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. 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). In digging up facts I found that, while many Africans say that homosexuality is un-African, African culture is no stranger to homosexual behaviours and acts. To understand the social, cultural context of pregnancy, childbirth and subsequent maternal and child care and to use this information for . Manage Settings Several African countries have good health care systems. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. However, the missionaries of the two foreign religions succeeded in converting some African people to the new religions. Little wonder John Mbiti, a famous African theologian said, Wherever the African is, there is his religion. This statement isnt true. African identity and culture are preserved in African Traditional Religion. Understanding African Traditional Religion. Religions such as Candombl, Vodun, Santeria, and the Caribbean and Orisa tradition historically came about from African transactions with the new world and the old Euro-Christian worldview. This article analyses the legal processes of recognising customary and religious (Muslim) marriages in South Africa's constitutional democracy. When Christianity and Western civilization came and interacted with African culture and religion, misconception of beliefs, values, and terms developed. This was amazingly written. Corrupt government officials also capitalize on the generosity of the westerners to the point of looking like a panhandler. 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. In his interview with the New York Times, the theologian said, The days are over when we will be carbon copies of European Christians, Europe and America westernized Christianity. 10. These oral sources are intricately interwoven into arts, political and social structure, and material culture. African Religion is not Ancestor Worship. 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. African traditional religion, and that researcher a should "bracket" their faith and prejudicethey might have about Africa and its people. These are also stories about how the world was put into place by a divine power, usually a supreme god, but in collaboration with other lesser supernatural beings or deities, who act on his behalf or aid in the creative process.11 The mechanisms and techniques of creation vary from story to story and from one tradition to another. those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts pre sented by Eurocent . Hence to call African traditional religion ancestral worship would cause problems in the study of ATR. Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. In my view, these common misconceptions are due to ill representation of the African culture. Colonization may seem to be over but for African traditional religion, it is not. Earlier researchers and missionaries portrayed them often as primitive and barbaric and ridiculed them [I give many examples in my book: White Fathers in Colonial Central Africa - a Critical Examination of V.Y. 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. What is the implication of indigenous hermeneutics for scholars today? When I was in Israel a few years ago, I stayed in a modest bed-and-breakfast inn near the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Required fields are marked *, Hello my question is how can I find a list of African countries that offers citizenship. African countries are also top the list of the 2021 WHO health care index. It is practiced around the world but there is no accurate count of how many people are Voodooists. All over the continent, cosmological myths describe a complicated process, whether the universe evolves from preexisting objects or from Gods mere thought or speech. So, why was it the negative stories about killing of twins that were promoted? It is incorrect to assume that conversion to Islam or to Christianity dealt a deathblow to indigenous traditions. In this way, the visible and invisible are in tandem, leading practitioners to speak about all objects, whether animate or inanimate, as potentially sacred on some level. Whether these words carry weight or simply make for a good quote, the fact remains that Africans are unique. Not the one we saw, very clear and good article easy to understand. To each his own. Theres a globally shared perspective of Africa being full of diseases. Understanding the contours of traditions as they are today consists of picturing both what they are and what they can be against the backdrop of what they once were. The colonial masters brought with them a new religion which they believe to be superior to African traditional religion. For Ivy Akumu '15, it sparked an interest in the history of Christianity and, by extension, of other religions. This article is an edited version of remarks he delivered for the annual Surjit Singh Lecture in Comparative Religious Thought and Culture at the Graduate Theological Union on April28, 2020. Mursi girl in Ethiopia. There is a general misconception that the entire people of North Africa speak Arabic. In fact, the continent is the most diverse in the world. They believe in Her growing fascination led to an Emerson Foundation-funded research project this summer, titled "Demystifying African Religion." The traditional religions of Africa are human in the deepest sense, because they focus on people and their everyday problems. Africans who follow a traditional religion rely on no scriptures, canonical texts, or holy books to guide them. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . Just as Muslim traders and sojourners introduced new world religions to North and West Africa, Western traders and missionaries introduced new world religions to the continent. Using the qualitative historical research . Every tribe and culture have their beliefs and way of life. During the colonial era, most of these traditional believes became a target of the colonial religion. Courtesy Of Stevenson, Amsterdam/Cape Town/Johannesburg. 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. The reason for this is quite simply the misunderstanding of the relevance and foundation of the African tradition. Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete. Compared to most patriarchal traditions, where womens participation and roles are curtailed, African religions attitude toward gender inclusion is unique. These leaders through greed and corruption ruin the image of their countries. 