Human beings maintain active and real relationshipswith the spiritual world, especially with the living dead, through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. The spiritual medium is the physical embodiment of the religious retributive order in which Africans know themselves to stand.. OLUPONA: Yes, its a mixed bag because in the African diaspora mostly due to the slave trade starting in the 15th century indigenous African religions have spread and taken root all over the world, including in the United States and Europe. SUMMARY OF REFORMED THEOLOGY IN 10 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. In most countries surveyed, at least three-in-ten people believe in reincarnation, which may be related to traditional beliefs in ancestral spirits. Mystical power is found in all of them, in diminishing degrees. Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. Taboos and customs cover all aspects of human life: words, foods, dress, relations among people, marriage, burial, work, and so forth: A part of this belief in the moral and religious order is belief in the invisible universe, which consists of divinities, spirits, and the ancestors (the living dead). Wendy Sherman, who was the lead U.S. negotiator in the nuclear deal with Iran, was welcomed by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. L_}mB)b7h; uZ4 QI,^ID-*Rj" xx>@9lCQr [GE1Hz:Aj3>^5T-FPD5|. Pp. GAZETTE: What else would we lose if we lost traditional African Religions? Commonly, God is believed to dwell in the skies. An important preoccupation of Mbitis work has been to show that knowledge of God and the worship of God have been staples of African life from the earliest times on the continent. Some ancestors may even be reincarnated to replenish the lineage. The ancestors are believed to be the most immediate link with the spiritual world, and they are thought to be constantly near, observing every thought and action of the living. Belief in the ancestors presents the idea of reciprocity in the African traditional moral world. Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975. Traditional Africans had to go to specific sacred placesfor them to worship but Christians can worship God anywhere at any time. View all Google Scholar citations Despite the presence of Christianity, traditional religions in Ghana have retained their influence because of their intimate relation to family loyalties and local mores. This power originates from God but is possessed hierarchically by divinities, spirits, and the living dead, and it is available to some people, in various degrees. 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. endobj However,among the people of South Benin in West Africa sometimes the lesser god known asVodun would ask for human sacrifices. Ancestors can offer advice and bestow good fortune and honor to their living dependents, but they can also make demands, such as insisting that their shrines be properly maintained and propitiated. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. 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. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. According to all the major surveys, Christianity and Islam each represent approximately 40 percent of the African population. 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. 4 0 obj Therefore we speak of African Traditional Religion thinking of those common things. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. INTRODUCTION Man considers life worth living because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable; hence value in its simple connotation means a thing of worth. (See the glossary for more information on juju. Mbiti says that: According to Mbiti, human beings have a privileged position in the universe. 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. Victor Christianto, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, International Journal of African Catholicism, Stan-William Ede, Dominic Okoye, Anselm Jimoh, Gregory Ekene Ezeokeke, Louismary Ocha, Overlaps between Judeo-Christian theology and traditional African religions, Vehicles of Divine Mystery: Paul's Danielic Self-Understanding in Ephesians 3, Teach us to number our days: an exegetical and theological analysis of Psalm 90, The Faith Journey of Paul: An Exegetical Analysis of Philippians 3: 1-14, The Concept of God in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Ethnic Groups Compared the Bible, Comparing the Concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible, Entries. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. A holistic interpretation of the book between Paul and James. Traditional Africans communicated to God through ancestors. It was believed that Vodun was a representativeof the Supreme God known as Mawu. Veneration of departed ancestors is a major characteristic of all traditional religions. TraditionalAfricans gave offerings but they did not give tithes. (Hebrews 1:1,Matthew 5:17,Exodus 34:10-28). This is the function of Gods providence and sustenance of the universe. Itis made of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit working together as one. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. 1630-1633), HEBREWS' CHRISTOLOGY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY APPREHENSION IN AFRICA 1, New Mind, New Heart, New Strength (A Paradigm on the New Man), Dissertation ETD Libermann and EA in Dialogue Dec 2013, Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond: An Inter-disciplinary Analysis. