For myself, I negotiate between my Yoruba and Christian identity by, for example, affirming those aspects of African culture that promote good life and communal human welfare. These differences, I will argue, have significant impact not just on the way people conceive of the moral world or with regard to moral intentions, but also on moral practices. They believe that Obatala helped Olurun in creating theworld and everything in it. This is called the Trinity. 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. 2 0 obj Interrogating identity: Frantz Fanon and the postcolonial prerogative, 3. between African traditional religion and the Christian faith. May the Lord assist us to know the truth and walk in it. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer, By Anthony Chiorazzi Harvard Correspondent. 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. 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. Consequently, traditional Africans have different ideas on what role the ancestors play in the lives of living descendants. 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. Ifa is an indispensable treasure trove of knowledge that cant be duplicated elsewhere; much of its knowledge has been handed down from babalawo [Ifa priest/diviner] to babalawo for centuries. 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. Christian teaching forbids making of any kinds ofimages to represent God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. degree at Harvard Divinity School. Rituals are aimed at maintaining a harmonious relationship with cosmic powers, and many have associated myths that explain their significance. 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. (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. All work unless implicitly stated is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Editorial Statement: This essay is a slightly modified excerpt from the section "Evaluating African Traditional Religion: The Descriptive Task" (98-107) in Fr. Render date: 2023-03-01T10:31:12.538Z OLUPONA: Indigenous African religions refer to the indigenous or native religious beliefs of the African people before the Christian and Islamic colonization of Africa. of the people which are all together. They can also be the dead of the tribe, following the order of primogeniture. These included interviews he conducted with pastors, exorcists, traditional priests, so-called witches and delivered witches. View all Google Scholar citations 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. Traditional theologians explained that one could not worship the Supreme Being formally, without the agency of the divinities or ancestors. Traditional Africans communicated to God through ancestors. Africans believe in the existence of a mystical, invisible, hidden, spiritual power in the universe. 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. The vigor with which the African Traditional Religion (ATR) has continued to resist the onslaught of Christianity is a cause of academic preoccupation. Traditional Africans had to go to specific sacred placesfor them to worship but Christians can worship God anywhere at any time. African religions behavior is centered mainly on the human person and his or her life in this world, with the consequence that religion is clearly functional, or a means to serve people to acquire earthly goods (life, health, fecundity, wealth, power and the like) and to maintain social cohesion and order.. Because many diseases are believed to have spiritual causes, traditional priests sometimes act as doctors or herbalists. ^xH&M'YZ7EDi%qN^K x\s6Q|jyLd*{-Jb"$e~ $@ 6G"F@w? God, the ancestors, and the spirits are all moral powers whose actions affect human life in various ways and to various degrees. Other spirits with a significant role in maintaining the African traditional moral world include ancestors and lineage spirits who operate in specific social contexts where their will is expressed through misfortunes, and some other spirits who do not act directly but who rely on human agents to effect their will. These spirits underlie the power of spirit mediums who, as mediators between space and the human world and by virtue of the moral authority this confers, are able to arbitrate between living human beings. L_}mB)b7h; uZ4 QI,^ID-*Rj" xx>@9lCQr [GE1Hz:Aj3>^5T-FPD5|. Acknowledgements, Introduction: Locations of culture, 1. OLUPONA: No, this type of binary thinking is simplistic. As judge, God is understood to uphold this standard by ultimately punishing its violations and by rewarding the righteous (usually in some eschatological domain). He then reflects on five "essential aspects" of. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. Witchcraft has been a prevailing belief in African cultures and has continually posed problems for the African people groups. <> 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. I am going to use the research reports of Opoky Onyinah , which he carried out among Ghanaian Christians between 1997 and 1999. The other question: Stereotype, This essay deals with the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Neglect, it is believed, might spell doom. Their purpose is to summarize recent material produced by the relevant religious organizations and by some of the main academic interpreters to provide Whilst interacting with the local African indigenous communities, and observing, The contact between African Traditional Religion (ATR) and Christianity is inextricably linkedto European economic activities that culminated into colonialism. However, to them, the entire universe is filled with spirit such as trees, rocks, and rivers. 1 Their central thrust is to emphasize the similarities rather than the differences between current movements in the world religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, but This includes five countries (Cameroon, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Senegal) where more than half the population uses traditional healers. He is not only the covenant giver He gives the power to keep the covenant. (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main This view influences the way humans relate to the universe: on the one hand, they strive to maintain harmony between themselves and the invisible universe by observing the moral and religious order; at the same time, humans see the universe in a utilitarian way, from the point of view of what is beneficial or harmful to them. endobj A classicatory system which attempts to distinguish the principal responses I should also state that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa. Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. Ancestors also serve as intermediaries (see ancestor worship). In the face of persistent human iniquity, God is believed to furnish means of atonement and forgiveness, thereby tempering justice with mercy., However, although Christianity and African Traditional Religion share some striking similarities, closer examination of African traditional beliefs reveals that the contrasts are far more striking than the similarities. Christians pray toGod through Jesus Christ. Shrine visitation is strongest among the uneducated and in rural communities. Christianity and Traditional African Heritage, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Marshall, Ruth GAZETTE: In trying to understand African spirituality, is it helpful to refer to it as polytheistic or monotheistic? Many laws, customs, set forms of behavior, regulations, rules, observances and taboos, constituting the moral code and ethics of a given community, are held sacred, and are believed to have been instituted by God.Furthermore, a person acts in ways that are good when he or she conforms to the customs and regulations of the community, or bad when he or she does not. While some African cosmologies have a clear idea of a supreme being, other cosmologies do not. African communities at the time but was also poised to become a site of religious and cultural conflict both within and between different communities in postcolonial South Africa. This is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism not at all. 2 0 obj They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Hence, it cannot be avoided in the interaction between Christianity and African Traditional Religion. Despite the presence of Christianity, traditional religions in Ghana have retained their influence because of their intimate relation to family loyalties and local mores. 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. Like Ronald Green, Magesa argues that African Traditional Religion is in the background of all African religiosity, both in Christianity and Islam, and supplies the basic attitude or worldview of most African Christians. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. 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. These act as a link between God and the human community. Itis made of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit working together as one. Traditional Religion as a source of African theology just as Christian theology is. INTRODUCTION Man considers life worth living because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable; hence value in its simple connotation means a thing of worth. . African spirituality is truly holistic. 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. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It evolved through many centuries, before the westerner come to Africa. Omissions? GAZETTE: How do you balance your Christian and indigenous African identity? <> The award allows Olupona a year of study and research in Germany; he is on leave this year (201516). While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Even though their differences outnumber their. 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. Dependence here functions like a two-way street, with the dead needing continued respect from and support by the living, and the living needingat least benign neutrality on the part of the dead. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. endobj He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. Modernity has not put a total stop to its influence. For instance, in the southern Volta Region of Ghana, and in Togo and Benin, thousands of young girls of the Ewe (say Ay-vay) tribe are held as slaves in unspeakable conditions under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. <> But as we learnt in Unit One, Christians can also worship Him attheir homes or other places. It is a counter culture in response to the, The move towards contextual Christianity in Africa is an essential venture if Christianity is to communicate with the African cultural heritage. Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA. I answered two, The paper discusses the state of traditional African religion in post-apartheid South Africa. Both have religious leaders or priests whopresent the peoples requests to God. Traditional Africans made images of the Supreme God or other supernatural beingswhich they worshipped. One scholar who has written extensively on African Traditional Religion is John Mbiti, a Kenyan whom many consider the dean of living African theologians. They do so by going to the hospital. The amount of devotees to indigenous practices has dwindled as Islam and Christianity have both spread and gained influence throughout the continent. For instance, if we were to lose indigenous African religions in Africa, then diviners would disappear, and if diviners disappeared, we would not only lose an important spiritual specialist for many Africans, but also an institution that for centuries has been the repository of African history, wisdom, and knowledge. In five countries (Tanzania, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal and Mali) majorities express this belief. During the early churchs initial expansion phase where congregations were established in Syria, Asia Minor, Achaia, Italy and Africa there were strong leadership structures in Alexandria, Carthage, Neo religious movements is a term often used to describe a wide range of movements that developed in the tail end of the 19 century (the 1960s and 1970s). So, basically, to speak of African tradition is to talk about African Traditional Religion. An important area Green points to has to do with the role of God in these two systems of thought. Conflict is a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds toupgrade your browser. The Supreme Being is usually thought of as remote from daily religious life and is, therefore, not directly worshipped. It is also an opportunity to help the Christian churches in the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups from which l come from, to see it as their duty to find means and ways to evangelise our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and children who are still under the African Traditional practices. Read our research on: Congress | Economy | Black Americans, Side by side with their high levels of commitment to Christianity and Islam, many people in the countries surveyed retain beliefs and rituals that are characteristic of traditional African religions. 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. Has data issue: true 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. 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