Similarly, there are others like Henry Louis Gates who has appropriated images of the Yoruba deity of Esu in his own work. The traditional approach of indigenous African religions to gender is one of complementarity in which a confluenceof male and female forces must operate in harmony. It is not unusual to see people living below the poverty line in nearly every country on earth. For instance, the Asante people of Ghana see twins as sacred beings. Fact: Slavery is older than the first human records. It arose through a process of syncretism between several traditional religions of West and Central Africa and Roman Catholicism.There is no central authority in control of the religion and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Vodouists, Vodouisants, or Serviteurs. John Mbiti divides spirit beings into two types, nature spirits and human spirits. God is the first Initiator of a people's way of Life, its tradition. African religions are, therefore, a praxis, and this is where the focus of study should mostly be directed. African traditional religion (ATRs) and spirituality have always been surrounded by negativity. Symbolic and mythic narratives may exist side by side with narratives of legends in history that bear similar characteristics with motifs and events of creation or coming to birth. Check Out Marriage Customs From 10 African Tribes, 15 Tribes With Surprising Bridal Traditions In Africa, 12 Surprising African Countries That Allow Dual Citizenship By Marriage, Can Foreigners Buy Land In Ghana? It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. . 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. Robert N. Bellah, Civil Religion in America,, Jacob K. Olupona, Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival and Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review),. Women play a key role in the practice of these traditions, and the internal gender relations and dynamics are very profound. Our parting a week later was hard for him! Religious contexts are shaped and determined by the identity of these religions. They are known as upstanding citizens and have been entrusted with sensitive positions in society. The colonial masters sold the idea that the long-held tradition and believes of the African people is savage, inferior, and primitive. However, since Africans are known for their excellent craftsmanship, these artifacts do tell the story of the ancient African empires. Many traditional African religions are based on guiding principles that are unfathomable to foreigners, more specifically those with interests such as historians and scholars. 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. 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. 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. Space constraints permit me to cite only one example. Theres a globally shared perspective of Africa being full of diseases. However, the missionaries of the two foreign religions succeeded in converting some African people to the new religions. Photo: Pinterest. Voodoo has no scripture or world authority. It all depends on the time of the year. It is also the most diversified continent in the world. /* 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. Despite conversion to Islam or to Christianity, Africans continue to accommodate an indigenous worldview that occupies a vital space in the African consciousness. Benin Is Getting Back 26 Of Its Looted Artifacts from The Colonial Era. the earlier idea was that African Traditional Religion was incompatible with monotheism. Using the qualitative historical research . 3. The term "African Traditional Religion" is used in two complementary senses. Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism. When Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code was released, it generated both curiosity and criticism for its portrayal of Christianity. This is the popular assumption amongst many African theologians of which Maluleke (1994) is one example. Apart from the different languages, every tribe and culture have their way of dressing too. It is the foundation on which the morals of pre-colonial Africa were built. The absence of centralized and unified cosmologies indicates the multifaceted nature of African religious life and worldviews. Now it is our turn to Africanize it.. In most African cultures, history and beliefs have been explained and passed on through oral traditions and storytelling. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. Most Africans at home and in the diaspora have made a name for themselves and praised for their contributions to society. This lack of knowledge as well as understanding of essentials has led to burgeoning of myths on African . 3. Slowly, they projected ATR as barbaric and dehumanizing. 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. African dance occupies central place in cultures throughout the African continent, embodying energy and a graceful beauty flowing with rhythm. MISCONCEPTION OF THE SUPREM BEING IN ATR There have been widespread misconceptions about the African Traditional Religion (hereinafter ATR). One reason that might account for the gap in African history is the unavailability of any written document. 2,269. African countries like Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya are among the fastest-growing economies in the world. Mursi girl in Ethiopia. The reason is partly that they want a time when, Your email address will not be published. African scholars in the United States are paying increasing attention to African images in African American culture and religion.20 Some scholars, especially literary critics, now scout African American novels such as Toni Morrisons and Alice Walkers works, for glimpses of African traditions. My essay Om ptadran, an Africanist Griot: Toni Morrison and African Epistemology, Myths, and Literary Culture, in. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. 8. Africa is a continent that is made up of 54 countries, 1.3 billion inhabitants, more than 3000 ethnic groups, and 2100 unique languages. In my view, these common misconceptions are due to ill representation of the African culture. The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. 