Whether these words carry weight or simply make for a good quote, the fact remains that Africans are unique. Introduction: Some Standard Misconceptions There have been widespread misconceptions about the African Traditional Religion (hereinafter ATR). Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. I did ancestry and, This is the genuine list of best African president. By Jacob K. Olupona. Long before the arrival of Christianity and Islam, Africans practiced African traditional religion (ATR). Myth 3: Africa Is Lacking Innovation. Indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition have been dismissed as myth, superstition and primitive stories. This statement isnt true. For African-American parents, transmitting an awareness of cultural values and norms . The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. Another generalization about Africa is that they are all corrupt. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Advertisement. African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Understanding African Traditional Religion. To the outside world, however, far too much of . This view wasnt held in many other tribes in Nigeria. It is not unusual to see people living below the poverty line in nearly every country on earth. Africa is a Continent Full of Corruption, Poverty and War. In summary, it is not every part of Africa that is hot. Voodoo is a religion that originates in Africa. Similarly, although ancestors dwell inside the earth, their activities also interject into human life, which is why they are referred to as the living dead.13 African cosmologies, therefore, portray the universe as a fluid, active, and impressionable space, with agents from each realm bearing the capabilities of traveling from one realm to another at will. These elements are worth exploring and espousing. 14. Fact: Slavery is older than the first human records. In the case of the Yoruba kings and their people, sacred kingship formed a sacred canopy that sheltered the followers of each of the three major traditionsIslam, Christianity, and African traditional religionforging bonds of community identity among followers of the different traditions. In fact, the continent is the most diverse in the world. African traditional religions are structured very differently from Western religions in that there is relatively little formal structure. With the negative image of the, A lot of people seize the chance of the holiday season to organize their weddings. The debate regarding the continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity has been raging since the early 19th century. The first encounters are fascinating. 6. Foreign aid has been helpful to many small African countries that are struggling economically. Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism. 2. The oral nature of these traditions allows for a great deal of adaptability and variation within and between indigenous African religions. 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. Required fields are marked *. In most African cultures, history and beliefs have been explained and passed on through oral traditions and storytelling. Connecting With Your Ancestors (African Spirituality Beliefs and Practices) Monique Joiner Siedlak. What, for example, is the notion of history and the sacred in Akan thought? The most common African history begins with the colonial era. Apart from the different languages, every tribe and culture have their way of dressing too. Mostly, the temperatures of these zones vary between the extremes (Either very hot or very cold). Indigenous African religions are not based on conversion like Islam and Christianity. Manage Settings Temperature varies from one country to another depending on the climate type. .entry-morefrom {display: none !important} So, while Africans easily adopt Western traditions, will the West also be willing to adopt African traditions? So, why was it the negative stories about killing of twins that were promoted? Hence to call African traditional religion ancestral worship would cause problems in the study of ATR. It is also the most diversified continent in the world. Ifa rejects the religious extremism of certain forms of radical Islam making life unbearable in todays world. Get it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 26. With exception of those who take history classes, the majority of young Africans will fail to elaborately tell the story of their origin. The stoning of the devil in the Kaba in Mecca was a disguise for rejecting the local Esu, the Yoruba god of fate and messenger of the gods. These leaders through greed and corruption ruin the image of their countries. In these times of intense turmoil, people of African descent are facing serious threats and challenges to their well-being. 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. To understand Africans, one must understand the African religion. Priests, priestesses, and diviners are among the authorities who perform religious ceremonies, but the hierarchical structure is often very loose. Despite conversion to Islam or to Christianity, Africans continue to accommodate an indigenous worldview that occupies a vital space in the African consciousness. When Christianity and Western civilization came and interacted with African culture and religion, misconception of beliefs, values, and terms developed. Whether it is being wrongly labelled voodoo, juju or witchcraft, indigenous African faith systems tend to be associated with darkness, animal and human sacrifices, violence and general backwardness. traditional African takes the character of critical reflection of the African understanding of reality and world view. expressed in all the African cultures, it means that religion forms parts of African culture but not all African cultural practices are religious. About | Commentary Guidelines | Harvard University Privacy | Accessibility | Digital Accessibility | Trademark Notice | Reporting Copyright Infringements 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. Indigenous religion has always played a pivotal role in the African public sphere, as my study of the Ifa divination system has shown.18 In indigenous religion, communities are governed according to the dictates of the gods, particularly through a divination system such as Fa (Benin) and Ifa (Southwest Nigeria), which encompass the political, social, and economic conditions of life. What is the implication of indigenous hermeneutics for scholars today? They are known as upstanding citizens and have been entrusted with sensitive positions in society. 