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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. The introduced religions of Islam (in northern Africa) and Christianity (in southern Africa) are now the continents major religions, but traditional religions still play an important role, especially in the interior of sub-Saharan Africa. Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. 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. Christians observe the Lords supper. Because many diseases are believed to have spiritual causes, traditional priests sometimes act as doctors or herbalists. Foreign religions simply dont have that same connection to the African continent. This hierarchy is also evident in human society, where there are chiefs, clan heads, family heads, older siblings, and so on. 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. A belief in ancestors also testifies to the inclusive nature of traditional African spirituality by positing that deceased progenitors still play a role in the lives of their living descendants. He then reflects on five "essential aspects" of. There are untold millions, which are outside the fold who need to come into the saving knowledge of Christ. OLUPONA: No, this type of binary thinking is simplistic. Much of Oluponas work is an attempt to provide a fuller understanding of the complexity and richness of African indigenous thought and practice by viewing it not as a foil or as a useful comparative to better understand Western religions, but as a system of thought and belief that should be valued and understood for its own ideas and contribution to global religions. The award allows Olupona a year of study and research in Germany; he is on leave this year (201516). Second, Africans believe in a moral order given by God, stipulated by the ancestors in the past. Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. GAZETTE: What is the state of indigenous African religions today? God, the ancestors, and the spirits are all moral powers whose actions affect human life in various ways and to various degrees. Traditional Religion as a source of African theology just as Christian theology is. Specifically, by reflecting on the wonder and magnitude of the universe, they came to the conclusion that God must exist: they posited the existence of God to explain the existence and sustenance of the universe. 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. GAZETTE: How do you balance your Christian and indigenous African identity? To achieve its goal, the paper adopts the method of . He contends that although African Traditional Religion generally refers to God as creator and sustainer of the universe, morally good, omniscient, and caring toward humans, yet even where this is held to be true, the high god in Africa is very often regarded as distanced from human affairs. And even when he is considered benign, the high God is morally otiose, having little direct retributive relationship with humankind. In some situations, the high God is cast in unfavorable terms as one who creates and who kills. 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. African spirituality is truly holistic. It is a way of life, and it can never be separated from the public sphere. and They consultedtraditional healers who used various herbs and charms to cure diverse illnesses. They take the communion to remember thedeath and resurrection of Jesus. <>
Just like in Christianity, traditional Africanreligion has organised practices. The spiritual medium is the physical embodiment of the religious retributive order in which Africans know themselves to stand.. 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. Baptismis by being sprinkled on water or being dipped in water. endobj
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. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. They can also be the dead of the tribe, following the order of primogeniture. Traditional Africans had to go to specific sacred placesfor them to worship but Christians can worship God anywhere at any time. Adebanwi, Wale These shrines were built near waterbodies, next to big trees or near other sacred places. These initiation rituals are already not as common in Africa as they were only 50 years ago, yet age-grade initiations have always helped young Africans feel connected to their community and their past. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. 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. All work unless implicitly stated is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 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. 1"7$X9Xyyyb GNpL!9I&mxo0++44cA@5c. 1 0 obj
While some African cosmologies have a clear idea of a supreme being, other cosmologies do not. Furthermore, the issue is whether a strict order of retribution cannot be tolerated if human ambition gets in the way of realizing enduring moral virtue and well-being. Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. The . Thus, everythingis not completely unpredictable and chaotic because of this order. TraditionalAfricans gave offerings but they did not give tithes. This should make it clear why some African intellectuals would question the relevance of Christianity on the continent. Who Should Christians Worship? Journal of Biblical Unitarianism 1:1, 5-33, 2014. Anthony Chiorazzi, who has an M.Phil. Focusing on Luo Muslims in Kenya, Dr Lawrence Oseje looks at the interaction of Islam and traditional Luo practices, especially those around death and burial. The numerous traditional African religions have in common the notion of a creator god, who made the world and then withdrew, remaining remote from the concerns of human life. This is called the Trinity. These included interviews he conducted with pastors, exorcists, traditional priests, so-called witches and delivered witches. When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. O?+dOw\eOoHc_o~
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vFK](S?I.$@\$OC(N#a6oJc!0 sm!$!'TGzmSvw)+Na?1s K{o?!I They are not mutually exclusive. When they pray they maykneel down, bow their heads or lift their hands up. ufF'dXeA^l4a*0(1l HLtA@a2O>bOk)x6*. 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. People may complain to God and the ancestors, but they will never accuse them of any moral wrongdoing. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. Peel, J. D. Y. This supreme . 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. 2 0 obj
