Africa is the second-largest continent in the world. The terms 'traditional' and 'religion' (in its singular form) have each been targets of criticism. It argues that the best interpretation of the Constitution requires laws that address cross-cutting issues of recognition and redistribution relating to religion/culture and gender, and that the best . Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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. Myth: Slavery in the non-Western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, Narratives about the creation of the universe (cosmogony) and the nature and structure of the world (cosmology) provide a useful entry to understanding African religious life and worldviews. Correcting Misconceptions About African Traditional Religions. 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. Africa is a Continent Full of Corruption, Poverty and War. Similarly, indigenous religion, worldviews, and rituals such as rites of passage and other religious performances are permeated by other religions, culture, and society in general. As the late African historian Cheikh Anta Diop argued, matriarchy was embedded in the African way of life. The colonial masters brought with them a new religion which they believe to be superior to African traditional religion. During the era of Western religious and cultural encounters in Yorubaland, some children were named Oguntoyibo, signifying Ogun (god of war and iron) is as powerful as the European god. Some children received names such as Ifatoyinbo, Ifa is as powerful as the white mans god. Such names and concepts illustrate the force and creative resistance of indigenous thought and its ability to engage Western modernity in rigorous debate. Please note: Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete. Unique Beliefs, and Too Many Misconceptions Traditional native sweat lodge with hot stones inside . . While some Christian mission historians, such as J. D. Y. Peel, for example, correctly argue that the Yoruba had their own enlightenment (Olaju), this is always presented in the context of Christian conversion and is very much tied to the escalating Christian missionary movement. These elements are worth exploring and espousing. But, the continent of Africa is far from poor. Slowly, they projected ATR as barbaric and dehumanizing. The debate regarding the continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity has been raging since the early 19th century. Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary . 9 years ago. There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. Advocating for civil religion in a religiously pluralistic society does not require the erasure of conventional religious traditions. Most are watered-down versions of what was truly a thriving civilization. Rather, institutional religion continues to grow in relevance and in the national imagination, whether its invocations are part of conversations concerning nation building, Maitatsine and Boko Haram violence, the secularism debate, the Sharia debate, the question of Islamic banking, or the role of the Organization of Islamic Conference. There are quite a number of revival groups and movements whose main aim is to ensure that the tenants and practice of African indigenous religion that are threatened survive. 2. The expression is also used almost as a technical term for a particular reading of such beliefs and practices, one that purports . Photo: Pinterest. It is practiced around the world but there is no accurate count of how many people are Voodooists. Benin Is Getting Back 26 Of Its Looted Artifacts from The Colonial Era. At the same time, forms of orature such as the Ifa tradition amongst the Yoruba, can form important sources for understanding the tenants and worldview of these religions that can serve as analogs to scriptures such as the Bible or the Quran. Advertisement. I did ancestry and, This is the genuine list of best African president. 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. Africans who follow a traditional religion rely on no scriptures, canonical texts, or holy books to guide them. 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. Ritual enables supernatural beings to bless individuals and the community with sustenance, prosperity, and fecundity.14 Rites of passage, such as initiation ceremonies, are rituals marking personal transitions recognized and celebrated by the community. More so, myths encode the traditional settings of the African and their belief system. These oral sources are intricately interwoven into arts, political and social structure, and material culture. Many sources define African worship as ancestral worship which is wrong. MISCONCEPTION OF THE SUPREM BEING IN ATR There have been widespread misconceptions about the African Traditional Religion (hereinafter ATR). Ifas religious thought systemfriendlier to Islam than to Christianitynot only predates Islam but also engages Islam in serious conversation. Myths, folklores proverbs therefore become the major sources of African philosophy (Jaja, 1995:28). Inasmuch as androcentric authority is more prominent within social structures and systems and patriarchy is more pronounced in the social order, women are considered the cornerstone of the African family system.19 The African mother is a vibrant life force, central to African religious understandings of the interrelatedness between the human and the divine, as she embodies the production and sustaining of life. African countries are also top the list of the 2021 WHO health care index. Loosely, it encompasses all African beliefs and practices that are considered religious but neither Christian nor Islamic. Here Is What You Have To Know. 53 offers from $9.56. Their many realities that Africans have not been . 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. This misconception has, in some scholars, matured into prejudice and resilient skepticism about the African's ability to grasp the concept of God. However, the so-called white wedding is Western culture. The absence of centralized and unified cosmologies indicates the multifaceted nature of African religious life and worldviews. 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. The Bambara and Malinke people of Mali believed that the primordial beings were twins. 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. Elders, priests, and priestesses have served as guardians of the sacred traditions. Humans are thus able to maintain constant and symbiotic relations with their ancestors who are understood to be intimately concerned and involved in their descendants everyday affairs. In African traditional religions guidance is provided through myths, which are handed down orally. Although it is difficult to generalize about African traditional cosmology and worldviews, a common denominator among them is a three-tiered model in which the human world exists sandwiched between the sky and the earth (including the underworld)a schema that is not unique to Africa but is found in many of the worlds religious systems as well. In fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya rank among the top countries with the best health care system in Africa. The more modern incarnation of this ancient African religionVoodooemerged as a unique blend of Catholic and African magical and religious rites. See Luc De Heusch, What Shall We Do with the Drunken King?,. Absolute as Supreme, infinite and everlasting mind. Gender dynamics are important in African indigenous religions and in cultural systems, so much so that women goddesses and women-invented rituals are commonplace. There are so many interesting facts about Africa that you dont see every day. Temperature varies from one country to another depending on the climate type. 4.8 out of 5 stars. Lilith Dorsey. In most African cultures, history and beliefs have been explained and passed on through oral traditions and storytelling. Catholic moral theologian Laurenti Magesa argues that, unlike clothes, which one can wear and take off, for Africans, religion is like skin that cannot be so easily abandoned.7 Mbiti also captures this unique aspect in the following passage: Because traditional religions permeate all the departments of life, there is no formal distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the religious and non-religious, between the spiritual and the material areas of life. 11. Your email address will not be published. Each ceremony denotes passage from one social status to another and is an opportunity to celebrate the initiates on their journey. 