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Encyclopedia of religious and spiritual development, Adopting Primary Taoism as a Protoevangelion for Contextualization of the Gospel into Asian Culture, Toward a Liturgical Approach to Re-Routing Mission, TOWARDS A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING IN THE MIDST OF PROSPERITY THEOLOGY WITHIN THE PENTECOSTAL AND EVANGELICAL CHURCHES IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA, PARTICULARLY YANGORU, Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology (with Julie C. Ma, Oxford: Regnum, 2010), The strategic level spiritual warfare theology of C. Peter Wagner and its implications for Christian mission in Malawi, Evangelism Handbook of New Testament Christianity, The Role of Caprivian Virtues in the Search for Common Moral Discourse A Conversation with Peter J Paris, Sexuality and Judaism, Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (pg. Christians pray toGod through Jesus Christ. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. This is called the Trinity. hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. Such a project, however, is only significant if it is not only executed by religious leaders, By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our. Villepastour, Amanda The rapid growth of many religions in Africa and the revival of AIR in . Instead of God keeping his distance from man, He, throughout history and today reaches down in love to draw humans toward him. 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. A Journal of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, by Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor It is worth noting that these animals areat no time offered as burnt offerings to God. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. Christian teaching forbids making of any kinds ofimages to represent God. Everything is said to center on them. ), In addition to expressing high levels of belief in the protective power of sacrificial offerings and sacred objects, upwards of one-in-five people in every country say they believe in the evil eye, or the ability of certain people to cast malevolent curses or spells. In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. endobj % Since God is seen as the Creator, various aspects of the universe are permeated by the sense of the sacredthe religious mentality affects the way people see the universe. Its about getting tangible results. Ritual functionaries include priests, elders, rainmakers, diviners, and prophets. In lieu of these traditional African ways of defining oneself, Christianity and Islam are gradually creating a social identity in Africa that cuts across these indigenous African religious and social identities. Baptismis by being sprinkled on water or being dipped in water. Christ Jesus, God's own son, takes the "groaning" of humans to God. 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. Islam has experienced a similar rapid growth. The bottom line then is that Africans who still wholly practice African indigenous religions are only about 10 percent of the African population, a fraction of what it used to be only a century ago, when indigenous religions dominated most of the continent. Church Life Journal He contends that although African Traditional Religion generally refers to God as creator and sustainer of the universe, morally good, omniscient, and caring toward humans, yet even where this is held to be true, the high god in Africa is very often regarded as distanced from human affairs. And even when he is considered benign, the high God is morally otiose, having little direct retributive relationship with humankind. In some situations, the high God is cast in unfavorable terms as one who creates and who kills. African spirituality is truly holistic. ^xH&M'YZ7EDi%qN^K 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. At stake here is nothing less than the question of human culpability and ultimate redemption, which has to do with the traditional Christian topic of sin and grace. ABSTRACT PART II: Comparing the concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible By Godwin Kwame Ofosuhene In the part one of my writing, with the titled The concept of God in the traditional religion of Akan and Ewe ethnic groups compare to the Bible - dated 31st May 2006, l explained how the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups of Ghana understood God in their traditional religious practices. <> For instance, in a few years time, I pray that I will be participating in an age-grade festival for men around 70 years of age called Ero in my native Nigerian community in Ute, in Ondo state. Rituals are aimed at maintaining a harmonious relationship with cosmic powers, and many have associated myths that explain their significance. Thus, for example, older persons not only possess a more powerful vital force but a greater responsibility in society and more intense mystical powers. It appeals more to social scientists than to those working in religious studies, particularly scholars of specific religious traditions. 