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Even the word religion, used in reference to these traditions, is in itself problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from other aspects of ones culture, society, and environment. While scholars have often argued that African indigenous accounts of creation were ex nihilo (created out of nothing), as the biblical account of creation is often portrayed,12 African cosmological narratives generally indicate that there is never one pattern governing how creation happens. The majority of Africans are hardworking and honest people. John Mbiti, chap. Myth #2. As in the Muslim pilgrimage, it is a solemn journey to the hilltop. Majority of countries on the continent are . Ritual enables supernatural beings to bless individuals and the community with sustenance, prosperity, and fecundity.14 Rites of passage, such as initiation ceremonies, are rituals marking personal transitions recognized and celebrated by the community. Voodoo, however, is a dynamic religion with no standardized dogma. This lack of knowledge as well as understanding of essentials has led to burgeoning of myths on African . Marriage customs in Africa vary from one tribe to another. See Luc De Heusch, What Shall We Do with the Drunken King?,. For many Africans, religion is a way of life that can never be separated from the public sphere, but instead informs everything in traditional African society, including politics, art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya rank among the top countries with the best health care system in Africa. Your email address will not be published. African traditional religion refers to the indigenousor autochthonousreligions of the African people. No. The formation of African diasporic religions in the crucible of forced and voluntary migrations of Africans from the continent from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries led to the intermingling of African religions with Christianity and local cultures of the Transatlantic to form novel religious expressions. I did ancestry and, This is the genuine list of best African president. A primary goal of parenting is to transmit values, beliefs and ideas around lifestyles based on cultural knowledge of the adult tasks and competencies needed for appropriate functioning in society (Gershoff, 2002; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chon & Buriel, 1990). Thus, it is easy to see why it seems that Africa needs help. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. Since growth and innovation come as a pair, it is impossible to say that African countries are growing without being innovative. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Perhaps, it was a deliberate attempt to make Africans feel inferior about themselves. My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. Intentional or not, this interpretation creates a distorted and misconstrued view of Africans by the rest of the world. This action will also remove this member from your connections and send a report to the site admin. African people do not worship their deceased relatives or ancestors. The stoning of the devil in the Kaba in Mecca was a disguise for rejecting the local Esu, the Yoruba god of fate and messenger of the gods. . Myths reveal critical events and episodesinvolving superhuman entities, gods, spirits, ancestorsthat are of profound and transcendent significance to the African people who espouse them. Africa is not homogenous. This is the popular assumption amongst many African theologians of which Maluleke (1994) is one example. Many sources define African worship as ancestral worship which is wrong. 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. Yes, poverty is an issue in Africa. Another generalization about Africa is that they are all corrupt. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. It all depends on the time of the year. Similarly, indigenous religion, worldviews, and rituals such as rites of passage and other religious performances are permeated by other religions, culture, and society in general. Slavery and World History. To the outside world, however, far too much of . The orthodox Easternize it. As a lived religion, African tradition deploys through its ritual processesparticularly rites of passage, calendrical rituals, and divinatory practicestangible material and nonmaterial phenomena to regulate life events and occurrences, in order to ensure communal well-being. Esu was represented as a stone mound in the front yard of ancient Yoruba compounds. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Introduction. Thank you for this interesting essay on African religion. One of the most ridiculous myths about it is that homosexuality did not exist in the continent until white men imported it. Each ceremony denotes passage from one social status to another and is an opportunity to celebrate the initiates on their journey. There are abundant natural resources scattered across the 54 countries of Africa. Just as rituals are an expression of this . Symbolic and mythic narratives may exist side by side with narratives of legends in history that bear similar characteristics with motifs and events of creation or coming to birth. This misconception has, in some scholars, matured into prejudice and resilient skepticism about the African's ability to grasp the concept of God. However, in the new world, we are seeing that the stone that the builders had rejected has become the cornerstone and central pillar: for example, Santeria was central to Cuban state making, and in Brazil only recently has Pentecostalism become responsible for the violence against Candombl devotees. . those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts presented by Eurocentric scholars. Our parting a week later was hard for him! 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. So, while Africans easily adopt Western traditions, will the West also be willing to adopt African traditions? 9 years ago. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, Many traditional African religions are based on guiding principles that are unfathomable to foreigners, more specifically those with interests such as historians and scholars. As Jaco Beyers puts it, the African understanding of religion is an understanding of the connectedness of all things. The reason is partly that they want a time when, Your email address will not be published. Morocco and Algeria are typical examples of this misconception. They counteracted various derogatory names given to AIR. It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. It is a well-known fact that religion continues to play a central and vital role in the lives of African people. God is the first Initiator of a people's way of Life, its tradition. A proper ongoing study of Ifa in West Africa would enable us to understand how one groupthe Yoruba of West Africaencounters transcendence and the sacred in practicing their tradition in ways radically different from Western constructions of religion. One of the more fascinating conversations that has emerged in the debate about African indigenous traditions is about the central role of women as bearers and transmitters of the traditions, and also the negotiation of gender dynamics. Photo: Pinterest. Furthermore the issue of whether ATR should be called in singular or plural is another issue causing problems in the study of african tradional religion. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL In fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens: The Divine Feminine in the African Religious Traditions. Your email address will not be published. Kofi Johnson Fayetteville State University kjohnson@uncfsu.edu. In African traditional religions guidance is provided through myths, which are handed down orally. These traditions have been passed from one generation to the next. The most difficult task I face in characterizing African indigenous spiritual traditions is accounting for their diversity and complexity. They include assumptions, misconceptions, traditional or religious beliefs and beliefs about the . Robert N. Bellah, Civil Religion in America,, Jacob K. Olupona, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival and Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review),. Consequently, despite all of Christianity and Islams claims to dominance and their propagandist machinery in demonizing indigenous religion, African religion still provides significant meaning to African existence in many ways. Africa is given the image of a place that is hot and sunny all year round. The area of study is Buganda in Uganda. 7. 11. While those who identify as practitioners of traditional African religions are often in the minority, many who identify as Muslims or Christians are involved in traditional religions to one degree or another. Ifas religious thought systemfriendlier to Islam than to Christianitynot only predates Islam but also engages Islam in serious conversation. Whether it is being wrongly labelled voodoo, juju or witchcraft, indigenous African faith systems tend to be associated with darkness, animal and human sacrifices, violence and general backwardness. Yet in the scholarship on the history of religions, indigenous African religions were never considered a substantive part of the worlds religious traditions, because they failed to fulfill certain criteria defined by axial age civilization. Privileged European scholars denied the agency of African religions and singled outand thereby controlledAfrican identity. John Mbiti divides spirit beings into two types, nature spirits and human spirits. On the other hand, we now know from research and archival sources that, by their very nature, sources and records of missionaries, colonial administrators, and indigenous elites, which were preserved by colonial administrations, were equally susceptible to distortion and perforation, having been written from the angle of an invented modernity that the colonizer considered superior to the worldviews of local peoples. Africa is the second-largest continent in the world. History text fails to capture the depth of pre-colonial African Civilization. This is based on misconceptions that these religions are antithetical to . Hence, the aforementioned rituals are the entry point not only for an understanding of African tradition and religions but also for the visible manifestations and essence of African religious traditions. Most of these aids go into building infrastructures like schools and hospitals. African traditional religion (ATRs) and spirituality have always been surrounded by negativity. An article by BBC explains why Nigeria is a global leader in the Bitcoin trade. Inasmuch as androcentric authority is more prominent within social structures and systems and patriarchy is more pronounced in the social order, women are considered the cornerstone of the African family system.19 The African mother is a vibrant life force, central to African religious understandings of the interrelatedness between the human and the divine, as she embodies the production and sustaining of life. Women play a key role in the practice of these traditions, and the internal gender relations and dynamics are very profound. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. Religion also encompasses the human, cultural dimensions within faith traditions, such as how human agency shapes, influences, and complicates religious control. However, this was never a generally accepted idea. Robert Mugabe . African traditional religions are structured very differently from Western religions in that there is relatively little formal structure. Another false impression often given about African religions is that women do not play any central or leadership roles in the performance of African religious traditions. The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. Nature spirits are associated with objects seen in nature, such as mountains, the sun, or trees, or natural forces such as wind and rain. 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. Gradually, many Africans began to buy the narrative. Unlike the Christian community, recited stories of creation are not performed by a single God, who ordered, by fiat, the creation of the universe with mere spoken words. African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Furthermore, many in places like the US and the UK have converted to various traditional African religions, and the importance of the diaspora for these religions is growing rapidly. 3. 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