A holistic interpretation of the book between Paul and James. This is called the Trinity. 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. :t\.1biti's approach assumes that "Christianity comes to enhance African traditional religions." This implies that there is no tension between the major elements of African Traditional Religions and the major claims of Christianity." 19 Postcolonial, Abstract Interfaith dialogue is commonly used in building peace and understanding among religious groups. The religious traditions and beliefs of the African peoples have enough differences to merit a study of each in its own right. Some scholars have rightly observed that the centre of gravity of Christianity is shifting from the West to the two-thirds world, that is Asia, South America and Africa. OLUPONA: One of the basic reasons is that indigenous African spiritual beliefs are not bound by a written text, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to Mbiti, Africans came to believe in God by reflecting on their experience and through observation of the created universe. Christianity and Traditional African Heritage, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. I am going to use the research reports of Opoky Onyinah , which he carried out among Ghanaian Christians between 1997 and 1999. 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. These gods are generally perceived as intermediaries between the Supreme Being and society. Palmi, Stephan Veneration of departed ancestors is a major characteristic of all traditional religions. In some communities masks were used to representcertain gods or ancestral spirits. |,utv2QdjrqfM7PC)2-|O7,0[i=_a/Om"X`Y2FpXBjsFxCqDd`%*g,-J1e*jjq,tm{w>qAsAqN$D hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. Yet consider that in 1900 most Africans in sub-Saharan Africa practiced a form of indigenous African religions. OLUPONA: Yes, and the pluralistic nature of African-tradition religion is one of the reasons for its success in the diaspora. . For example, followers can seek spiritual direction and relief from healers, medicine men and women, charms [adornments often worn to incur good luck], amulets [adornments often used to ward off evil], and diviners [spiritual advisers]. Whenever. OLUPONA: Indigenous African religions refer to the indigenous or native religious beliefs of the African people before the Christian and Islamic colonization of Africa. 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. Their significance lies in the genealogical positions and the rights and duties which derive from them. Ancestors uphold right conduct by punishing moral violations, demanding respect and attention, and getting angry when not given due respect. 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. Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 595.32 841.92] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S>>
inequality and class divide, dreams and interpretation, names and religious identity. Part one looks briefly at the matter of religion itself. The position I critique in this paper is really a complex of closely overlapping positions, some more theoretically sophisticated or better grounded empirically than others. Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. Differences between Christianity and traditional African beliefs and customs (Exodus 20:3-5,Hebrews 10:8-10) 1. They do not offer any libation. Church Life Journal Since God is seen as the Creator, various aspects of the universe are permeated by the sense of the sacredthe religious mentality affects the way people see the universe. Most African communities offered animals and not humans as sacrifices. Christians practice baptism. The commitment to theory, 2. Below is the article summary. Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. Therefore, the universe has dimensions of order and power as follows: first of all, there is order in the laws of nature. 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. 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. 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. African religions, Indigenous religions of the African continent. Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. The action of the living, for example, can affect the gods or spirits of the departed, while the support of family or tribal ancestors ensures prosperity of the lineage or state. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential. 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. As a resident fellow, Sherman will teach a study group on negotiation and diplomacy this semester. 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. Witchcraft was also feared and witchdoctors were respected as they had power tocurse, make people get sick or end their life. Traditional Africans made images of the Supreme God or other supernatural beingswhich they worshipped. The other question: Stereotype, This essay deals with the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. KEYWORDS: African Culture, Christian God, Deities, Religion, Values. 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. Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. 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. The recipient of many prestigious academic honors and research fellowships, Olupona also received the 20152016 Reimar Lust Award for International and Cultural Exchange, considered one of Germanys most prestigious academic honors. GAZETTE: It sounds like African indigenous religions are dynamic, inclusive, and flexible. The amount of devotees to indigenous practices has dwindled as Islam and Christianity have both spread and gained influence throughout the continent. 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. Christianity is more dominant in the south, while Islam is more dominant in the north. Moreover, the religions developed in the Americas impact Africa in that devotees of the African diaspora have significant influence on practices in Africa. Some of the ideas from Mbitis works are pertinent to our discussion here: Africans believe in a hierarchy of beings, from the ultimate being, God, to lesser ones, divinities, spirits, the living dead, human beings, animals, plants, and inanimate beings. Creates and who kills various herbs and charms to cure diverse illnesses blood on the and! More dominant in the development of this order options will check for or. Of African theology just as Christian theology is near other sacred places priests, so-called and... Is the state of indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at.... Reasons for its success in the past are not rights and duties derive... 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