Africa has 4 main climate zones. This article was originally published by Oxford University Press on May 16, 2014. Mursi girl in Ethiopia. The culture believes and traditions of the people of Africa is vast and should not be oversimplified in a stereotypical way. My earlier scholarship was propelled by the insight that the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship are what define Yoruba civil religion and, indeed, the center of Yoruba identity.15 Sociologist Robert Bellah understands civil religion as the sacred principle and central ethic that unites a people, without which societies cannot function.16 Civil religion incorporates common myths, history, values, and symbols that relate to a societys sense of collective identity. However, western culture has blurred to an extent the lines between African tribes. The truth is that people in some African countries lack access to education and resources, but they make the most of what they have. While some countries are hot most of the year, other countries experience different types of weather. 15. See Luc De Heusch, What Shall We Do with the Drunken King?,. Lets take the killing of twins as a case study. Ifa rejects the religious extremism of certain forms of radical Islam making life unbearable in todays world. Thus, it is easy to see why it seems that Africa needs help. As the late African historian Cheikh Anta Diop argued, matriarchy was embedded in the African way of life. Another misbelief about Africa is that all Africans are the same. There is a general misconception that the entire people of North Africa speak Arabic. About | Commentary Guidelines | Harvard University Privacy | Accessibility | Digital Accessibility | Trademark Notice | Reporting Copyright Infringements This is an incorrect representation of the continent that is so vast and with diverse political, social and economic differences. 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. Because religion is a way of life, it relates to culture and society as they affect the worldview of the African people. So it is the responsibility of the religious leaders in these . Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. Understanding African Traditional Religion. It was through this encounter that the Yoruba system of banking money in traditional pots kept underground in farms and forests began. A proper ongoing study of Ifa in West Africa would enable us to understand how one groupthe Yoruba of West Africaencounters transcendence and the sacred in practicing their tradition in ways radically different from Western constructions of religion. Perhaps its the abundant wildlife, scorching deserts, or the vast uninhabited plainlands. Representation matters, and as scholars we have a responsibility to advocate for religions in their contexts. There are many female goddesses along with their male counterparts. The colonial masters sold the idea that the long-held tradition and believes of the African people is savage, inferior, and primitive. In digging up facts I found that, while many Africans say that homosexuality is un-African, African culture is no stranger to homosexual behaviours and acts. Especially if you have never been to Africa. Earlier researchers and missionaries portrayed them often as primitive and barbaric and ridiculed them [I give many examples in my book: White Fathers in Colonial Central Africa - a Critical Examination of V.Y. 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. MISCONCEPTION OF THE SUPREM BEING IN ATR There have been widespread misconceptions about the African Traditional Religion (hereinafter ATR). Traditional African religions have gone global! Myth: Slavery is a product of Western civilization. This inaccurate assessment of African belief even affects the definition of African 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. The ability of the Black community to call on the spirits and ways of its ancestors is crucial to its continu Voodoo, however, is a dynamic religion with no standardized dogma. It is misleading to say "Africa" when speaking about a specific tribe, ethnic group, or country in Africa. Again, this isnt true. In certain contexts and communities we have many documented instances of the central role of goddesses as founders of traditions, builders of kingdoms, and saviors and defenders of cities and civilizationsfor example, Moremi in Yorubaland, Nzinga in Angola, and Osun in West Africa. On the other hand, countries like South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia sometimes experience snowfalls. They held the view that twins were a symbol of excessive fertility which is a characteristic of animals. African spirituality more generallyand Nigerian spirituality in particularis shaped by how individuals in their daily existence make sense of their interactions with religious experience. Their many realities that Africans have not been . 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. Myths, folklores proverbs therefore become the major sources of African philosophy (Jaja, 1995:28). 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. These are also stories about how the world was put into place by a divine power, usually a supreme god, but in collaboration with other lesser supernatural beings or deities, who act on his behalf or aid in the creative process.11 The mechanisms and techniques of creation vary from story to story and from one tradition to another. Similar to other West African communities, the Yoruba did not reject Western modernity but challenged its claim to ontological and epistemological superiority. The myths held by the west about Africa are mostly founded on misinformation. The African tradition of female circumcision is the ritual of the rite of passage from girlhood into the realm of womanhood. Similarly, there are others like Henry Louis Gates who has appropriated images of the Yoruba deity of Esu in his own work. This creates fear and panic resulting in misleading assumptions about Africa. These can be found all over the Americas and Europe. For example, James George Frazer (18541941) and Edward B. Tylor (18321917) classified indigenous religious practices of natives not as universally religious or generative of religious cultures but as forms of primitive religion or magic arising from the lower of three stages of human progress. Gender dynamics are important in African indigenous religions and in cultural systems, so much so that women goddesses and women-invented rituals are commonplace. Many sources define African worship as ancestral worship which is wrong. 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. Because of this, rituals were done to prevent the birth of twins which the people believed to be an anomaly. Courtesy Of Stevenson, Amsterdam/Cape Town/Johannesburg. 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. Just as Muslim traders and sojourners introduced new world religions to North and West Africa, Western traders and missionaries introduced new world religions to the continent. 