and Corrections? The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. Traditional Africans did not practice baptism. He has researched and written about such diverse religious cultures as the Hare Krishnas, Zoroastrians, Shakers, and the Old Order Amish. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. l| -O;l0bo?Ge_4=MQ=EO|`X\G~Ah,yyG]%,GmF/-w F%YX`Ip}( na~!e[X/K879 ,y?R'd&h. d?ZKS=h8\%M{h(5M=xUeQG:3Sp}#-%>KpC3`zI *vw() INTRODUCTION Man considers life worth living because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable; hence value in its simple connotation means a thing of worth. A network of mutual relationships and responsibilities links the duals worlds of the mundane and the sacred. I had it. 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. 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. According to Mbiti, Africans believe that God has ordained a moral order for humans, through which they came to understand what is good and what is evil, so that they might live in harmony with one another and safeguard the life of the people. OLUPONA: If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and bought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview. Those to whom this power is accessible can use it for good, such as healing, rainmaking, or divination, while others can use it for harm, through magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. African Traditional Religion and Concepts of Development: A Background Paper 1 . Christ Jesus, God's own son, takes the "groaning" of humans to God. There is also a mystical order of the universe. 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. It is also present in relationships between persons, based on age and function. For all Ghanaian ethnic groups, the spirit world is considered to be as real as the world of the living. Exodus 20:3-5 tells us not to make or worship images ofanything in heaven or on earth. / DI41@ tD}r;Y w,XVzwiA1JtvrlfFaD7E@s 00=L"q{Vf\}ioKy=lXS.P6ChX m% ~nUV)=vp%FBvy}+6,0+V8sG&>K_iBOntQvyCN[I'uvR;}hA/D|+I9Q$cL, Commonalities between Christianity and Africa Traditional Religion. In the Ewe thought they are called Vodou (Vodu or Vudu in Benin and Togo; also Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, or other phonetically equivalent spellings. 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. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/Annots[ 9 0 R] /MediaBox[ 0 0 595.32 841.92] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S>> Consequently, traditional Africans have different ideas on what role the ancestors play in the lives of living descendants. OLUPONA: We would lose a worldview that has collectively sustained, enriched, and given meaning to a continent and numerous other societies for centuries through its epistemology, metaphysics, history, and practices. 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.. For this reason, l am writing on the topic, which says, Comparing the concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible. You can download the paper by clicking the button above. Part two provides a condensed historical survey of the, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. Ancestors and numerous other spirits are also recognized as part of the cosmological order. Areas of interest to read in the part one was how Christianity has found an inroad into the lives of so many who were living in deep darkness and slavery to the evil powers. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 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. The Christian idea of church has similarities with African traditional life in which brotherhood and the extended family play a central role. Traditional Religion as a source of African theology just as Christian theology is. In the part two of my writing, l will expand on the world populated by spirits called Vodou alongside that of the Akan. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. $70.00/$25.00. This is a universal belief among Africans. 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. Christians do not believe in the existence of any other godapart from the Supreme Being. For this reason, they can come to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ through the teaching of the Word of God because it is home going time. Belief in the Trinity While both Christianity and African religion have a concept of a Supreme Being, Christians believe in a God who exists in three persons. These initiation rituals are already not as common in Africa as they were only 50 years ago, yet age-grade initiations have always helped young Africans feel connected to their community and their past. A classicatory system which attempts to distinguish the principal responses I wont pray to an orisa, but I will affirm the importance of my connection with members of my age group. But it is also the strict commitment, to the observance of certain (written or unwritten) divinely inspired moral prescriptions or codes of ethics, promulgated by the religious authorities and enforced by sanctions. Acts are wrong if they hurt or damage relationships or if they are discovered to constitute a breach of custom or regulation. To buttress his point Mbiti states that in certain African societies to sleep with someone elses wife is not considered evil if these two are not found out by the society which forbids it, and in other societies is in fact an expression of friendship and hospitality to let a guest spend the night with ones wife or daughter or sister. Mbitis assertions must be read as a limited reference to some African societies and in some limited settings. The final aspect of this deep structure of moral reason in African Traditional Religion Green refers to as morally intentional trans-moral safety valves such as are found in the doctrine of grace or atonement in Weston religions (Christianity) or of liberation from the world of moral causation in Eastern religions. Marshall, Ruth Just like in Christianity, traditional Africanreligion has organised practices. similarities between the traditional beliefs of Africans in Africa. 3 0 obj Instead of God keeping his distance from man, He, throughout history and today reaches down in love to draw humans toward him. The understanding of God normally needs some refining when one comes from African Traditional Religion to be a Christian. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds toupgrade your browser. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. All life, power, and existence flow from God, and by right of their primogeniture and proximity to God by death God has granted the ancestors a qualitatively more powerful life force over their descendants. Who constitutes the world of the ancestors? In the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups the above phenomenological conception of ATR called for education in the light of the scriptures. 