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. Another misbelief about Africa is that all Africans are the same. Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. 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. Let's begun by saying that ATR, refer to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of Africans. Because of this, rituals were done to prevent the birth of twins which the people believed to be an anomaly. with Ibramic faiths tends to deprive the African Traditional Religion its true status as an independent religion . We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. Required fields are marked *, Hello my question is how can I find a list of African countries that offers citizenship. The African roots of Voodoo may stretch back over 6000 years, making it one of the world's oldest ancestral traditions. 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. 12. Through modern change these traditional religions cannot remain intact, but they are by no means extinct. The Mursi religion is classified as Animism. Indeed indigenous African religions have provided the blueprint for robust conversations and thinking about community relations, interfaith dialogue, civil society, and civil religion. Fact: Slavery is older than the first human records. 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. Marriage customs in Africa vary from one tribe to another. Every life stage is important in African religions, from birth and naming, to betrothal/marriage, elderhood, and eventually death. Her growing fascination led to an Emerson Foundation-funded research project this summer, titled "Demystifying African Religion." Such an approach should endeavor to provide not only an awareness of sociocultural contexts but also to narrate the historical dimensions of these traditions. 1 While, officially, statistics suggest that African . South Africa, as a member state of the World Health Organisation, has been set on the path of institutionalising African traditional medicine. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. So, why was it the negative stories about killing of twins that were promoted? Such dismissal has been based on the misconception and assumption that indigenous Bapedi . 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. Understanding African Traditional Religion. But Ifa divination predates Western modernity. In this way, the visible and invisible are in tandem, leading practitioners to speak about all objects, whether animate or inanimate, as potentially sacred on some level. Myths reveal critical events and episodesinvolving superhuman entities, gods, spirits, ancestorsthat are of profound and transcendent significance to the African people who espouse them. The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. By civil religion, I have in mind not only institutional religion and the beliefs and practices as they relate to the sacred and transcendent, but also practices not always defined as religious, including the rites of passage offered by our various youth brigades, and also the values of communalism and national sacrifice. In this postcolonial period, it has come to be established that there is what we may call . They are less concerned with doctrines and much more so with rituals, ceremonies, and lived practices. They tend to propagate peaceful coexistence, and they promote good relations with members of other religious traditions that surround them. The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. European theorists are important, and we need to know and understand them to engage in serious global cultural dialogue, but this does not mean that we should discard our traditions as noninterpretive traditions limited merely to ethnographic illustrations. Many foreign nations and organizations do send aid to African countries. A classic example is how the Ifa divination text of the Yoruba provides deep commentary on the practice of Islam by the Yoruba people, such as the hajj tradition. 2. A porous border exists between the human realm and the sky, which belongs to the gods. However, since Africans are known for their excellent craftsmanship, these artifacts do tell the story of the ancient African empires. 2,269. 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. 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. In response to this verse, Ifa defines its own pilgrimage tradition in the rituals of the climbing of Oke Itase (Ifa Hill), the home of Ifa, when the Araba of Ifa in quiet solitude leads the devotee to the top of the sacred temple of Ifa. On the other hand, countries like South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia sometimes experience snowfalls. It is misleading to say Africa when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. The story is the same in the political sphere. There are key developmental projects in some African countries that would not be possible without Foreign aids. 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. Your email address will not be published. As in the Muslim pilgrimage, it is a solemn journey to the hilltop. While those who identify as practitioners of traditional African religions are often in the minority, many who identify as Muslims or Christians are involved in traditional religions to one degree or another. My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. I suggest that, at the conceptual and theoretical levels, we begin to take this interpretive approach seriously. 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. Indigenous Bapedi music and oral tradition have been dismissed as myth, superstition and primitive stories. Each has a life force but no concrete physical form. African Traditional Religion: A Definition (1973), Omosade Awolalu in Yoruba Belief and Sacrificial Rites and John Mbiti in The Concept of God in Africa (1970) are a few examples of postcolonial scholars of religion who have resisted and denounced colonial idea that Africans do not know God. 1. Although the slaves accepted Roman Catholicism, they did not give up their traditional beliefs either. Second, spirit beings occupy the next tier in the cosmology and constitute a pantheon of deities who often assist the supreme God in performing different functions. Acceptably, this was a cruel act of ignorance, but like many other stories about African countries, this story is often generalized. 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! Africa is host to the highest number of religious countries in the world, according to a recent Gallop poll. Introduction. Here are some 10 myths about Africa and Africans that are either an exaggeration of the fact or based on misguided information. Myth #2. . /* 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. If you take these reports at face value, you may start to believe that all Africans are poor. The diviner, therefore, is also a counselor, psychologist, medicine man or woman, and the spiritual guardian of villages and towns. African dance occupies central place in cultures throughout the African continent, embodying energy and a graceful beauty flowing with rhythm. Not the one we saw, very clear and good article easy to understand. For one thing, a sizable number of African myths deal with events considered to have actually happened as narrated by the people themselves or as reformulated into symbolic expressions of historical events. those misconceptions and misrepresentations of the facts presented by Eurocentric scholars. They certainly represent interpretive traditions, and, when carefully studied, they form a solid foundation for theoretical frameworks used to study and decode these religions in our scholarship. 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