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. It was just the belief of a few groups of people known as Efik people, the predominant tribe in Calabar. Therefore, this article will explore African spirituality, traditional religion, culture and the present way of life. Elders, priests, and priestesses have served as guardians of the sacred traditions. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Africa is the second-largest continent in the world. While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. On the other hand, the Yoruba people encountered Europeans in dialogue rather than monologue. In African traditional religions guidance is provided through myths, which are handed down orally. 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. Each ceremony denotes passage from one social status to another and is an opportunity to celebrate the initiates on their journey. Scholarship has since proved, however, that the tenacity of indigenous religion is evident in all spheres of African life. Among its one billion inhabitants, more than 1,000 languages are spoken, and there is a massive variety of ethnic religions. South Africa, as a member state of the World Health Organisation, has been set on the path of institutionalising African traditional medicine. African Traditional Religion: An Examination of Terminologies Used for Describing the Indigenous Faith of African People, Using an Afrocentric Paradigm by Nana Osei Bonsu, B.Ed. 5.3.2 Intolerance and misconceptions about African traditional religion and Culture As already alluded, the stories told in Europe about Africa, the notion of racial and cultural superiority, and the notion of salvation, led to the western missionaries having a negative attitude toward African traditional religion and culture. .sqs-featured-posts-gallery .title-desc-wrapper .view-post Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. 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 goes a long way to show that information is power and the way a story is told matters a lot. This lack of knowledge as well as understanding of essentials has led to burgeoning of myths on African . Their many realities that Africans have not been . Published. If you take these reports at face value, you may start to believe that all Africans are poor. 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. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . Also, about 30 % of the earths remaining mineral resources are in Africa. The African religious worldview is primarily indigenous, although Islam and Christianity continuously respond to its viability and strength through their transitive approaches, their theologies, and their knowledge systems. d. politics, everyday 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. As in the Muslim pilgrimage, it is a solemn journey to the hilltop. A frica has 54 countries and more than a billion people. Here Is What You Have To Know. Wherever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop; he takes it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony;. with Ibramic faiths tends to deprive the African Traditional Religion its true status as an independent religion . Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. The much-cited dictum by the doyen of African religious studies, the recently deceased John Mbiti, that Africans are notoriously religious still holds true (though I prefer to use the word deeply).1 While, officially, statistics suggest that African Christians and Muslims constitute about 80 percent of the total population, and African indigenous religion constitutes about 20 percent, these statistics do not reflect the truth of the African situation. Today as a minority tradition, indigenous African religions have suffered immensely from human rights abuses. African religions are, therefore, a praxis, and this is where the focus of study should mostly be directed. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, There are key developmental projects in some African countries that would not be possible without Foreign aids. Myth #2. During the colonial era, most of these traditional believes became a target of the colonial religion. Ritual practices are central to the performance of African religion. Why is this important to our understanding of African indigenous religions? In the primordial era, various forms of ethnic indigenous religions spread across the African continent, providing cohesive foundations of nations, peoples, and religious worldviews. 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. Absolute as Supreme, infinite and everlasting mind. That is the ultimate and absolute being who originated and gives meaning to all existence.9 III. My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. 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. Here Are the Top Ten African Volunteer Programs, 9 Traditional African Music Instruments And Their Origin, 8 Traditional African Sports That Should Be In the Olympics, economic forecasts predict the rapid growth in the African Market, 10 Traditional African Hairstyles And Their Origin. Lets take the killing of twins as a case study. Take for instance the story of poverty in Africa. The unending political banditry and fraudulent activities by some individuals are the foundation of this stereotype. The orthodox Easternize it. However, African indigenous religion has not only succeeded in domesticating Islam and Christianity; in many instances, it has absorbed aspects of these two other traditions into its cosmology and narrative accounts and practices. 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. 53 offers from $9.56. Courtesy of Stevenson, Amsterdam/Cape Town/Johannesburg. 