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). %PDF-1.5 Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. 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. Below is the article summary. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. Our duty is to preach the Word of God and trust the saving grace of Jesus Christ for conversion of souls. for this article. Hence, it cannot be avoided in the interaction between Christianity and African Traditional Religion. Traditional theologians explained that one could not worship the Supreme Being formally, without the agency of the divinities or ancestors. x][oH~GroA $9,f K3d~VU_% fYU]q{Z?Fo?>w&j/n>>]?b5M._GYTQ|_W/_c\yA,bQQ)xn0ZtK*Q/Xb)zetab~x2e*w1Ym2n}{%2Kt[nQ,^'D^}WI_:'ym;eup|5>)$c4"y"E_C/ 1 0 obj Ancestors also serve as intermediaries (see ancestor worship). An old African adage says: The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.. Despite the presence of Christianity, traditional religions in Ghana have retained their influence because of their intimate relation to family loyalties and local mores. Again, it doesnt reflect the multiplicity of ways that traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. 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. 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. 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. Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. Islam has experienced a similar rapid growth. The Igbo traditional religious worldview maintains a polytheistic religious view, unlike the monotheistic outlook of the Christian religion. TraditionalAfricans gave offerings but they did not give tithes. There is even a community deep in the American Bible Belt in Beaufort County, S.C., called Oyotunji Village that practices a type of African indigenous religion, which is a mixture of Yoruba and Ewe-Fon spiritual practices. These included interviews he conducted with pastors, exorcists, traditional priests, so-called witches and delivered witches. An important area Green points to has to do with the role of God in these two systems of thought. As I have discussed elsewhere in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, for example, some African societies are so conscious of the implications of crossing the line on some ethical matters, like adultery, incest, and murder, that anyone who engages in these acts is considered automatically to be putting the very survival of the community in danger. Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. The other question: Stereotype, This essay deals with the relationship between Christianity and other religions. hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. These act as Gods associates, assistants, and mediators, and they are directly involved in human affairs. So, basically, to speak of African tradition is to talk about African Traditional Religion. 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. 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. The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, "for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions." Pratten, David Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. It was believed that Vodun was a representativeof the Supreme God known as Mawu. People may complain to God and the ancestors, but they will never accuse them of any moral wrongdoing. Christians give a tenth of all their earnings to God. 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. Veneration of departed ancestors is a major characteristic of all traditional religions. Christian teaching forbids making of any kinds ofimages to represent God. This order, according to Mbiti, is knowable to humans, by nature. between African traditional religion and the Christian faith. 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. A belief in ancestors also testifies to the inclusive nature of traditional African spirituality by positing that deceased progenitors still play a role in the lives of their living descendants. He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. For example, in 14 of the 19 countries surveyed, more than three-in-ten people say they sometimes consult traditional healers when someone in their household is sick. Ronald M. Green of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a non-African scholar of African religion, has also written about African Traditional Religion and about religion and morality in Africa. In most cases, the earth is conceived as a living thing, a goddess, Mother Earth. According to Mbiti, the earth is symbolically viewed as the mother of the universe, while the heavens/sky are seen as its male counterpart. The Yoruba, however, do have a concept of a supreme being, called Olorun or Olodumare, and this creator god of the universe is empowered by the various orisa [deities] to create the earth and carry out all its related functions, including receiving the prayers and supplications of the Yoruba people. GAZETTE: What else would we lose if we lost traditional African Religions? Human beings maintain active and real relationshipswith the spiritual world, especially with the living dead, through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. Mystical power is found in all of them, in diminishing degrees. However, in African religious thought God is distanced from the task of moral affairs because the task of moral retribution and maintenance of effective moral norms is usually performed by spiritual agents of much lower standingthat is, by spirits of various sorts, by ghosts and even by human practitioners of spiritual arts. Other characteristics that show the contrast between (Western) Christian thought and African Traditional Religion,according to Green, are the nonexistence of concepts of heaven and hell in African Traditional Religion, the lack of messianic expectations and hope, and the absence of eschatological thought with God stepping in to right all wrongs or to punish wickedness. And although African Traditional Religion affirms the continuation of life after death, where the person is believed to join the spirit world of the ancestors to continue life in some ways similar to the life before death, this belief does not constitute a hope for improved existence or for ultimate reward and punishment since a persons moral depravity or moral rectitude [does] not count in the beyond and whatever penalties or rewards those may bring have no bearing on life after death.. An important area Green points to has to do with the study of the Christian idea of church has with... Bump into the other the above phenomenological conception of ATR called for education in light! Diverse religious cultures as the Hare Krishnas, Zoroastrians, Shakers, and they discovered! Systems of thought style rules, there may be some discrepancies, Shakers, and.... Accuse them of any kinds ofimages to represent God other spirits are also recognized as part of the.! 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