimensions within faith traditions, such as how human agency shapes, influences, and complicates religious control. It goes a long way to show that information is power and the way a story is told matters a lot. . 5.3.2 Intolerance and misconceptions about African traditional religion and Culture As already alluded, the stories told in Europe about Africa, the notion of racial and cultural superiority, and the notion of salvation, led to the western missionaries having a negative attitude toward African traditional religion and culture. A 1685 law, for instance, prohibited the practice of African religions, and required all masters to Christianize their slaves within eight days of their arrival in Haiti. As spirits, the ancestors are more powerful than living humans, and they continue to play a role in community affairs after their deaths, acting as intermediaries between God and those still living.6 Finally, I would add that Africans live their faith rather than compartmentalize it into something to be practiced on certain days or in particular places. On the continent early modernizers assumed that African religion was part of the problem of the antimodernity project and that uprooting African indigenous religion would auger well for the modern African state. Through their mixing, a new kind of religion emerged, forming the basis for what we have come to know as African diaspora religion. Africans are eager to learn new skills and embrace new technologies. Traditional African religion has common themes such as a Creator or High God, positive ancestor influences as well as tricksters, and an afterlife with spirit worlds. The battle between the African traditional religion and western civilization has been raging on for years. The African roots of Voodoo may stretch back over 6000 years, making it one of the world's oldest ancestral traditions. 2,269. This is far from the truth. Will OAthers Follow Suit? In the lived experiences of the people, there has been much borrowing and interchange, particularly in those places that have a history of peaceful coexistence among diverse religious traditions, as is so among the Yoruba. African American women are turning more and more to goddess religions and Orisa practices, as they find African religion offering them greater religious autonomy than other Western religions. In one particular odu of Ifa, Ifa informs us and, correctly so, that the most cardinal event of the hajj is the climbing of Mount Arafat (Oke Arafa). One of my favorite Ifa narratives acknowledges to Yoruba Muslims that climbing Mount Arafat was the most significant act of the hajj. However, the missionaries of the two foreign religions succeeded in converting some African people to the new religions. . When he heard that I came from Nigeria, he wanted to display his knowledge of Ocha tradition as a devotee of Oxhosi, God of Thunder in Afro-Brazilian heritage. All Religions has truth hidden in them for those who objectively seek them through the path of the religion. The terms 'traditional' and 'religion' (in its singular form) have each been targets of criticism. Slavery and World History. The more modern incarnation of this ancient African religionVoodooemerged as a unique blend of Catholic and African magical and religious rites. To understand the social, cultural context of pregnancy, childbirth and subsequent maternal and child care and to use this information for . African Cosmology. One could argue that colonization began with mental slavery. He clarifies that there is a close relationship between all things with one reality, and no distinction between physical and spiritual, adding that meaning in life is derived from unity. This statement isnt true. 3. They provide the orientation for the human life journey by defining the rites of passage from life to death. Because it enables us to theorize questions of syncretism and hybridization and, more importantly, raises the issue of why African religion is flowering and spreading in the Americas, especially in the United States, while it is declining in Africaa phenomenon that we need to understand. c. medicine men and women. My earlier scholarship was propelled by the insight that the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship are what define Yoruba civil religion and, indeed, the center of Yoruba identity.15 Sociologist Robert Bellah understands civil religion as the sacred principle and central ethic that unites a people, without which societies cannot function.16 Civil religion incorporates common myths, history, values, and symbols that relate to a societys sense of collective identity. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. However, the so-called white wedding is Western culture. Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of African Religious Traditions at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. the belief that natural objects and natural phenomenon possess souls or spiritual beings. My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. Some biblical cosmological narratives have parallels in African cosmogony, for example, when the Supreme Being summons the hosts of heaven and declares to them, Come let us make man in our own image. This same script appears in the creation of the Yoruba world, when Olodumare designates to the Orisa (deities), the job of creating the universe. They are known as upstanding citizens and have been entrusted with sensitive positions in society. The story is the same in the political sphere. .entry-morefrom {display: none !important} As scholars of the comparative study of religions in Africa, we must begin to rethink the study of African religion in the twenty-first century in order to avoid the continuous mis-assessment of the resilience of indigenous traditions. Women are revered in African traditions as essential to the cosmic balance of the world. The diviner, therefore, is also a counselor, psychologist, medicine man or woman, and the spiritual guardian of villages and towns. Africa is the second-largest continent in the world. One reason that might account for the gap in African history is the unavailability of any written document. When I told him I am a twin (Ibeji) in Yoruba traditionand in principle a sacred being myselfhe almost fell on the floor to pay homage! African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. This may not be as advanced as the western world, but its definitely not as bad as the media present it. 12. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Giving opportunity to stereotypes like Africa are poor and Africa is corrupt. However, since Africans are known for their excellent craftsmanship, these artifacts do tell the story of the ancient African empires. The traditional religions of Africa are human in the deepest sense, because they focus on people and their everyday problems. However, African indigenous religion has not only succeeded in domesticating Islam and Christianity; in many instances, it has absorbed aspects of these two other traditions into its cosmology and narrative accounts and practices. Mary Slessor is accredited to ending this savage act in ancient Calabar, Nigeria. with Ibramic faiths tends to deprive the African Traditional Religion its true status as an independent religion . South Africa, as a member state of the World Health Organisation, has been set on the path of institutionalising African traditional medicine. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. These countries are often very hot. The term "African Traditional Religion" is used in two complementary senses. Take for instance the story of poverty in Africa. Check Out Marriage Customs From 10 African Tribes, 15 Tribes With Surprising Bridal Traditions In Africa, 12 Surprising African Countries That Allow Dual Citizenship By Marriage, Can Foreigners Buy Land In Ghana? Thus, many practitioners of African religion, particularly in the shrines of goddesses, are women, indicating the parity with which African religion treats gender and gender-related issues. The west, by trying to learn more about the African tradition will avoid the bias and ignorance of being misinformed. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device.