Myth #2. It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. They are less concerned with doctrines and much more so with rituals . 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. 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. Misconception 1: "Entire North Africa natively speaks Arabic.". The term "African Traditional Religion" is used in two complementary senses. Before colonization, marriages were strictly traditional and depends on the customs, traditions, and believes of, Africa is a beautiful continent. the earlier idea was that African Traditional Religion was incompatible with monotheism. Once again, this is far from the truth. In the primordial era, various forms of ethnic indigenous religions spread across the African continent, providing cohesive foundations of nations, peoples, and religious worldviews. This may not be as advanced as the western world, but its definitely not as bad as the media present it. Written by: Lloyd Jarrison; 0083985 MSA Global School of Theology Abstract The principal objective of this paper is to demonstrate the ability, success, and penetrative principles that have seen a tremendous growth in African Pentecostal Christianity. 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. Each has a life force but no concrete physical form. One of the more fascinating conversations that has emerged in the debate about African indigenous traditions is about the central role of women as bearers and transmitters of the traditions, and also the negotiation of gender dynamics. 1 While, officially, statistics suggest that African . Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL African Religion is not Ancestor Worship. In my view, these common misconceptions are due to ill representation of the African culture. 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. Scholarship has since proved, however, that the tenacity of indigenous religion is evident in all spheres of African life. Based on the understanding that even in 21 st century Africa, religion plays a vital role in gender construction, for effective Sexuality is 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. There is a common saying in Africa Dont forget where you come from. Africa is the target of western stereotypes. Prior to colonization, there was scarcely any form of writing in the majority of African tribes and cultures. Ifa defines Yoruba humanity, providing responses to critical issues of its communities. 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. Countries like Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso that are close to the Sahara desert have the Sahel climate. Esu was represented as a stone mound in the front yard of ancient Yoruba compounds. Slowly, they projected ATR as barbaric and dehumanizing. When Christianity and Western civilization came and interacted with African culture and religion, misconception of beliefs, values, and terms developed. All Religions has truth hidden in them for those who objectively seek them through the path of the religion. Human spirits represent people who have died, usually ancestors, in the recent or distant past.5 Third, the world of the ancestors occupies a large part of African cosmology. See Luc De Heusch, What Shall We Do with the Drunken King?,. Robert Mugabe . 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. African indigenous religions provide strong linkages between the life of humans and the world of the ancestors. Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. Whether these words carry weight or simply make for a good quote, the fact remains that Africans are unique. They include assumptions, misconceptions, traditional or religious beliefs and beliefs about the . 4.8 out of 5 stars. Africa is a continent that is made up of 54 countries, 1.3 billion inhabitants, more than 3000 ethnic groups, and 2100 unique languages. The traditional religions of Africa are human in the deepest sense, because they focus on people and their everyday problems. Marriage customs in Africa vary from one tribe to another. As Jaco Beyers puts it, the African understanding of religion is an understanding of the connectedness of all things. 9. Your email address will not be published. .title-desc-wrapper .view-post {display: none !important} While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. Investors are moving to take advantage of the African market. As many might know, one type of ritualinitiations for adolescent African girlscauses great consternation among Westerners, because these often involve rites like female circumcision or other bodied practices. 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. It should be noted that any attempt to generalize about the nature of "African religions" risks wrongly implying that there is homogeneity among all African cultures. In modern-day Christianity, Pentecostalism has become a major force to reckon with, indicating a sharp growth by adapting to local [] It is also the most diversified continent in the world. Every tribe and culture have their beliefs and way of life. Especially if you have never been to Africa. I suggest that, at the conceptual and theoretical levels, we begin to take this interpretive approach seriously. Ceremonies of naming, rites of passage, death, and other calendrical rites embody, enact, and reinforce the sacred values communicated in myths. Giving opportunity to stereotypes like Africa are poor and Africa is corrupt. However, the Efik people of Calabar were not the only ones who believed twin children were an abomination. 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. Africans are eager to learn new skills and embrace new technologies. the belief that natural objects and natural phenomenon possess souls or spiritual beings. 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. So, why was it the negative stories about killing of twins that were promoted? African traditional religion (ATRs) and spirituality have always been surrounded by negativity. 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. There is a general misconception that the entire people of North Africa speak Arabic. Manage Settings That is the case concerning issues Significant as these studies are, there seems to be no systematic exploration of African traditions in African American culture.21. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. African religions are, therefore, a praxis, and this is where the focus of study should mostly be directed. Just as rituals are an expression of this . Religious contexts are shaped and determined by the identity of these religions. 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. Many people have bought into the narrative of African traditional religious beliefs as something untrue and based on delusions, but they have also forgotten that all religions have the same thing in common. The west, by trying to learn more about the African tradition will avoid the bias and ignorance of being misinformed. The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. The idea that Africa is unsafe while statistics say otherwise shows how much misconception there is about Africa. A common stereotype about Africa is that the continent is poverty-stricken, full of corruption, and always at war. They provide the orientation for the human life journey by defining the rites of passage from life to death. Connecting With Your Ancestors (African Spirituality Beliefs and Practices) Monique Joiner Siedlak. Haitian Vodou is an African diasporic religion that developed in Haiti between the 16th and 19th centuries. The debate regarding the continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity has been raging since the early 19th century. John Mbiti, chap. When Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was released, it generated both curiosity and criticism for its portrayal of Christianity. 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. However, the missionaries of the two foreign religions succeeded in converting some African people to the new religions. African identity and culture are preserved in African Traditional Religion. 