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. Jacob 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. It was believed that the animals blood appeased God. hasContentIssue true, Copyright International African Institute 2016. For Christians itsa church. The understanding of God normally needs some refining when one comes from African Traditional Religion to be a Christian. In addition, roughly a quarter or more of the population in 11 countries say they believe in the protective power of juju (charms or amulets), shrines and other sacred objects. Nevertheless, they also display enough family resemblances for us to be able to delineate their main features and to a very reasonable extent fall on them to represent the whole. <> endobj One scholar who has written extensively on African Traditional Religion is John Mbiti, a Kenyan whom many consider the dean of living African theologians. The position I critique in this paper is really a complex of closely overlapping positions, some more theoretically sophisticated or better grounded empirically than others. Focusing on Luo Muslims in Kenya, Dr Lawrence Oseje looks at the interaction of Islam and traditional Luo practices, especially those around death and burial. Christ was tempted in all the ways Devoid of essential personal characteristics they represent the essence of what might be called structural personality. While Islam and Christianity tend to be overtly resistant to adopting traditional African religious ideas or practices, indigenous African religions have always accommodated other beliefs. . Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. <> In this paper, Ill bring the understanding of African traditional adherents into the light of the Holy Scriptures; to explain what the Bible teaches about soul and spirit in relation to God and man. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. OLUPONA: Your question underscores an important facet about African spirituality: It is not a closed theological system. Some of these African diaspora religions include Cuban Regla de Ocha, Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomble. Christians practice baptism. Again, it doesnt reflect the multiplicity of ways that traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. Copyright 2023 Ritual sacrifices and witchcraft beliefs are still common. %PDF-1.5 The Christian idea of church has similarities with African traditional life in which brotherhood and the extended family play a central role. endobj In other words, he shows that the sense of the divine was not something introduced to Africa by missionaries or by anyone else; that the knowledge of God in African religion was not much different from the idea of God that Christian missionaries preached in Africa; and, more specifically to our purpose here, that belief in God engendered a moral response that for centuries before Christian arrival in Africa directed moral life and interaction on the continent and among its peoples. Traditional Africans did not practice baptism. Christians do not believe in the existence of any other godapart from the Supreme Being. In the end, I believe that Africans can make room for a plurality of religious points of view without one religious point of view excluding or compromising the other. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. <> These are called Taboos. While the recourse to traditional healers may be motivated in part by economic reasons and an absence of health care alternatives, it may also be rooted in religious beliefs about the efficacy of this approach. Furthermore, the issue is whether a strict order of retribution cannot be tolerated if human ambition gets in the way of realizing enduring moral virtue and well-being. 3 0 obj It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential. This dissertation will attempt to explore how deliverance ministry has replaced the anti-witchcraft shrines and the exorcistic activities of the African Indigenous Churches. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. February 21, 2019. In short, the question is whether the notion of mercy exists in the moral order of African Traditional Religion and whether the sacrifices of African religion amount to an expiatory understanding in African religious thought. Even though their differences outnumber their. (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main GAZETTE: How do you balance your Christian and indigenous African identity? The religious traditions and beliefs of the African peoples have enough differences to merit a study of each in its own right. Human beings are the link between the heavens and the earth, between the visible and the invisible universe. Inculturation, as we will argue later in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, sheds the light of the gospel on cultural practices like this one to reveal what is sinful in them and to show that human beings, especially women, in this case, deserve better treatment than this. For example, an African amulet might have inside of it a written verse from either the Koran or Christian Bible. African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems - Toyin Falola 2022-03-10 Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. This leads him into the whole area of theology of religions, in which the relationship between Christianity and other religions is currently the focus of lively debate. This happened in the past, and these codes were stipulated, considered sacred and binding, by the community leaders: The moral and religious order in the universe is articulated and expressed in a variety of taboos and customs that prohibit specific actions contravening such order. Both religions believe that God revealsHimself to people through dreams, propheciesand other special events. This order, established by God, guides the functioning of the universe, preventing it from falling into chaos; and it ensures the continuance of life and the universe itself. Download chapter 3 in full (3-page PDF, <1MB), Photo credit: Sebastien Desarmaux/GODONG/Godong/Corbis, Part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, 1615 L St. NW, Suite 800Washington, DC 20036USA African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. 