similarities between african traditional religion and christianity pdfsimilarities between african traditional religion and christianity pdf

Indigenous African religions are pragmatic. Other spirits with a significant role in maintaining the African traditional moral world include ancestors and lineage spirits who operate in specific social contexts where their will is expressed through misfortunes, and some other spirits who do not act directly but who rely on human agents to effect their will. These spirits underlie the power of spirit mediums who, as mediators between space and the human world and by virtue of the moral authority this confers, are able to arbitrate between living human beings. It is a counter culture in response to the, The move towards contextual Christianity in Africa is an essential venture if Christianity is to communicate with the African cultural heritage. Such activities include the making of sacrifices and the pouring of libations. 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. Level of cannabis use could determine post-op outcomes, Historian says Fla. dispute shows why AP class in African American studies is needed, Why Church Committee alums urged new House panel to avoid partisanship, One small step toward understanding gravity, Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. For all Ghanaian ethnic groups, the spirit world is considered to be as real as the world of the living. Acts are wrong if they hurt or damage relationships or if they are discovered to constitute a breach of custom or regulation. To buttress his point Mbiti states that in certain African societies to sleep with someone elses wife is not considered evil if these two are not found out by the society which forbids it, and in other societies is in fact an expression of friendship and hospitality to let a guest spend the night with ones wife or daughter or sister. Mbitis assertions must be read as a limited reference to some African societies and in some limited settings. It argues that since the coming of democracy this form of religion has occupied a more important position, Although there is some debate, Francis Oborji in this article argues that one should speak of African Traditional Religion (ATR) in the singular. Eternal Rest of the Soul. Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, C.S.Sp., is Professor of moral theology, the theology of the world church, and Africana studies at the University of Notre Dame. Witchcraft has been a prevailing belief in African cultures and has continually posed problems for the African people groups. They are not mutually exclusive. Commonalities between Christianity and Africa Traditional Religion. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. 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. 1"7$X9Xyyyb GNpL!9I&mxo0++44cA@5c. University of Notre Dame, McGrath Institute for Church Life The spirit medium is required to possess moral probity and integrity. stream L_}mB)b7h; uZ4 QI,^ID-*Rj" xx>@9lCQr [GE1Hz:Aj3>^5T-FPD5|. 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. GAZETTE: What will Africa lose if it loses its African indigenous worldview? The introduced religions of Islam (in northern Africa) and Christianity (in southern Africa) are now the continents major religions, but traditional religions still play an important role, especially in the interior of sub-Saharan Africa. These gods are generally perceived as intermediaries between the Supreme Being and society. He has researched and written about such diverse religious cultures as the Hare Krishnas, Zoroastrians, Shakers, and the Old Order Amish. May the Lord assist us to know the truth and walk in it. This is the kind of interlocutor who will counter an observation about violent militancy in contemporary Islam in the context, let us say, of a discussion about Boko Haram with But what about the Crusades? When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. Before you discuss on how somebody is doing something, it is also good to look at the reason why the person is doing that thing, so that you can be in a better position to educate the person properly. It is also present in relationships between persons, based on age and function. The Church is the Christian family, in which all are accompanied to one another through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ. Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. 2 0 obj Most African communities offered animals and not humans as sacrifices. One of Jacob Oluponas earliest memories in Massachusetts is of nearly freezing in his apartment as a graduate student at Boston University during the great snowstorm of 1978. 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. This includes five countries (Cameroon, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Senegal) where more than half the population uses traditional healers. 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. Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975. All rights reserved. Moral culpability is always on the shoulders of humanity. The same hierarchy evident in the relationship between God, the ancestors, and humanity is also present in the relationship between the animate and the inanimate world, the former being superior to the latter. Total loading time: 0 Highlights of the first writing were, the African Traditional Religion, the life of the ethnic groups in Ghana; their beliefs, customs, ritual and taboos. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. Mission Manual Pages Section A Biblical Basis of Mission 1 20, E-journal of Religious and Theological Studies, TITLE A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SALVATION IN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY: TOWARDS DEVELOPING AN EVANGELISTIC MODEL IN SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TUENSANG DISTRICT CHAPTER ONE, Baptism and Original Sin in the Early Church : contributions of Tertullian, THE UNIQUELY CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW - Ethington Book, CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION IN KUMASI: A COMPARATIVE STUDY Department of General Art Studies, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY @BULLET An Introduction to Bible Doctrine @BULLET, Monotheism in the Qur'an and in the New Testament: Comparative Theological Explorations of the Role of Prophets and the Covenants. Belief in the power of such objects is highest in Senegal (75%) and lowest in Rwanda (5%). It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Human beings maintain active and real relationshipswith the spiritual world, especially with the living dead, through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. Read our research on: Congress | Economy | Black Americans, Side by side with their high levels of commitment to Christianity and Islam, many people in the countries surveyed retain beliefs and rituals that are characteristic of traditional African religions. |,utv2QdjrqfM7PC)2-|O7,0[i=_a/Om"X`Y2FpXBjsFxCqDd`%*g,-J1e*jjq,tm{w>qAsAqN$D Mbiti emphasizes that Africans view the universe religiously. A sacrifice refers to an animal that is offered to God, e.g. This article concerned itself with the modern encounter between Christianity and African Indigenous Religion (AIR) in Africa. I wont pray to an orisa, but I will affirm the importance of my connection with members of my age group. Christianity and Traditional African