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. . A primary goal of parenting is to transmit values, beliefs and ideas around lifestyles based on cultural knowledge of the adult tasks and competencies needed for appropriate functioning in society (Gershoff, 2002; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chon & Buriel, 1990). It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, In whatever way it happens, African cosmological narratives are similarly complex, unsystematized, and multivariate, and they are the bedrock for indigenous value systems. This was amazingly written. In most African cultures, history and beliefs have been explained and passed on through oral traditions and storytelling. Advertisement. 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. Copyright 2023 President and Fellows of Harvard College. However, the so-called white wedding is Western culture. Why is this important to our understanding of African indigenous religions? Hence the misguided notion that Africans are corrupt. 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. The Bambara and Malinke people of Mali believed that the primordial beings were twins. Please confirm you want to block this member. 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? But, the continent of Africa is far from poor. 2. Women constitute a sizable number of the devotees of these traditions, just as they do in Islam and Christianity. The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. This is far from the truth. The battle between the African traditional religion and western civilization has been raging on for years. War in Africa, either political or religious is mostly isolated cases. 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. Religion also encompasses the human, cultural dimensions within faith traditions, such as how human agency shapes, influences, and complicates religious control. Thank you for this interesting essay on African religion. South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya rank among the top countries with the best health care system in Africa. The problem of Africa isnt wealth but the unequal distribution of wealth. One reason that might account for the gap in African history is the unavailability of any written document. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. 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. Voodoo, however, is a dynamic religion with no standardized dogma. Indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition have been dismissed as myth, superstition and primitive stories. d. politics, everyday life. 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. The Ifa divination system, which produced 256 chapters of oral narratives, constitutes an encyclopedic compendium of knowledge that provides answers to nearly every meaningful human question in the Yoruba and Fon universe. Again, this isnt true. 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. 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. The African roots of Voodoo may stretch back over 6000 years, making it one of the world's oldest ancestral traditions. It is misleading to say Africa when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. Such an approach should endeavor to provide not only an awareness of sociocultural contexts but also to narrate the historical dimensions of these traditions. 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. 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. Published. 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. But Ifa divination predates Western modernity. A 1685 law, for instance, prohibited the practice of African religions, and required all masters to Christianize their slaves within eight days of their arrival in Haiti. 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. Introduction. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . Get it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 26. Understanding African Traditional Religion. This is based on misconceptions that these religions are antithetical to modernity. 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. The more modern incarnation of this ancient African religionVoodooemerged as a unique blend of Catholic and African magical and religious rites. According to theologian Tony Evans, W. E. B. 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. Such dismissal has been based on the misconception and assumption that indigenous Bapedi . Traditional African religions have gone global! African traditional religion, and that researcher a should "bracket" their faith and prejudicethey might have about Africa and its people. 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. The range of African indigenous beliefs and practices has been referred to as African traditional religions in an effort to encompass the breadth and depth of the religious traditions on the continent.2 The diversity of the traditions themselves is tremendous, making it next to impossible for all of them to be captured in a single presentation. Each of the more than 50 modern . Robert N. Bellah, Civil Religion in America,, Jacob K. Olupona, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival and Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review),. Required fields are marked *. Without relevant knowledge, stereotypes are unavoidable. Instead, the old and the new were syncretized, producing some unique . .entry-morefrom {display: none !important} 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. Africa is not homogenous. Myth: Slavery is a product of Western civilization. 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. But, the bad eggs seem to get more attention. The Hausa man is different from the Igbo man who is also different from the Yoruba man. Post-colonial Africa is yet to be completely free from the mental slavery and stereotype created by the colonial masters. Africa is host to the highest number of religious countries in the world, according to a recent Gallop poll. Information was passed down mostly by oral communication in the form of folk tales. The expression is also used almost as a technical term for a particular reading of such beliefs and practices, one that purports . Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. The terms 'traditional' and 'religion' (in its singular form) have each been targets of criticism. As a lived religion, African tradition deploys through its ritual processesparticularly rites of passage, calendrical rituals, and divinatory practicestangible material and nonmaterial phenomena to regulate life events and occurrences, in order to ensure communal well-being. 1. The oral nature of these traditions allows for a great deal of adaptability and variation within and between indigenous African religions. 11. Elders, priests, and priestesses have served as guardians of the sacred traditions. Many foreign nations and organizations do send aid to African countries. 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. My earlier scholarship was propelled by the insight that the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship are what define Yoruba civil religion and, indeed, the center of Yoruba identity.15 Sociologist Robert Bellah understands civil religion as the sacred principle and central ethic that unites a people, without which societies cannot function.16 Civil religion incorporates common myths, history, values, and symbols that relate to a societys sense of collective identity. Women are revered in African traditions as essential to the cosmic balance of the world. It is misleading to say "Africa" when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. 5. Given our current impending ecological crisis, indigenous African religions have a great deal to offer both African countries and the world at large. 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