My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. Thus, it is easy to see why it seems that Africa needs help. Fact: Slavery is older than the first human records. Representation matters, and as scholars we have a responsibility to advocate for religions in their contexts. Continue with Recommended Cookies. Indigenous traditions continue to define the African personality. The expression is also used almost as a technical term for a particular reading of such beliefs and practices, one that purports . 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. Catholic moral theologian Laurenti Magesa argues that, unlike clothes, which one can wear and take off, for Africans, religion is like skin that cannot be so easily abandoned.7 Mbiti also captures this unique aspect in the following passage: Because traditional religions permeate all the departments of life, there is no formal distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the religious and non-religious, between the spiritual and the material areas of life. African religions have also become a major attraction for those in the diaspora who travel to Africa on pilgrimages because of the global reach of these traditions. To understand Africans, one must understand the African religion. 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. 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. Misconception 1: "Entire North Africa natively speaks Arabic.". Please confirm you want to block this member. Today, several myths are mixed with facts in describing African traditional religion. Please note: These traditions are not religious principles, but a cultural identity that is passed on through stories, myths and tales. According to theologian Tony Evans, W. E. B. That is the ultimate and absolute being who originated and gives meaning to all existence.9 III. Portia Zvavahera, His Presence, 2013, oil-based printing ink on paper. Humans are thus able to maintain constant and symbiotic relations with their ancestors who are understood to be intimately concerned and involved in their descendants everyday affairs. 4. 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. A frica has 54 countries and more than a billion people. 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. 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. 7. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . ao Ajima OM, Ubana EU (2018) The Concept . This is based on misconceptions that these religions are antithetical to modernity. Every tribe and culture have their beliefs and way of life. Among its one billion inhabitants, more than 1,000 languages are spoken, and there is a massive variety of ethnic religions. Understanding African Traditional Religion. A classic example is how the Ifa divination text of the Yoruba provides deep commentary on the practice of Islam by the Yoruba people, such as the hajj tradition. To understand the social, cultural context of pregnancy, childbirth and subsequent maternal and child care and to use this information for . Prior to colonization, there was scarcely any form of writing in the majority of African tribes and cultures. Depending on the kind of religious activity being performed, different religious authorities can be leaders for specific events. . Ritual practices are central to the performance of African religion. With the negative image of the, A lot of people seize the chance of the holiday season to organize their weddings. Her growing fascination led to an Emerson Foundation-funded research project this summer, titled "Demystifying African Religion." Jul 26, 2007 #1. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Required fields are marked *. This is far from the truth. 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). The traditional approach of indigenous African religions to gender is one of complementarity in which a confluenceof male and female forces must operate in harmony. Du Bois argued . But Ifa divination predates Western modernity. One of my favorite Ifa narratives acknowledges to Yoruba Muslims that climbing Mount Arafat was the most significant act of the hajj. While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. I did ancestry and, This is the genuine list of best African president. 2. Just as rituals are an expression of this . Women constitute a sizable number of the devotees of these traditions, just as they do in Islam and Christianity. Intentional or not, this interpretation creates a distorted and misconstrued view of Africans by the rest of the world. As the late African historian Cheikh Anta Diop argued, matriarchy was embedded in the African way of life. This inaccurate assessment of African belief even affects the definition of African religion. Common misconceptions of Africa include the idea that it is behind the rest of the world, lacking in innovative technology. African indigenous religions provide strong linkages between the life of humans and the world of the 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. . It is incorrect to assume that conversion to Islam or to Christianity dealt a deathblow to indigenous traditions. a. newly birthed babies. However, African traditional religion is resilient which explains its continued existence after so many years. That is why they have developed institutions for healing, for commerce, and for the general well-being of their own practitioners and adherents of other religions as well. those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts presented by Eurocentric scholars. In fact, the continent is the most diverse in the world. All Religions has truth hidden in them for those who objectively seek them through the path of the religion. When addressing religion in Africa, scholars often speak of a triple heritage, that is the triple legacy of indigenous religion, Islam, and Christianity that are often found side by side in many African societies. 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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. 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? One could argue that colonization began with mental slavery. Mostly, the temperatures of these zones vary between the extremes (Either very hot or very cold). In African traditional religions guidance is provided through myths, which are handed down orally. Scholarship has since proved, however, that the tenacity of indigenous religion is evident in all spheres of African life. The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. Africa is a Continent Full of Corruption, Poverty and War. African Traditional Religions (ATRs) will be discussed within the context of which it belongs to, the African traditional life (ATL). Why is this important to our understanding of African indigenous religions? Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism. Manage Settings The survey appears to support the prevailing narrative that the most . These one-sided stories or reports are among the major roots of stereotypes and myths about Africa. This is the popular assumption amongst many African theologians of which Maluleke (1994) is one example. 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. 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). . It was just the belief of a few groups of people known as Efik people, the predominant tribe in Calabar. By Jacob K. Olupona. The Hausa man is different from the Igbo man who is also different from the Yoruba man. African people do not worship their deceased relatives or ancestors. In times of crisis they often come to the surface, or people revert to them in secret.8. African traditional religion (ATRs) and spirituality have always been surrounded by negativity. I suggest that, at the conceptual and theoretical levels, we begin to take this interpretive approach seriously. c. medicine men and women. So it is the responsibility of the religious leaders in these . One of the most ridiculous myths about it is that homosexuality did not exist in the continent until white men imported it. 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. There is a general misconception that the entire people of North Africa speak Arabic. The first encounters are fascinating. Because religion is a way of life, it relates to culture and society as they affect the worldview of the African people. Africa is the target of western stereotypes. As oral narratives, myths are passed from one generation to another and represented and reinterpreted by each generation, who then make the events revealed in the myths relevant and meaningful to their present situation.9. The African roots of Voodoo may stretch back over 6000 years, making it one of the world's oldest ancestral traditions. 