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. It is also the most diversified continent in the world. 9 years ago. . Haitian Vodou is an African diasporic religion that developed in Haiti between the 16th and 19th centuries. Human spirits represent people who have died, usually ancestors, in the recent or distant past.5 Third, the world of the ancestors occupies a large part of African cosmology. 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. More so, myths encode the traditional settings of the African and their belief system. 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. This article analyses the legal processes of recognising customary and religious (Muslim) marriages in South Africa's constitutional democracy. For example, in many African cultures, intending couples MUST perform both traditional and white weddings. Later in my academic life, I explored theoretical issues at the national level, showing how Nigerian civil religionan invisible faithprovided a template for assessing how we fared at nation building, allowing the symbols of Nigerian nationhood to take on religious significance for the Nigerian public above and beyond any particular cultural communities of faith.17 I do not want to be misunderstood here. These narratives come to us in the form of myths. Unlike its popular usage, in scholarly language myths are sacred stories believed to be true by those who hold on to them. Religions such as Candombl, Vodun, Santeria, and the Caribbean and Orisa tradition historically came about from African transactions with the new world and the old Euro-Christian worldview. d. politics, everyday life. Responding to this erasure of African indigenous religion as a productive and generative practice, scholars rallied in opposition. Myth 3: Africa Is Lacking Innovation. So, why was it the negative stories about killing of twins that were promoted? The story of Mary Slessor and the killing of twins is popular. The most common African history begins with the colonial era. The Hausa man is different from the Igbo man who is also different from the Yoruba man. African identity and culture are preserved in African Traditional Religion. Many centuries ago, Ifa must have envisaged the possibility of Boko Harams Islamic extremist movement ravaging Nigeria today. In many African countries a range of beliefs and attitudes underpin these alternative explanations. The story is the same in the political sphere. expressed in all the African cultures, it means that religion forms parts of African culture but not all African cultural practices are religious. Therefore, this article will explore African spirituality, traditional religion, culture and the present way of life. Africa is poor. With the negative image of the, A lot of people seize the chance of the holiday season to organize their weddings. 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. Paperback. 9. These stages characterized European perceptions of human evolution. 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. Such dismissal has been based on the misconception and assumption that indigenous Bapedi . Once again, this is far from the truth. John Mbiti in his book African Religion and Philosophy, argued that African Religion deserves the same respect as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Like Mbiti and Green, Magesa notes that the world of African Traditional Religion is a hierarchically ordered place where, God is seen as the Great ancestor, the first Founder and the Progenitor, the Giver of Life behind everything that exists. 8. Here are some 10 myths about Africa and Africans that are either an exaggeration of the fact or based on misguided information. Lilith Dorsey. 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. 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. Du Bois argued . It is not unusual to see people living below the poverty line in nearly every country on earth. Your email address will not be published. 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. Kofi Johnson Fayetteville State University kjohnson@uncfsu.edu. 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. 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. When it comes to cryptocurrencies, African countries are leading as well. They include assumptions, misconceptions, traditional or religious beliefs and beliefs about the . According to theologian Tony Evans, W. E. B. Thank you for this interesting essay on African religion. I ran into a co-resident, a famous Swiss author. One of the most ridiculous myths about it is that homosexuality did not exist in the continent until white men imported it. Finally, it suggested that Afrocentric terminologiesis . The African religion was condemned by the Early European scholars, travelers, investigators and missionaries. 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. with Ibramic faiths tends to deprive the African Traditional Religion its true status as an independent religion . Whether one agrees or disagrees with the practice, it is important to note that not all female initiations involve circumcision, and that the rituals associated with initiation are crucial to ensuring that an individuals social position is affirmed by both family and community. Through their mixing, a new kind of religion emerged, forming the basis for what we have come to know as African diaspora religion. Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism. It goes a long way to show that information is power and the way a story is told matters a lot. Unlike other world religions that have written scriptures, oral sources form the core of indigenous African religions. One of the more fascinating conversations that has emerged in the debate about African indigenous traditions is about the central role of women as bearers and transmitters of the traditions, and also the negotiation of gender dynamics. 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. This corrective scholarship and critical intervention helped to redefine African worldviews and spirituality and, as such, showed how African religion is pivotal to the individual and communal existence of the people. 4.8 out of 5 stars. traditional African takes the character of critical reflection of the African understanding of reality and world view. Long before the arrival of Christianity and Islam, Africans practiced African traditional religion (ATR). Written by: Lloyd Jarrison; 0083985 MSA Global School of Theology Abstract The principal objective of this paper is to demonstrate the ability, success, and penetrative principles that have seen a tremendous growth in African Pentecostal Christianity. The orthodox Easternize it. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances. There is a common saying in Africa Dont forget where you come from. 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. 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! 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misconceptions about african traditional religion