Heritage, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. February 21, 2019. / DI41@ tD}r;Y w,XVzwiA1JtvrlfFaD7E@s 00=L"q{Vf\}ioKy=lXS.P6ChX m% ~nUV)=vp%FBvy}+6,0+V8sG&>K_iBOntQvyCN[I'uvR;}hA/D|+I9Q$cL, The vigor with which the African Traditional Religion (ATR) has continued to resist the onslaught of Christianity is a cause of academic preoccupation. Christ is the Mediator between Humans and God In African Traditional Religion ancestral spirits, and lesser gods, are usually the spirits that communicate with humans on earth. Marshall, Ruth Victor Christianto, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, International Journal of African Catholicism, Stan-William Ede, Dominic Okoye, Anselm Jimoh, Gregory Ekene Ezeokeke, Louismary Ocha, Overlaps between Judeo-Christian theology and traditional African religions, Vehicles of Divine Mystery: Paul's Danielic Self-Understanding in Ephesians 3, Teach us to number our days: an exegetical and theological analysis of Psalm 90, The Faith Journey of Paul: An Exegetical Analysis of Philippians 3: 1-14, The Concept of God in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Ethnic Groups Compared the Bible, Comparing the Concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible, Entries. By Greens own admission, and as we shall see later, there are as many divergences on the architectonic hinge of these deep structuresGod, the human person, and the materialworldas there are similarities. These act as Gods associates, assistants, and mediators, and they are directly involved in human affairs. Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently sat down for an interview about his lifelong research on indigenous African religions. He is not only the covenant giver He gives the power to keep the covenant. 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. Part two provides a condensed historical survey of the, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, and which is being practised today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number . The spiritual medium is the physical embodiment of the religious retributive order in which Africans know themselves to stand.. This article concerned itself with the modern encounter between Christianity and African Indigenous Religion (AIR) in Africa. The numerous traditional African religions have in common the notion of a creator god, who made the world and then withdrew, remaining remote from the concerns of human life. He contends that although African Traditional Religion generally refers to God as creator and sustainer of the universe, morally good, omniscient, and caring toward humans, yet even where this is held to be true, the high god in Africa is very often regarded as distanced from human affairs. And even when he is considered benign, the high God is morally otiose, having little direct retributive relationship with humankind. In some situations, the high God is cast in unfavorable terms as one who creates and who kills. Barrenness is, therefore, considered a great misfortune because it prevents ancestors from returning to life. Indigenous African religions are by nature plural, varied, and usually informed by ones ethnic identity, where ones family came from in Africa. While some African cosmologies have a clear idea of a supreme being, other cosmologies do not. GAZETTE: In trying to understand African spirituality, is it helpful to refer to it as polytheistic or monotheistic? According to all the major surveys, Christianity and Islam each represent approximately 40 percent of the African population. endobj For example, an African amulet might have inside of it a written verse from either the Koran or Christian Bible. And if these shrines are not properly cared for by the designated descendant, then misfortune in the form of illness might befall the caretaker. Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World, Chapter 3: Traditional African Religious Beliefs and Practices, Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, Next: Chapter 4: Interreligious Harmony and Tensions, Chapter 2: Commitment to Christianity and Islam, Chapter 4: Interreligious Harmony and Tensions, In the U.S. and Western Europe, people say they accept Muslims, but opinions are divided on Islam, In Western Europe, familiarity with Muslims is linked to positive views of Muslims and Islam, Q&A: Measuring attitudes toward Muslims and Jews in Western Europe, Europes Muslim population will continue to grow but how much depends on migration, The Growth of Germanys Muslim Population, Size & Demographic Characteristics of Religious Groups, Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, 60% of Americans Would Be Uncomfortable With Provider Relying on AI in Their Own Health Care, The changing face of Congress in 8 charts, As Russian invasion nears one-year mark, partisans grow further apart on U.S. support for Ukraine. for this article. Ronald M. Green of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a non-African scholar of African religion, has also written about African Traditional Religion and about religion and morality in Africa. The traditional cosmology expresses belief in a supreme being (referred to by the Akan as Nyame, or by the Ewe Mawu). Traditional Africans didnot have this practice. "useRatesEcommerce": false So, basically, to speak of African tradition is to talk about African Traditional Religion. 24 October 2016. Secondly, there is moral and religious order. Christians observe the Lords supper. (Hebrews 1:1,Matthew 5:17,Exodus 34:10-28). His research has helped to introduce and popularize new concepts in religious studies, such as the term reverse missionaries, referring to African prelates sent to Europe and the United States. The African Traditional Religion has no founder. <> between African traditional religion and the Christian faith. Consequently, traditional Africans have different ideas on what role the ancestors play in the lives of living descendants. These differences, I will argue, have significant impact not just on the way people conceive of the moral world or with regard to moral intentions, but also on moral practices. Traditional African religious beliefs, such as belief in the protective power of sacrifices to ancestors, Traditional African religious practices, such as owning sacred objects. However, Christians can offer animals to the church where they canbe sold or reared to give the church income. Indigenous African practices tend to be strongest in the central states of Africa, but some form of their practices and beliefs can be found almost anywhere in Africa. He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. Instead of God keeping his distance from man, He, throughout history and today reaches down in love to draw humans toward him. GAZETTE: But yet you said its a mixed bag? Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. A network of mutual relationships and responsibilities links the duals worlds of the mundane and the sacred. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Our duty is to preach the Word of God and trust the saving grace of Jesus Christ for conversion of souls. This leads him into the whole area of theology of religions, in which the relationship between Christianity and other religions is currently the focus of lively debate. SUMMARY OF REFORMED THEOLOGY IN 10 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Acknowledgements, Introduction: Locations of culture, 1. 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