My interest is in the intersection of indigenous African religious traditions and Christianity — Islam — Judaism. We Africans should focus even more on our own jux like other continents do, coz ATR is our indigenous and non else. The 15 facts about African Traditional Religion are indeed true and as a matter of fact, that is why we do not have real conversion to Christianity. ATR is a way of life of people and practical by nature.
Christianity makes people live on promises which do not give immediate answers to their problems. Christianity has therefore, robbed Africa of its beautiful culture and religion. What are those aspects of African indigenous religious worldview that have found expression with African indigenous churches.
Have been looking for the fact about Tradition religion for so long and am so glad that I found out some fact here about ATR, am so happy so read all these fact because our people are now focus on christainity and Islamic religion only and they leave ATR behind and the raw fact is that ATR is the true way of life and the best religion so far.
So there fore am begging all Africans to come back Home. Faith is a gift: religion a work. God is not static but living and ceaselessly working to bring peace to human hearts. God has shown humans how they ought to live but it takes courage, which we lack, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God. So we all want to do our own thing: chaos. Buy Now Read More. May 16 th African religions cover a diverse landscape of ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and worldviews. By Jacob K.
Olupona 1. Subscribe to the OUPblog via email: Our Privacy Policy sets out how Oxford University Press handles your personal information, and your rights to object to your personal information being used for marketing to you or being processed as part of our business activities. Recent Comments. Cool Post 3 thatoneguatemalan 10 th January African Diversity jakesickels 20 th September Esther Showa 29 th June Katusiime zuwaina 28 th September Faith 23 rd November Emmanuel 30 th December Iwedi Ojinmah 20 th February Tweyongere Deus 25 th September Derek B 2 nd February Nsenkyerene Kofi 28 th October Gambo hyella gundiri 7 th March Some African diasporans are returning to the continent to reconnect with their ancestral traditions, and they are encouraging and organizing the local African communities to reclaim this heritage.
African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. While Islam and Christianity tend to be overtly resistant to adopting traditional African religious ideas or practices, indigenous African religions have always accommodated other beliefs. For example, an African amulet might have inside of it a written verse from either the Koran or Christian Bible.
The idea is that the traditional African practitioner who constructed that amulet believes in the efficacy of other faiths and religions; there is no conflict in his mind between his traditional African spirituality and another faith.
They are not mutually exclusive. Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. 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.
Holding or maintaining to a uniform doctrine is not the essence of indigenous African religions. OLUPONA: We would lose a worldview that has collectively sustained, enriched, and given meaning to a continent and numerous other societies for centuries through its epistemology, metaphysics, history, and practices. For instance, if we were to lose indigenous African religions in Africa, then diviners would disappear, and if diviners disappeared, we would not only lose an important spiritual specialist for many Africans, but also an institution that for centuries has been the repository of African history, wisdom, and knowledge.
Diviners — who go through a long educational and apprenticeship program — hold the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African people. The Yoruba diviners, for example, draw on this extensive indigenous knowledge every day by consulting Ifa, an extensive literary corpus of information covering science, medicine, cosmology, and metaphysics.
That would be a serious loss not only for Africans, but also for academics, researchers, writers, and general seekers of wisdom the world over. OLUPONA: If we lose traditional African religions, we would also lose or continue to seriously undermine the African practice of rites of passage such as the much cherished age-grade initiations, which have for so long integrated and bought Africans together under a common understanding, or worldview.
These initiation rituals are already not as common in Africa as they were only 50 years ago, yet age-grade initiations have always helped young Africans feel connected to their community and their past. In lieu of these traditional African ways of defining oneself, Christianity and Islam are gradually creating a social identity in Africa that cuts across these indigenous African religious and social identities.
For myself, I negotiate between my Yoruba and Christian identity by, for example, affirming those aspects of African culture that promote good life and communal human welfare. For instance, in a few years time, I pray that I will be participating in an age-grade festival — for men around 70 years of age — called Ero in my native Nigerian community in Ute, in Ondo state.
Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. Maybe this is why I am not an Anglican priest. In the end, I believe that Africans can make room for a plurality of religious points of view without one religious point of view excluding or compromising the other.
Anthony Chiorazzi, who has an M. He has researched and written about such diverse religious cultures as the Hare Krishnas, Zoroastrians, Shakers, and the Old Order Amish. Wendy Sherman, who was the lead U. In other words, he shows that the sense of the divine was not something introduced to Africa by missionaries or by anyone else; that the knowledge of God in African religion was not much different from the idea of God that Christian missionaries preached in Africa; and, more specifically to our purpose here, that belief in God engendered a moral response that for centuries before Christian arrival in Africa directed moral life and interaction on the continent and among its peoples.
According to Mbiti, Africans came to believe in God by reflecting on their experience and through observation of the created universe. 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. Rooted in the belief in God as the Creator, Africans believe in various dimensions of the created universe, such as visible and invisible the spiritual realm , heavenly skyward and earthly and in some ethnic groups there is a belief in the underworld.
Commonly, God is believed to dwell in the skies. While the universe has a beginning, many Africans believe that it does not have an end—either spatially or temporally. The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. Mbiti emphasizes that Africans view the universe religiously. Since God is seen as the Creator, various aspects of the universe are permeated by the sense of the sacred—the religious mentality affects the way people see the universe.
Therefore, the universe has dimensions of order and power as follows: first of all, there is order in the laws of nature. This order, established by God, guides the functioning of the universe, preventing it from falling into chaos; and it ensures the continuance of life and the universe itself.
Thus, everything is not completely unpredictable and chaotic because of this order. Secondly, there is moral and religious order. 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.
This order, according to Mbiti, is knowable to humans, by nature. Thus, it is because of the existence of this order that different communities have worked out a code of conduct. This happened in the past, and these codes were stipulated, considered sacred and binding, by the community leaders:. The moral and religious order in the universe is articulated and expressed in a variety of taboos and customs that prohibit specific actions contravening such order.
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.
Human beings maintain active and real relationships with the spiritual world, especially with the living dead, through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. These act as a link between God and the human community. There is also a mystical order of the universe. Africans believe in the existence of a mystical, invisible, hidden, spiritual power in the universe.
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.
This is a universal belief among Africans. Those to whom this power is accessible can use it for good, such as healing, rainmaking, or divination, while others can use it for harm, through magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. This power is not accessible to everyone, and in most cases it is inborn, but the person has to learn how to use it.
Mbiti says that:.
0コメント