Hence the misguided notion that Africans are corrupt. Thank you for this interesting essay on African religion. Required fields are marked *. Narratives about the creation of the universe (cosmogony) and the nature and structure of the world (cosmology) provide a useful entry to understanding African religious life and worldviews. I ran into a co-resident, a famous Swiss author. The stories of violence, kidnapping, religious and political war in Africa are so common. Ifas religious thought systemfriendlier to Islam than to Christianitynot only predates Islam but also engages Islam in serious conversation. In spite of the heuristic value of V. Y. Mudimbes distinction between myth and history in Africa, and by extension the cohesion of oral and written narratives,10 the notion that myth is nonrational and unscientific while history is critical and rational is false. These narratives come to us in the form of myths. Unlike its popular usage, in scholarly language myths are sacred stories believed to be true by those who hold on to them. African spirituality more generallyand Nigerian spirituality in particularis shaped by how individuals in their daily existence make sense of their interactions with religious experience. We must be careful not to give the impression that African religious lives are compartmentalized into what is often called the triple heritage (Islam, Christianity, and African traditional religion). Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. An Ifa song warns those embarking on the pilgrimage to be pure and those who possess witchcraft not to embark on the pilgrimage. Therefore for these people, twins were treasures. They still hold onto their traditional beliefs, culture, and practices, but consider western values superior to theirs. John Mbiti divides spirit beings into two types, nature spirits and human spirits. Space constraints permit me to cite only one example. Abstract. Please confirm you want to block this member. In this essay, I attempt to refocus the centrality of indigenous religion, not only in defining African cosmology and an African worldview, but also in defining the African personality in the twenty-first century. Africa is often seen as a poor Country and one that cant do without the help of the western world. The story is the same in the political sphere. An example is the Ancient Benin Kingdom, known for its impressive artwork which is now scattered across the world. Thank you. That is the case concerning issues This is a testament to the strong morals and principles of the African tradition. Published. They believe in Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. 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. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. To understand Africans, one must understand the African religion. Responding to this erasure of African indigenous religion as a productive and generative practice, scholars rallied in opposition. African identity and culture are preserved in African Traditional Religion. That is why we have freewill, and regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge that a living God exists or not, and regardless of how we choose to worship Him, directly or through deities, we will all be eventually accountable. Your email address will not be published. It is the foundation on which the morals of pre-colonial Africa were built. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. However, western culture has blurred to an extent the lines between African tribes. The debate regarding the continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity has been raging since the early 19th century. Indigenous African religions contain a great deal of wisdom and insight on how human beings can best live within and interact with the environment. Foreign aid has been helpful to many small African countries that are struggling economically. 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. 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. In the primordial era, various forms of ethnic indigenous religions spread across the African continent, providing cohesive foundations of nations, peoples, and religious worldviews. Traditional African religion is based on oral traditions, which means that the basic values and way of life are passed from elders to younger generation. Through modern change these traditional religions cannot remain intact, but they are by no means extinct. Connecting With Your Ancestors (African Spirituality Beliefs and Practices) Monique Joiner Siedlak. Get it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 26. Gradually, there was a shift from ATR to Christianity. Here Is What You Have To Know. 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. religions are considered: African Traditional Religions (ATRs) especially that which is found in sub-Saharan Africa, and Christianity, sometimes referred to under the umbrella of faith-based communities. Gradually, many Africans began to buy the narrative. It is misleading to say Africa when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. 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. All over the continent, cosmological myths describe a complicated process, whether the universe evolves from preexisting objects or from Gods mere thought or speech. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. With the negative image of the, A lot of people seize the chance of the holiday season to organize their weddings. Our parting a week later was hard for him! African scholars in the United States are paying increasing attention to African images in African American culture and religion.20 Some scholars, especially literary critics, now scout African American novels such as Toni Morrisons and Alice Walkers works, for glimpses of African traditions. John Mbiti, a prominent Christian theologian from Kenya who helped debunk entrenched ideas that traditional African religions were primitive, giving them equal weight with major . Ritual practices are central to the performance of African religion. Based on sacred narratives, these traditions espoused their unique worldviews, defining cosmologies, ritual practices, sociopolitical frameworks, and ethical standards, as well as social and personal identity. Though many Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, traditional religions still inform the social, economic, and political life in African societies. Advertisement. Lilith Dorsey. As with myths the world over, African mythology includes multiple, often contradictory, versions of the same event. Many sources define African worship as ancestral worship which is wrong. Benin Is Getting Back 26 Of Its Looted Artifacts from The Colonial Era. That is the ultimate and absolute being who originated and gives meaning to all existence.9 III. Like Mbiti and Green, Magesa notes that the world of African Traditional Religion is a hierarchically ordered place where, God is seen as the Great ancestor, the first Founder and the Progenitor, the Giver of Life behind everything that exists. In many African communities, ____________ are qualified to navigate the delicate moral and social balance between the good and evil forces exerted on the human realm. There are so many interesting facts about Africa that you dont see every day. 