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. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He later earned both an M.A. 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. I am going to use the research reports of Opoky Onyinah , which he carried out among Ghanaian Christians between 1997 and 1999. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. Total loading time: 0 All work unless implicitly stated is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. He then reflects on five "essential aspects" of. Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. x\s6Q|jyLd*{-Jb"$e~ $@ 6G"F@w? Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. Religion is part and parcel of daily life. Indigenous African religion is primarily an oral tradition and has never been fully codified; thus, it allows itself to more easily be amended and influenced by other religious ideas, religious wisdom, and by modern development. Updates? God, the ancestors, and the spirits are all moral powers whose actions affect human life in various ways and to various degrees. Interrogating identity: Frantz Fanon and the postcolonial prerogative, 3. Magesa discusses the African tradition in its various manifestations: its understanding of the human person and of life in general; aesthetics, politics, ethics, and of course religion, which he shows to be the architectonic basis of these other expressions or manifestations of African tradition. This should make it clear why some African intellectuals would question the relevance of Christianity on the continent. Pratten, David The Supreme Being is usually thought of as remote from daily religious life and is, therefore, not directly worshipped. GAZETTE: Are ancestors considered deities in the traditional African cosmology? The spirit medium is required to possess moral probity and integrity. Christianity forbids human sacrifices in worshipas it is murder. :t\.1biti's approach assumes that "Christianity comes to enhance African traditional religions." This implies that there is no tension between the major elements of African Traditional Religions and the major claims of Christianity." 19 Anthony Chiorazzi, who has an M.Phil. Eternal Rest of the Soul. Christians give a tenth of all their earnings to God. This condition is under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. These ancestral gods lived in the spiritual world, which according to ATR, is the world populated by spirits. Christians do not have regard for their powers because they believethat they overcome all evil through the name of Jesus. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. I answered two, The paper discusses the state of traditional African religion in post-apartheid South Africa. Using Ghana as a case history, I shall evaluate this ministry to find out its positive and negative effects. Observing this moral order ensures harmony and peace within the community. The African Traditional Religion has no founder. The recipient of many prestigious academic honors and research fellowships, Olupona also received the 20152016 Reimar Lust Award for International and Cultural Exchange, considered one of Germanys most prestigious academic honors. According to Mbiti, Africans came to believe in God by reflecting on their experience and through observation of the created universe. 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). The idea is that the traditional African practitioner who constructed that amulet believes in the efficacy of other faiths and religions; there is no conflict in his mind between his traditional African spirituality and another faith. OLUPONA: My father, a faithful Anglican priest, was a good example. Some traditional African societies like the Yoruba believed in the existence of lessergods. They trust God for their healing. 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. In the part two of my writing, l will expand on the world populated by spirits called Vodou alongside that of the Akan. similarities between the traditional beliefs of Africans in Africa. This article concerned itself with the modern encounter between Christianity and African Indigenous Religion (AIR) in Africa. Quantum computing simulation reveals possible wormhole-like dynamics. The cup of wine symbolises the blood Jesus shedand the bread symbolises His body which was broken for us. It is also present in relationships between persons, based on age and function. Therefore, these traditional theologians condemned those who said, ATR and similar non-western religions are followed by irrational or foolish people who in their stupidity bow down to stones, trees and rivers instead of the Creator who created such objects and themselves. Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies, particularly scholars of specific religious traditions and beliefs Africans. Belief called the trokosi system or wives of the African peoples have enough differences to merit a study of created! Scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI studies from the University of Nigeria,,... Offer animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship but christians can worship God the anti-witchcraft shrines and the spirits are moral. This ministry to find out its positive and negative effects Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c. Source... Earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria,,! 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