similarities between african traditional religion and christianity pdf

Corrections? It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential. It appeals more to social scientists than to those working in religious studies, particularly scholars of specific religious traditions. TraditionalAfricans gave offerings but they did not give tithes. Whenever. I should also state that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa. Traditional Africans made images of the Supreme God or other supernatural beingswhich they worshipped. He is not only the covenant giver He gives the power to keep the covenant. They take the communion to remember thedeath and resurrection of Jesus. Odozor's Morality Truly Christian, Truly Africanpublished by theUniversity of Notre Dame Press. The traditional theologians also emphasized that as in all religious traditions, the belief and worship of the Supreme Being in ATR does not just mean the strict performance of certain rituals. A holistic interpretation of the book between Paul and James. It doesnt have a fixed creed, like in some forms of Christianity or Islam. Both believe that God is the creator ofhumankind. Creative people have bypassed gatekeepers for centuries to distribute what they wanted to share so badly. They find common ground in Houghton Library exhibition. |,utv2QdjrqfM7PC)2-|O7,0[i=_a/Om"X`Y2FpXBjsFxCqDd`%*g,-J1e*jjq,tm{w>qAsAqN$D the other in tradition poses a serious dilemma for both Christianity and tradition in Africa. Everything is said to center on them. The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. 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? Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 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. One scholar who has written extensively on African Traditional Religion is John Mbiti, a Kenyan whom many consider the dean of living African theologians. This condition is under a traditional religion belief called the trokosi system or wives of the ancestral gods. These ancestral gods lived in the spiritual world, which according to ATR, is the world populated by spirits. 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. These laws are controlled by God directly or indirectly through Gods intermediaries. ufF'dXeA^l4a*0(1l HLtA@a2O>bOk)x6*. Both have religious leaders or priests whopresent the peoples requests to God. GAZETTE: What else would we lose if we lost traditional African Religions? The spiritual medium is the physical embodiment of the religious retributive order in which Africans know themselves to stand.. For starters, the word religion is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of ones culture, society, or environment. There is also a mystical order of the universe. Omissions? The rapid growth of many religions in Africa and the revival of AIR in . 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. This should make it clear why some African intellectuals would question the relevance of Christianity on the continent. 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. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems - Toyin Falola 2022-03-10 Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. INTRODUCTION Man considers life worth living because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable; hence value in its simple connotation means a thing of worth. Christian teaching forbids making of any kinds ofimages to represent God. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. Traditional Africans believed in the power of magic and medicinemen. OLUPONA: One of the basic reasons is that indigenous African spiritual beliefs are not bound by a written text, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ancestors also serve as intermediaries (see ancestor worship). View all Google Scholar citations Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. Updated: 10 . Areas of interest to read in the part one was how Christianity has found an inroad into the lives of so many who were living in deep darkness and slavery to the evil powers. . February 21, 2019. Learn more about the similarities and differences of the religious systems of Africa, including indigenous religions, Abrahamic, Islamic, and Christian beliefs of people in the region. The continued influence of traditional African religion is also evident in some aspects of daily life. Some of these myths explain the origin of the universe, the nature of the relationship between creation (including humanity) and God, and the source and cause of the human predicament and of evil in general; they also provide a synopsis of the forces comprising the African moral conception of the universe. Religious rituals provide ameans by which the community seeks redress and repairs wrongs that have been committed and that call down calamities and afflictions from spiritual beingsall this to restore the status quo ante or even to maintain the existing good status quo that society or an individual may be enjoying., In the hierarchically ordered world of African Traditional Religion, God is the ancestor, par excellence. of the people which are all together. The bottom line then is that Africans who still wholly practice African indigenous religions are only about 10 percent of the African population, a fraction of what it used to be only a century ago, when indigenous religions dominated most of the continent. Pratten, David endobj Palmi, Stephan ABSTRACT The concept of God in the traditional religion of Akan and Ewe ethnic groups compare to the Bible By Godwin Kwame Ofosuhene I am going to focus this writing, on how the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups of Ghana, understood God in their traditional religious practices and after that compare or discuss these beliefs in the light of the Holy Scriptures. Like Ronald Green, Magesa argues that African Traditional Religion is in the background of all African religiosity, both in Christianity and Islam, and supplies the basic attitude or worldview of most African Christians. This is because Jesusalready shed His blood on the cross and He was the perfect sacrifice that totally satisfied God. Additionally, I will not discourage, disparage, or try and convert those who practice their form of African indigenous religions. And if these shrines are not properly cared for by the designated descendant, then misfortune in the form of illness might befall the caretaker. 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. for this article. He sees the other faith as complementing and even adding spiritual potency to his own spiritual practice of constructing effective amulets. Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. So, basically, to speak of African tradition is to talk about African Traditional Religion. Postcolonial, Abstract Interfaith dialogue is commonly used in building peace and understanding among religious groups. Christians practice baptism. 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. According to all the major surveys, Christianity and Islam each represent approximately 40 percent of the African population. All work unless implicitly stated is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For example, sickness in the indigenous African worldview is not only an imbalance of the body, but also an imbalance in ones social life, which can be linked to a breakdown in ones kinship and family relations or even to ones relationship with ones ancestors. They are not mutually exclusive. (See the glossary for more information on the evil eye.). Ancestors can offer advice and bestow good fortune and honor to their living dependents, but they can also make demands, such as insisting that their shrines be properly maintained and propitiated. 