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. Myths reveal critical events and episodesinvolving superhuman entities, gods, spirits, ancestorsthat are of profound and transcendent significance to the African people who espouse them. 7. African spirituality more generallyand Nigerian spirituality in particularis shaped by how individuals in their daily existence make sense of their interactions with religious experience. Though many Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, traditional religions still inform the social, economic, and political life in African societies. .pagination {display: none !important} Ifa defines Yoruba humanity, providing responses to critical issues of its communities. John Mbiti, a prominent Christian theologian from Kenya who helped debunk entrenched ideas that traditional African religions were primitive, giving them equal weight with major . I suggest that, at the conceptual and theoretical levels, we begin to take this interpretive approach seriously. Introduction. 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. Religion occupies a reasonable space in the life of the traditional African/Igbo people. The battle between the African traditional religion and western civilization has been raging on for years. 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. Through their mixing, a new kind of religion emerged, forming the basis for what we have come to know as African diaspora religion. Her growing fascination led to an Emerson Foundation-funded research project this summer, titled "Demystifying African Religion." Many sources define African worship as ancestral worship which is wrong. Even in areas of Zimbabwe with easy access to Western-type delivery care, the majority of women are cared for and delivered by traditional birth attendants who are members of their extended family. In modern-day Christianity, Pentecostalism has become a major force to reckon with, indicating a sharp growth by adapting to local [] 3. A porous border exists between the human realm and the sky, which belongs to the gods. have recognized the important ways in which "African" and "religion" are western constructs involving both misconceptions and changing perceptions, especially concerning religion (Ray:2000). African Religion is not Ancestor Worship. Giving opportunity to stereotypes like Africa are poor and Africa is corrupt. This is far from the truth. /* Must be below squarespace-headers */(function(){var e='ontouchstart'in window||navigator.msMaxTouchPoints;var t=document.documentElement;if(!e&&t){t.className=t.className.replace(/touch-styles/,'')}})(), Bakongomasks from the Kongo Central Photo: Wikipedia. Most of these aids go into building infrastructures like schools and hospitals. Marriage customs in Africa vary from one tribe to another. Myth: Slavery in the non-Western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution. Most importantly, the rite itself should not be condemned together with circumcision or female genital mutilation. One could argue that colonization began with mental slavery. There are so many interesting facts about Africa that you dont see every day. However, some African nations have become addicted to these aids and seem unable to function without them. The concerns for health, wealth, and procreation are very central to the core of African religions. The diviner, therefore, is also a counselor, psychologist, medicine man or woman, and the spiritual guardian of villages and towns. African Traditional Religion and medicine are integral parts of life and culture of the Africans and have greatly influenced their conceptions about human health and wholeness. The term "African Traditional Religion" is used in two complementary senses. These stages characterized European perceptions of human evolution. 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. 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. On the other hand, countries like South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia sometimes experience snowfalls. 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. African cosmogonic narratives posit the creation of a universe and the birth of a people and their indigenous religions. Morocco and Algeria are typical examples of this misconception. In one particular odu of Ifa, Ifa informs us and, correctly so, that the most cardinal event of the hajj is the climbing of Mount Arafat (Oke Arafa). Thus, it is easy to see why it seems that Africa needs help. a. newly birthed babies. Because of this, rituals were done to prevent the birth of twins which the people believed to be an anomaly. When I told him I am a twin (Ibeji) in Yoruba traditionand in principle a sacred being myselfhe almost fell on the floor to pay homage! The misconception about African religion Man generally is given to misconception especially in the midst of conflicting ideas or contending issues. No. African Traditional Religions (ATRs) will be discussed within the context of which it belongs to, the African traditional life (ATL). Every life stage is important in African religions, from birth and naming, to betrothal/marriage, elderhood, and eventually death. 9. African dance occupies central place in cultures throughout the African continent, embodying energy and a graceful beauty flowing with rhythm. They often dictate when the community honors a particular divinity or observes particular taboos. 3. The survey appears to support the prevailing narrative that the most . Your email address will not be published. An example is the Ancient Benin Kingdom, known for its impressive artwork which is now scattered across the world. Africa is often seen as a poor Country and one that cant do without the help of the western world. In this postcolonial period, it has come to be established that there is what we may call . In times of crisis they often come to the surface, or people revert to them in secret.8. African religions do not rely on a single individual to be a religious leader, but rather depend on an entire community to make the religion work. 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