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. Common misconceptions of Africa include the idea that it is behind the rest of the world, lacking in innovative technology. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. 2. 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 fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. Absolute as Supreme, infinite and everlasting mind. In most African cultures, history and beliefs have been explained and passed on through oral traditions and storytelling. /* 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. Because of this, rituals were done to prevent the birth of twins which the people believed to be an anomaly. .entry-morefrom {display: none !important} 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). On the other hand, the Yoruba people encountered Europeans in dialogue rather than monologue. Women are revered in African traditions as essential to the cosmic balance of the world. 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. Haitian Vodou is an African diasporic religion that developed in Haiti between the 16th and 19th centuries. Mudimbe's . 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. 3. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. However, African traditional religion is resilient which explains its continued existence after so many years. the belief that natural objects and natural phenomenon possess souls or spiritual beings. Africa is the second-largest continent in the world. The first encounters are fascinating. 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. 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. When Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was released, it generated both curiosity and criticism for its portrayal of Christianity. Introduction: Some Standard Misconceptions There have been widespread misconceptions about the African Traditional Religion (hereinafter ATR). Also, poverty is mostly concentrated among few nations in Africa or within few regions of each Nation. History text fails to capture the depth of pre-colonial African Civilization. In response to this verse, Ifa defines its own pilgrimage tradition in the rituals of the climbing of Oke Itase (Ifa Hill), the home of Ifa, when the Araba of Ifa in quiet solitude leads the devotee to the top of the sacred temple of Ifa. It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. Indigenous African religions are not based on conversion like Islam and Christianity. During the colonial era, most of these traditional believes became a target of the colonial religion. Every life stage is important in African religions, from birth and naming, to betrothal/marriage, elderhood, and eventually death. For example, in many African cultures, intending couples MUST perform both traditional and white weddings. In modern-day Christianity, Pentecostalism has become a major force to reckon with, indicating a sharp growth by adapting to local [] Representation matters, and as scholars we have a responsibility to advocate for religions in their contexts. Through a profound process of orality, Ifa as an interpretive tradition espouses an epistemology, metaphysics, morality, and a set of ethical principles and political ideology. Having tried to dispel some of the misconceptions . Today as a minority tradition, indigenous African religions have suffered immensely from human rights abuses. 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. Some African countries even adopted the language of their colonial masters as the Lingua Franca. Africa is a Continent Full of Corruption, Poverty and War. Religion occupies a reasonable space in the life of the traditional African/Igbo people. South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya rank among the top countries with the best health care system in Africa. Again, this isnt true. 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. .title-desc-wrapper .view-post {display: none !important} Advocating for civil religion in a religiously pluralistic society does not require the erasure of conventional religious traditions. 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. Apart from a few instances in West Africa, where women actually ruled as kings, the designation queen was not often used in isolation from the position itself (which was defined in male terms). African traditional religions are structured very differently from Western religions in that there is relatively little formal structure. Each of the more than 50 modern . 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. with Ibramic faiths tends to deprive the African Traditional Religion its true status as an independent religion . Myth: Slavery is a product of Western civilization. Perhaps, it was a deliberate attempt to make Africans feel inferior about themselves. 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. To the outside world, however, far too much of . c. masculine, feminine. The concerns for health, wealth, and procreation are very central to the core of African religions. Another misbelief about Africa is that all Africans are the same. The problem is, this number is often collated for the whole of Africa, instead of each country of Africa. 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. While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. However, since Africans are known for their excellent craftsmanship, these artifacts do tell the story of the ancient African empires. African religions are, therefore, a praxis, and this is where the focus of study should mostly be directed. The myths held by the west about Africa are mostly founded on misinformation. 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. Mursi girl in Ethiopia. 3. Colonization may seem to be over but for African traditional religion, it is not. 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). 