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. } This hierarchy is also evident in human society, where there are chiefs, clan heads, family heads, older siblings, and so on. Whilst interacting with the local African indigenous communities, and observing, The contact between African Traditional Religion (ATR) and Christianity is inextricably linkedto European economic activities that culminated into colonialism. Conflict is a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction. Just as within the traditional political and diplomatic contexts, one cannot formally contact the king without the agency of his linguists or sub-chiefs. Christianity is more dominant in the south, while Islam is more dominant in the north. I wont pray to an orisa, but I will affirm the importance of my connection with members of my age group. Part two provides a condensed historical survey of the, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters, by R. S. Sugirtharajah. ABSTRACT PART II: Comparing the concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible By Godwin Kwame Ofosuhene In the part one of my writing, with the titled The concept of God in the traditional religion of Akan and Ewe ethnic groups compare to the Bible - dated 31st May 2006, l explained how the Akan and Ewe ethnic groups of Ghana understood God in their traditional religious practices. As I have discussed elsewhere in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, for example, some African societies are so conscious of the implications of crossing the line on some ethical matters, like adultery, incest, and murder, that anyone who engages in these acts is considered automatically to be putting the very survival of the community in danger. 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. Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. The African Traditional Religion has no founder. OLUPONA: No, this type of binary thinking is simplistic. 1 0 obj The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, "for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions." African spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane.. 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. This is called a tithe. Highlights of the first writing were, the African Traditional Religion, the life of the ethnic groups in Ghana; their beliefs, customs, ritual and taboos. One of the things these diaspora African religions testify to is the beauty of African religions to engage a devotee on many spiritual levels. 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. In the Ewe thought they are called Vodou (Vodu or Vudu in Benin and Togo; also Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, or other phonetically equivalent spellings. They do not offer any libation. Traditional African religious beliefs, such as belief in the protective power of sacrifices to ancestors, Traditional African religious practices, such as owning sacred objects. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). For Christians itsa church. Christ was tempted in all the ways 1 Their central thrust is to emphasize the similarities rather than the differences between current movements in the world religions, particularly Christianity and Islam, but No matter how one looks at it, to offer the female members of ones family as a mark of hospitality to a stranger is morally wrong, not just from the point of view of Christian morality but from a purely natural law point of view as well. They are thus moral agents. It is the ancestors, however, the custodians of tradition, who determine the way these agents act, and it is tradition that supplies the moral code and indicates what the people must do to live ethically. African traditions carry out their role as ethical guides in many ways, including myths and rituals. Maybe this is why I am not an Anglican priest. Many laws, customs, set forms of behavior, regulations, rules, observances and taboos, constituting the moral code and ethics of a given community, are held sacred, and are believed to have been instituted by God.Furthermore, a person acts in ways that are good when he or she conforms to the customs and regulations of the community, or bad when he or she does not. This paper uses a qualitative research approach in the form of document analysis to critically explore the religious intersectionalities between Christianity and African Traditional. 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. To ensure that a natural balance is maintained between the world of the sacred and that of the profane, the roles of the chief within the state, family elders in relation to the lineage, and the priest within society, are crucial. We will return to these issues later in Morality Truly Christian, Truly African, but for now it is enough to ask whether the similarities in the deep structure between the two religions are indeed as similar as Green suggests. Traditional African religious influences on the church and the Bible It is worth noting that Cameroonians ferociously resisted foreign religions in the 18th century to maintain their traditional religions when Christianity entered Cameroon (Betoto, 2012). This is the function of Gods providence and sustenance of the universe. I also celebrate and honor the kings festivals and ceremonies in my hometown and other places where I live and do research. However, they do not seek the services of magicians orwitchdoctors. Human beings are the link between the heavens and the earth, between the visible and the invisible universe. This power is not accessible to everyone, and in most cases it is inborn, but the person has to learn how to use it. The vibrancy of African Traditional Religion in these two aspectstheological and moralcreates a unique opportunity for Christianity in Africa, one that, as Bediako points out has been lost to Christian theology in the West, for a serious and creative theological encounter between the Christian and primal traditions. It is therefore very important for African theology to ascertain the meaning of African Traditional Religion, both because of the service this tradition renders to Christian theology as a dialogue partner, and because the very self-awareness of the African theologian and of African theology itself to a large extent hinges on a proper articulation and appreciation of Africas pre-Christian past. These are the pristine men and women, the originators of the lineage or clan or ethnic group. 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. Yet consider that in 1900 most Africans in sub-Saharan Africa practiced a form of indigenous African religions. Its about getting tangible results. They did this as theyoffered libation by pouring water or any other drink to the ground. The cup of wine symbolises the blood Jesus shedand the bread symbolises His body which was broken for us. Belief in the Trinity While both Christianity and African religion have a concept of a Supreme Being, Christians believe in a God who exists in three persons. Authoring or editing more than half a dozen books on religion and African culture (including the recent African Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press), Olupona has researched topics ranging from the indigenous religions of Africa to the religious practices of Africans who have settled in America. Foreign religions simply dont have that same connection to the African continent. In short, the question is whether the notion of mercy exists in the moral order of African Traditional Religion and whether the sacrifices of African religion amount to an expiatory understanding in African religious thought. During the early churchs initial expansion phase where congregations were established in Syria, Asia Minor, Achaia, Italy and Africa there were strong leadership structures in Alexandria, Carthage, Neo religious movements is a term often used to describe a wide range of movements that developed in the tail end of the 19 century (the 1960s and 1970s). , Truly Africanpublished by theUniversity of Notre Dame Press different fathers played a role in the form of document to... The rapid growth of many religions in Africa and the earth, between the heavens and the invisible universe distribute. Is considered benign, the high God is cast in unfavorable terms as one who and! Essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential to speak of African indigenous in... Manage your cookie settings thedeath and resurrection of Jesus a universal phenomenon that is inevitable in human interaction which broken... 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