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. Belief in the power of such objects is highest in Senegal (75%) and lowest in Rwanda (5%). Observing this moral order ensures harmony and peace within the community. Conflict is a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction. 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. I should add that without claiming to be full members of indigenous traditions, there are many professed Christians and Muslims who participate in one form of indigenous religious rituals and practices or another. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally. Such activities include the making of sacrifices and the pouring of libations. 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. Mbiti says that: According to Mbiti, human beings have a privileged position in the universe. % When punishment comes, it comes in the present life. Whatever the difference in the deep structures that undergird the moral life in the Christian conception or in Africa Traditional Religion, Green, like Mbiti, concludes that Africans believe in a morally saturated universe: The role of intermediary agents and spirits in maintaining moral order in African Traditional Religion is quite remarkable, as we have already seen from the work of Mbiti. 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. African traditional religion cannot be discussed without mentioning that it is the way of life of the people of Africa and so cannot be differentiated from the politics, education, and socialisation, etc. 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). Shrine visitation is strongest among the uneducated and in rural communities. <>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Indigenous African religions are by nature plural, varied, and usually informed by ones ethnic identity, where ones family came from in Africa. The amount of devotees to indigenous practices has dwindled as Islam and Christianity have both spread and gained influence throughout the continent. Nevertheless, since 1900, Christians in Africa have grown from approximately 7 million to over 450 million today. endobj M!eJ/"0Nq"3_ad!+;\4C2-0"+5qu|Rw!9KkC~V3M$ 2d yFT!Jf"ez:~ U S dE{hbaERVTGeqBzk2^oP)R}7Qv#.dQF4^%y+X-o"wr+l+B?{lb="akK;qurpDB ~O` Hn5~:D]xDS-V3tVgP`Axx8Mi2.O4g5=t DTW?ne![Cc?"C+E|o&Ks0`7_BiXHyJ8;B>7AfvuPTZV(3JW|/+Ywy"EtBEVYlNFc[5%X8@o|^DHD\*=z.)P??6`! Traditional Africans had to go to specific sacred placesfor them to worship but Christians can worship God anywhere at any time. The Supreme Being is usually thought of as remote from daily religious life and is, therefore, not directly worshipped. Veneration of departed ancestors is a major characteristic of all traditional religions. hand with the study of the people who practise the religion. All rights reserved. Belief in the ancestors presents the idea of reciprocity in the African traditional moral world. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. 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. For starters, the word religion is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of ones culture, society, or environment. OLUPONA: My father, a faithful Anglican priest, was a good example. % May the Lord assist us to know the truth and walk in it. The Church also combines those who have died and those who still live. 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. 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() Commonly, God is believed to dwell in the skies. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. This article concerned itself with the modern encounter between Christianity and African Indigenous Religion (AIR) in Africa. <>/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>> 4 0 obj It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. 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. No matter how one looks at it, to offer the female members of ones family as a mark of hospitality to a stranger is morally wrong, not just from the point of view of Christian morality but from a purely natural law point of view as well. Before you discuss on how somebody is doing something, it is also good to look at the reason why the person is doing that thing, so that you can be in a better position to educate the person properly. OLUPONA: I was raised in Africa during the 1960s, when the Yoruba community never asked you to chose between your personal faith and your collective African identity. Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. 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. They are thus moral agents. It is the ancestors, however, the custodians of tradition, who determine the way these agents act, and it is tradition that supplies the moral code and indicates what the people must do to live ethically. African traditions carry out their role as ethical guides in many ways, including myths and rituals. Peel, J. D. Y. These facts, however, does not necessary suggest that the educated Ghanaian has totally abandoned tradition; some educated and mission trained individuals do consult traditional oracles in times of crises. Ifa is an indispensable treasure trove of knowledge that cant be duplicated elsewhere; much of its knowledge has been handed down from babalawo [Ifa priest/diviner] to babalawo for centuries. 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. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. African religions, Indigenous religions of the African continent. 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. The action of the living, for example, can affect the gods or spirits of the departed, while the support of family or tribal ancestors ensures prosperity of the lineage or state. While some African cosmologies have a clear idea of a supreme being, other cosmologies do not. 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. Africans had shrines they believedGod dwelt in. One of the things these diaspora African religions testify to is the beauty of African religions to engage a devotee on many spiritual levels. Mission Manual Pages Section A Biblical Basis of Mission 1 20, E-journal of Religious and Theological Studies, TITLE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SALVATION IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY: TOWARDS DEVELOPING AN EVANGELISTIC MODEL IN SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TUENSANG DISTRICT CHAPTER ONE, Baptism and Original Sin in the Early Church : contributions of Tertullian, THE UNIQUELY CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW - Ethington Book, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN KUMASI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Department of General Art Studies, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY @BULLET An Introduction to Bible Doctrine @BULLET, Monotheism in the Qur'an and in the New Testament: Comparative Theological Explorations of the Role of Prophets and the Covenants. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. 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. Editorial Statement: This essay is a slightly modified excerpt from the section "Evaluating African Traditional Religion: The Descriptive Task" (98-107) in Fr. Commonalities between Christianity and Africa Traditional Religion. For instance, in the southern Volta Region of Ghana, and in Togo and Benin, thousands of young girls of the Ewe (say Ay-vay) tribe are held as slaves in unspeakable conditions under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. 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. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. I told my father that I was coming home, he recalled. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. A Background to Religion and Magic in Western Thought Our modern usage of the term 'magic' derives from the Greek magike, Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. They are not mutually exclusive. Just like in Christianity, traditional Africanreligion has organised practices. Much of Oluponas work is an attempt to provide a fuller understanding of the complexity and richness of African indigenous thought and practice by viewing it not as a foil or as a useful comparative to better understand Western religions, but as a system of thought and belief that should be valued and understood for its own ideas and contribution to global religions. (1981) and Ph.D. (1983) in the history of religions from Boston University. These act as a link between God and the human community. These intermediary agents include the ancestors, members of the community who at death become idealized. In four countries, for instance, half or more of the population believes that sacrifices to ancestors or spirits can protect them from harm. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Whilst interacting with the local African indigenous communities, and observing, The contact between African Traditional Religion (ATR) and Christianity is inextricably linkedto European economic activities that culminated into colonialism. Sarr, Ramon GAZETTE: What else would we lose if we lost traditional African Religions? The commitment to theory, 2. endobj African Traditional Religion and Concepts of Development: A Background Paper 1 . The data also will include a survey he conducted in 1999 of 1201 participants across Ghana concerning the belief in the traditional spirit-world. An old African adage says: The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other.. According to all the major surveys, Christianity and Islam each represent approximately 40 percent of the African population. Traditional African religion advocated for bird and animal sacrifices whenever peoplewent to worship God. This is called a tithe. Specifically, by reflecting on the wonder and magnitude of the universe, they came to the conclusion that God must exist: they posited the existence of God to explain the existence and sustenance of the universe. GAZETTE: In trying to understand African spirituality, is it helpful to refer to it as polytheistic or monotheistic? The other question: Stereotype, This essay deals with the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Traditional African religion does not show any belief in the Trinity. <> I am going to use the research reports of Opoky Onyinah , which he carried out among Ghanaian Christians between 1997 and 1999. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. 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. University of Notre Dame, McGrath Institute for Church Life Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer, By Anthony Chiorazzi Harvard Correspondent. 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. 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." A very controversial point when he is considered benign, the high God is morally,... Who have died and those who have died and those who have died and those who died... That it does not have an endeither spatially or temporally dwindled as Islam and Christianity have both spread and influence. 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