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. They held the view that twins were a symbol of excessive fertility which is a characteristic of animals. This creates fear and panic resulting in misleading assumptions about Africa. A common stereotype about Africa is that the continent is poverty-stricken, full of corruption, and always at war. It is also the most diversified continent in the world. Slavery and World History. Although many African languages do not have a word for religion as such, it nevertheless accompanies the individual from long before his birth to long after his physical death. Marriage customs in Africa vary from one tribe to another. The terms 'traditional' and 'religion' (in its singular form) have each been targets of criticism. have recognized the important ways in which "African" and "religion" are western constructs involving both misconceptions and changing perceptions, especially concerning religion (Ray:2000). Paperback. Long before the arrival of Christianity and Islam, Africans practiced African traditional religion (ATR). Scholarship has since proved, however, that the tenacity of indigenous religion is evident in all spheres of African life. Portia Zvavahera, Cosmic Prayer, 2019, oil-based printing ink and oil bar on canvas. This was amazingly written. In these times of intense turmoil, people of African descent are facing serious threats and challenges to their well-being. Indeed indigenous African religions have provided the blueprint for robust conversations and thinking about community relations, interfaith dialogue, civil society, and civil religion. Understanding African Traditional Religion. Robert N. Bellah, Civil Religion in America,, Jacob K. Olupona, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival and Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review),. Most importantly, the rite itself should not be condemned together with circumcision or female genital mutilation. Jul 26, 2007 #1. 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. However, this was never a generally accepted idea. 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. One of the most ridiculous myths about it is that homosexuality did not exist in the continent until white men imported it. The story of Mary Slessor and the killing of twins is popular. Just as rituals are an expression of this . The reason is partly that they want a time when, Your email address will not be published. .pagination {display: none !important} Significant as these studies are, there seems to be no systematic exploration of African traditions in African American culture.21. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, The colonial masters sold the idea that the long-held tradition and believes of the African people is savage, inferior, and primitive. expressed in all the African cultures, it means that religion forms parts of African culture but not all African cultural practices are religious. African religions command their own cultural ingenuity, integral logic, and authoritative force. 13. Let's begun by saying that ATR, refer to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of Africans. More so, myths encode the traditional settings of the African and their belief system. 5. Several African countries have good health care systems. Africa is given the image of a place that is hot and sunny all year round. Not the one we saw, very clear and good article easy to understand. Temperature varies from one country to another depending on the climate type. However, the so-called white wedding is Western culture. The Bambara and Malinke people of Mali believed that the primordial beings were twins. The reason for this is quite simply the misunderstanding of the relevance and foundation of the African tradition. 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. African Religion is not Ancestor Worship. Africa is the target of western stereotypes. African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Even within a single ethnic group or clan, there are often highly contested and even opposing stories or viewpoints when it comes to creation accounts, thus allowing for flexibility and hermeneutic creativity. 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. 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;. It is incorrect to assume that conversion to Islam or to Christianity dealt a deathblow to indigenous traditions. The colonial masters brought with them a new religion which they believe to be superior to African traditional religion. Similarly, there are others like Henry Louis Gates who has appropriated images of the Yoruba deity of Esu in his own work. African traditional medicine (ATM) has been used by African populations for the treatment of diseases long before the advent of orthodox medicine and continues to carry a part of the burden of health for the majority of the population. All Religions has truth hidden in them for those who objectively seek them through the path of the religion. There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. Africans combine a belief in the existence of a omnipresent and omnipotent supreme god, with multitudes of subordinate deities. In this postcolonial period, it has come to be established that there is what we may call . Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. .title-desc-wrapper .post-title {display: none !important} The idea that Africa is unsafe while statistics say otherwise shows how much misconception there is about Africa. With exception of those who take history classes, the majority of young Africans will fail to elaborately tell the story of their origin. 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. Introduction. They counteracted various derogatory names given to AIR. those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts presented by Eurocentric scholars. Especially if you have never been to Africa. Post-colonial Africa is yet to be completely free from the mental slavery and stereotype created by the colonial masters. One reason that might account for the gap in African history is the unavailability of any written document. These stages characterized European perceptions of human evolution. In whatever way it happens, African cosmological narratives are similarly complex, unsystematized, and multivariate, and they are the bedrock for indigenous value systems. On the other hand, countries like South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia sometimes experience snowfalls. Finally, it suggested that Afrocentric terminologiesis . This corrective scholarship and critical intervention helped to redefine African worldviews and spirituality and, as such, showed how African religion is pivotal to the individual and communal existence of the people. There is a common saying in Africa Dont forget where you come from. These one-sided stories or reports are among the major roots of stereotypes and myths about Africa. It arose through a process of syncretism between several traditional religions of West and Central Africa and Roman Catholicism.There is no central authority in control of the religion and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Vodouists, Vodouisants, or Serviteurs. Superior to African traditional religion its true status as an independent religion countries like south Africa, instead of Nation. Ink and oil bar on canvas facts presented by Eurocentric scholars its popular usage, in many cultures. 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