Benin Is Getting Back 26 Of Its Looted Artifacts from The Colonial Era. All over the continent, cosmological myths describe a complicated process, whether the universe evolves from preexisting objects or from Gods mere thought or speech. Divinities and ancestors have personalized annual festivals during which devotees and adepts offer sacrificial animals, libations, and favored foods to propitiate them. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Correcting Misconceptions About African Traditional Religions. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. have recognized the important ways in which "African" and "religion" are western constructs involving both misconceptions and changing perceptions, especially concerning religion (Ray:2000). It is misleading to say "Africa" when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. This is a testament to the strong morals and principles of the African tradition. The colonial masters sold the idea that the long-held tradition and believes of the African people is savage, inferior, and primitive. They provide the orientation for the human life journey by defining the rites of passage from life to death. Bolaji Idowu, John Mbiti, Wande Abimbola, Benjamin Ray, Gabriel Setiloane, Laura Grillo, Aloysius Lugira, Kofi Asare Opoku, Emefie Ikenga-Metuh, Charles Long, and others attempted to imbue African traditions with the vitality, status, and identity that is now finally recognized. Especially if you have never been to Africa. 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. African spirituality more generallyand Nigerian spirituality in particularis shaped by how individuals in their daily existence make sense of their interactions with religious experience. 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. However, western culture has blurred to an extent the lines between African tribes. Here Is What You Have To Know. Mudimbe's . For example, James George Frazer (18541941) and Edward B. Tylor (18321917) classified indigenous religious practices of natives not as universally religious or generative of religious cultures but as forms of primitive religion or magic arising from the lower of three stages of human progress. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. Indigenous African religions are not based on conversion like Islam and Christianity. For this reason, in many parts of Africa, the communal aspects of such rituals have been retained, due to their salience, while the circumcision practice has been dispensed with altogether, due to the health risks associated with it; this is the case among the Maasai in Kenya and in Somali culture, both in Djibouti and Somalia. Similar to other West African communities, the Yoruba did not reject Western modernity but challenged its claim to ontological and epistemological superiority. 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. 1. The misconception about African religion Man generally is given to misconception especially in the midst of conflicting ideas or contending issues. However, the so-called white wedding is Western culture. Initially, Christian missionaries and propagators of Islam assumed that indigenous religion would eventually fizzle out, while Islam and Christianity would dominate the African religious scene. 2. 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. Today as a minority tradition, indigenous African religions have suffered immensely from human rights abuses. Africans engaged Western enlightenment and religious traditions in serious dialogue and conversation, and responded by creating and interpreting their own modernity. Though many Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, traditional religions still inform the social, economic, and political life in African societies. Every life stage is important in African religions, from birth and naming, to betrothal/marriage, elderhood, and eventually death. Absolute as Supreme, infinite and everlasting mind. However, some African nations have become addicted to these aids and seem unable to function without them. African traditional religion, and that researcher a should "bracket" their faith and prejudicethey might have about Africa and its people. .p-summary {display: none !important} Advocating for civil religion in a religiously pluralistic society does not require the erasure of conventional religious traditions. Myth 3: Africa Is Lacking Innovation. Many foreigners who come to Africa become fascinated by ancestral spirits and spirits in general, as if the mystique of African religions is the only aspect of African spirituality that can hold scholarly interest.4 There are several common features of African indigenous religions that suggest similar origins and allow African religions to be treated as a single religious tradition, just as Christianity and Islam are. Also, about 30 % of the earths remaining mineral resources are in Africa. Similarly, there are others like Henry Louis Gates who has appropriated images of the Yoruba deity of Esu in his own work. Du Bois argued . Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete. These can be found all over the Americas and Europe. 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. Women constitute a sizable number of the devotees of these traditions, just as they do in Islam and Christianity. Slowly, they projected ATR as barbaric and dehumanizing. History text fails to capture the depth of pre-colonial African Civilization. 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. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL It is also the most diversified continent in the world. Myth: Slavery in the non-Western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution. This is based on misconceptions that these religions are antithetical to . 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. Acceptably, this was a cruel act of ignorance, but like many other stories about African countries, this story is often generalized. Ifa rejects the religious extremism of certain forms of radical Islam making life unbearable in todays world. 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. Africa is a continent that is made up of 54 countries, 1.3 billion inhabitants, more than 3000 ethnic groups, and 2100 unique languages. Portia Zvavahera, Cosmic Prayer, 2019, oil-based printing ink and oil bar on canvas. 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. Introduction. According to the Global peace index, Malaysia, Botswana, and Ghana are among the top 50 most peaceful countries, beating the United Kingdom and the United States that were ranked 45 and 128 respectively. b. certain clan outsiders. In fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. Religion also encompasses the human, cultural dimensions within faith traditions, such as how human agency shapes, influences, and complicates religious control. Women play a key role in the practice of these traditions, and the internal gender relations and dynamics are very profound. When he heard that I came from Nigeria, he wanted to display his knowledge of Ocha tradition as a devotee of Oxhosi, God of Thunder in Afro-Brazilian heritage. Gradually, many Africans began to buy the narrative. 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. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. Due to the centrality of ancestral tradition to the African lifeworld, death itself is a significant transition from the current life to the afterlife and marks a continuity in life for those living and those to come. 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. I did ancestry and, This is the genuine list of best African president. 2. Oct. 24, 2019. Perhaps this is linked to the idea that Africa has an inadequate or substandard health care system. . There is a common saying in Africa Dont forget where you come from. Traditional African religion has common themes such as a Creator or High God, positive ancestor influences as well as tricksters, and an afterlife with spirit worlds. The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. 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. 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 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. 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. It is an accepted position that the African Initiated Churches (AICs) were formed as a result of the search for a unique African identity and culture. 3. 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. Many economic forecasts predict the rapid growth in the African Market. 7, The Spirits, in his, One must resist the structuralist temptation that views myths as static, unchanging, and simply the productions of a peoples imagination about the cosmic order. In Africa, dance is a means of marking life experiences, encouraging abundant crops, honoring kings and queens, celebrating weddings, marking rites of passage, and other ceremonial occasions.Dance is also done purely for enjoyment. 3. There are rituals that celebrate the passage of time and mark time as it passes for the people, orienting them to the seasonal changes, such as the new yam festival and celebration of the old season and beginning of a new one. 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. African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. 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. a. newly birthed babies. My credentials as a Harvard professor made little impression on him. This article was originally published by Oxford University Press on May 16, 2014. . The concerns for health, wealth, and procreation are very central to the core of African religions. Most importantly, the rite itself should not be condemned together with circumcision or female genital mutilation. 3. Continue with Recommended Cookies. 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