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. . There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. ao Ajima OM, Ubana EU (2018) The Concept . Indigenous traditions, however, did not capitulate to these forms, but, rather, creatively domesticated the new faiths, absorbing new rituals and tenets into their own belief systems and responding to the exogenous modernity in its wake. He clarifies that there is a close relationship between all things with one reality, and no distinction between physical and spiritual, adding that meaning in life is derived from unity. The cosmological structure, however, is much more defined and precise. 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. Another misbelief about Africa is that all Africans are the same. Each ceremony denotes passage from one social status to another and is an opportunity to celebrate the initiates on their journey. Just as rituals are an expression of this . John Mbiti in his book African Religion and Philosophy, argued that African Religion deserves the same respect as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. That is why we have freewill, and regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge that a living God exists or not, and regardless of how we choose to worship Him, directly or through deities, we will all be eventually accountable. Also, about 30 % of the earths remaining mineral resources are in Africa. 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. 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. African Traditional Religion is the traditional religion of the African people before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Such scholars stereotyped African religionand African peoples themselvesas primitive social forms, part of a lower social order. The story is the same in the political sphere. The Hausa man is different from the Igbo man who is also different from the Yoruba man. His many publications include African Religions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014); City of 201 Gods: Il-If in Time, Space, and the Imagination (University of California Press, 2011); and Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals (Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991), which has become a model for ethnographic research among Yoruba-speaking communities. 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. If you take these reports at face value, you may start to believe that all Africans are poor. The challenge is to study faith, proverbs, traditions and mythology across Africa to identify the fragments of religion passed down as oral traditions and mythology in the great . The battle between the African traditional religion and western civilization has been raging on for years. This is an incorrect representation of the continent that is so vast and with diverse political, social and economic differences. 4. Courtesy Of Stevenson, Amsterdam/Cape Town/Johannesburg. Yet in the scholarship on the history of religions, indigenous African religions were never considered a substantive part of the worlds religious traditions, because they failed to fulfill certain criteria defined by axial age civilization. Privileged European scholars denied the agency of African religions and singled outand thereby controlledAfrican identity. Scholarship has since proved, however, that the tenacity of indigenous religion is evident in all spheres of African life. Africa is a Continent Full of Corruption, Poverty and War. Its almost as if pre-colonial Africa never existed. As in the Muslim pilgrimage, it is a solemn journey to the hilltop. Unlike the Christian community, recited stories of creation are not performed by a single God, who ordered, by fiat, the creation of the universe with mere spoken words. In fact, Africa is a vast continent encompassing both geographic variation and tremendous cultural diversity. 11. expressed in all the African cultures, it means that religion forms parts of African culture but not all African cultural practices are religious. 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. South Africa, Tunisia, and Kenya rank among the top countries with the best health care system in Africa. When he heard that I came from Nigeria, he wanted to display his knowledge of Ocha tradition as a devotee of Oxhosi, God of Thunder in Afro-Brazilian heritage. Indigenous traditions continue to define the African personality. Advertisement. .sqs-featured-posts-gallery .title-desc-wrapper .view-post Every life stage is important in African religions, from birth and naming, to betrothal/marriage, elderhood, and eventually death. 53 offers from $9.56. Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. What we know as African history today is mostly based on the interpretations of our colonial masters. The problem of Africa isnt wealth but the unequal distribution of wealth. Let's begun by saying that ATR, refer to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of Africans. 3. Mudimbe's . 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. Every tribe and culture have their beliefs and way of life. It is misleading to say "Africa" when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. Through a profound process of orality, Ifa as an interpretive tradition espouses an epistemology, metaphysics, morality, and a set of ethical principles and political ideology. 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. Correcting Misconceptions About African Traditional Religions. For example, in many African cultures, intending couples MUST perform both traditional and white weddings. These countries are often very hot. The truth is that people in some African countries lack access to education and resources, but they make the most of what they have. Traditional African religion is based on oral traditions, which means that the basic values and way of life are passed from elders to younger generation. 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. 3. It deals with their cosmology, ritual practices, symbols, arts, society, and so on. Get it as soon as Wednesday, Oct 26. 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. Fact: One-third of Moroccans and one-quarter of Algerians do not speak Arabic as their first language. 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