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;. Countries like Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso that are close to the Sahara desert have the Sahel climate. Therefore, this article will explore African spirituality, traditional religion, culture and the present way of life. Africans engaged Western enlightenment and religious traditions in serious dialogue and conversation, and responded by creating and interpreting their own modernity. Another misbelief about Africa is that all Africans are the same. African Cosmology. The diviner, therefore, is also a counselor, psychologist, medicine man or woman, and the spiritual guardian of villages and towns. These elements are worth exploring and espousing. 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. Corrupt government officials also capitalize on the generosity of the westerners to the point of looking like a panhandler. 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? Not the one we saw, very clear and good article easy to understand. 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. The most difficult task I face in characterizing African indigenous spiritual traditions is accounting for their diversity and complexity. Divinities and ancestors have personalized annual festivals during which devotees and adepts offer sacrificial animals, libations, and favored foods to propitiate them. Responding to this erasure of African indigenous religion as a productive and generative practice, scholars rallied in opposition. 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. 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. The terms 'traditional' and 'religion' (in its singular form) have each been targets of criticism. There are abundant natural resources scattered across the 54 countries of Africa. Most of these aids go into building infrastructures like schools and hospitals. Foreign aid has been helpful to many small African countries that are struggling economically. South Africa, as a member state of the World Health Organisation, has been set on the path of institutionalising African traditional medicine. In summary, it is not every part of Africa that is hot. 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. It is not unusual to see people living below the poverty line in nearly every country on earth. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. 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. Correcting Misconceptions About African Traditional Religions. Majority of countries on the continent are . Second, spirit beings occupy the next tier in the cosmology and constitute a pantheon of deities who often assist the supreme God in performing different functions. These stages characterized European perceptions of human evolution. The absence of centralized and unified cosmologies indicates the multifaceted nature of African religious life and worldviews. Compared to most patriarchal traditions, where womens participation and roles are curtailed, African religions attitude toward gender inclusion is unique. Robert N. Bellah, Civil Religion in America,, Jacob K. Olupona, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival and Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review),. 1. Here Are the Top Ten African Volunteer Programs, 9 Traditional African Music Instruments And Their Origin, 8 Traditional African Sports That Should Be In the Olympics, economic forecasts predict the rapid growth in the African Market, 10 Traditional African Hairstyles And Their Origin. Another crucial aspect to consider in the comparative study of African religions is the reality of the transfer of these religions across the Atlantic through the Middle Passage and transnational migration and cultural exchange. 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. Divination enables us to recognize how indigenous traditions have a foundation upon which knowledge and knowledge production is developed. 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. Religion creates a significant part of African life. Lilith Dorsey. 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. Without relevant knowledge, stereotypes are unavoidable. The term "African Traditional Religion" is used in two complementary senses. All rights reserved. African spirituality more generallyand Nigerian spirituality in particularis shaped by how individuals in their daily existence make sense of their interactions with religious experience. 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. There are female priestesses, diviners, and other figures, and many feminist scholars have drawn from these traditions to advocate for womens rights and the place of the feminine in African societies. 9. African religion supplies knowledge to live by and also a transfer of tradition, worldview, ethical orientation (principles of what is right or wrong), an ontologya way of life. Because of this, rituals were done to prevent the birth of twins which the people believed to be an anomaly. There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. 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. 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. Many centuries ago, Ifa must have envisaged the possibility of Boko Harams Islamic extremist movement ravaging Nigeria today. The problem of Africa isnt wealth but the unequal distribution of wealth. Though many Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, traditional religions still inform the social, economic, and political life in African societies. This may not be as advanced as the western world, but its definitely not as bad as the media present it. Despite the plethora of denominations and sects, African religions continue to be viewed as single entities,3 and their (our) religions are perhaps the least understood facet of African life. Will OAthers Follow Suit? Igbo religion is traditional according to Mbiti (1970), in the sense that it is rooted in their culture.It is received by oral authority by one generation and transmitted by the same process to subsequent generations and, thus, has effect of being widely diffused among its adherents and of deeply coloring their consciousness. Perhaps this is linked to the idea that Africa has an inadequate or substandard health care system. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL 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. Introduction. The scope of the study is 1877-when Christianity was first introduced in Uganda to 1962 when Uganda got her independence; the period when Christian missionaries lost influence together with the colonial rulers. Finally, it suggested that Afrocentric terminologiesis . African Religion is not Ancestor Worship. However, this was never a generally accepted idea. Similarly, although ancestors dwell inside the earth, their activities also interject into human life, which is why they are referred to as the living dead.13 African cosmologies, therefore, portray the universe as a fluid, active, and impressionable space, with agents from each realm bearing the capabilities of traveling from one realm to another at will. Lets take the killing of twins as a case study. Gender dynamics are important in African indigenous religions and in cultural systems, so much so that women goddesses and women-invented rituals are commonplace. have recognized the important ways in which "African" and "religion" are western constructs involving both misconceptions and changing perceptions, especially concerning religion (Ray:2000). Africa is given the image of a place that is hot and sunny all year round. The diversity of Native American religions could fill whole libraries with descriptions of belief, tales of lore, definitions, explanations, and insights into spiritual practices and ceremonies. Reclaim the Ancestral Traditions of African Religion! African leaders are also investing heavily in diversifying the economy. So, while Africans easily adopt Western traditions, will the West also be willing to adopt African traditions? Paperback. Africans combine a belief in the existence of a omnipresent and omnipotent supreme god, with multitudes of subordinate deities. 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