AFRICA’S RELIGIOUS HERITAGE

By Leonardo M. Alves

These notes consist of essays outlining the religious manifestation of Africans. It begins with a description of the traditional forms of the African religions and the impact felt with the coming of the revealed Abrahamic faiths into the continent. The focus is on sub-Saharan Africa.

AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION

The sub-Saharan African traditional religions vary along ethnic grouping, and many times its expression changes from village to village within the same people.  Therefore, to generalize the African Traditional religion of the Bantu, Niger-Congo, West Africa, Khoisan- very distinct peoples, with different economies and environment, diverse linguistic families - in a single summary form is quite challenging and imprecise, but here I present an attempt.

Some traditional cultures believe in a single impersonal transcendent God (Olodum, Ngai, N’ame, Nzambi), while in most of the societies there are plural and/or dual deities. There is also a pantheon of divine entities, spirits and ancestors that plays a significant role in the every-day spirituality.

The presence of the sacred is always in the every-day life, with interactions with lesser manifestation of divinities (i.e. Orisha in the Yoruba religion). Traditionally, the belief in a topical place for after life (Hell or Heaven) is unknown, and indeed seems that time has two tenses only: past and present. Eschatology is absent in the Traditional African Religion.

The rituals are pragmatic, seeking solutions for personal distress, diseases, social problems, natural disasters. The deities are amoral in the sense they are not necessarily good or bad.

The worship is held in shrines, or specially designed hut or places like the social center in a village, and consists of chant and dances, offerings, libation, and sacrifices, performed by priests, healers, wonder-workers, who can be part-time or hold a definite religious role in the society. The lack of permanent sacred text is compensated by a rich oral corpus of mythologies.

Some religious form, principally the Yoruba, survived the dramatic transplant to America and developed into Brazilian Candomble, Cuban Santeria, and the Haitian Vodou.

Many of the practices and ideology of the African Traditional Religions survive in syncretic manner in posterior forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, sometimes generating New Religious Movements on its own.

Bibliography

-          Mbiti, John. African Religions and Philosophy. Oxford: Heinneman, 1991.

-          Olupona, Jacob K. African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society, NY: Paragon  House, 1991.

-          Olupona, Jacob K. The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective. Numen, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 240-273

-          Zahan, Dominique, The Religion, Spirituality and Thought of Traditional Africa

JUDAISM

The connection of Judaism with Africa is unmemorable. There are reference of the Kingdom of Kush in the Bible, and many other evidences of the interrelation and presence of Jewish faith in the continent.

In North Africa, on the margins of the Mediterranean Sea many Jewish communities settled in times even before the Pax Romana. Cyrene, Alexandria, Carthago were important centers and ancestors of the today-vanquishing groupings in an Islamic setting. Djerba, in Tunisia is believed to be the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the world.

In Ethiopia the Falasha Israelites preserve customs that resembles the ancient Hebrew religion from the Second Temple period (500 AC – 70 DC). Recently, many of them migrated to Israel after the formal recognition of their community as `fully Jewish` by European Sephardi and Askhenazi Rabbinical Judaism in the 1970’s.

There also were scattered communities in other parts of the continent. During the Songhai Empire, were traders crossed the Sahara and there once flourished a significant group, where theological discussions with their Muslim neighbors. Other isolated group is the Lemba in Mozambique, whose recent DNA testing demonstrated their genetic links with Jewry elsewhere.

After the European immigration, many immigrants, explorers, refugees of Judeo heritage found home in Africa. Crypto-Jews from Portugal mingled with the population of Cape Verde, Sao Tome & Principe, and Canary Islands. Later, came more European settles, and today there is even a small Jewish Afrikaans-speaking population in South Africa.

In the Twentieth century there was the emergence of native forms of Judaism, usually inspired by the reading of the Old Testament from the Scriptures of Christian missionaries. They include the House of Israel in Ghana, Igbo Jews in Nigeria, and the Abayudaya in Uganda.

Bibliography

-          Kurinsky, Samuel. Jews In Africa: Ancient Black African Relations, Fact Paper 19-II

-          Video. Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews (1983)

-          Various Authors. Y chromosomes traveling south: the cohen modal haplotype and the origins of the Lemba--the "Black Jews of Southern Africa". American Journal of Human Genetics. Feb. 2000  N. 66 (2):674-86.

CHRISTIANITY

Christianity established early in Africa. In the first three centuries of Common Era anonymous missionaries set up communities in Egypt, Nubia, Maghreb, and Ethiopia, places where an authentic expression took way in rituals, arts, literature and thought.

The expansion of Islam into Africa in the centuries following the hegira proved to be challenging to Christianity in Africa, with a substantial diminution and even total assimilation, as were in case of Nubia and North Africa, except Egypt and Ethiopia where this faith strived to survive into the present.

The Portuguese navigations and other European traders brought also the Colonial Christianity. The missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, mass-converted indigenous groups and imposing the European ways of life to them, opening ways to a permanent domination by European powers. In reaction, many African Initiated Churches aroused, giving an African interpretation to Christianity.

In North America and Caribbean there are many denominations and congregations formed and lead by African descendents, whose form of worship and interpretation of Christianity is remarkably unique, influencing White Protestantism as well.

Also, new religious movements of African origins and Christian backgrounds emerged in Caribbean, such the Rastafarianism in Jamaica and the Shouters in Trinidad, and in North America, such as the Father Divine and Charles “Daddy” M. Grace movements.

Bibliography

-          Isichei, Elizabeth. A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present. Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995

-          Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Church in America. New York: Schocken Books, 1963

-          http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/AfricanChristianity/index.html

ISLAM

Islam came to the continent in the 7th and 8th, with establishment of Muslim empires in the North part of Africa, supplanting the native Christianity in those areas. In Western Africa arouse Muslim states which benefited with literacy and commerce proportionated through the new faith. The role of Muslim religion in the Northern Africa societies found home and syncretic forms also emerged.

African Islam crossed the Atlantic in slave ships and was a cultural mark in African communities in America. The Malés were literate Muslim Africans capable even to organize an uprising in Brazil, what lead to their disbandment in 1835. In North America the Nation of Islam is a renewal religious-racial movement that arouse among African-American Christians in the early twentieth century.

Bibliography

-          Kritzeck, James, William Hubert Lewis and J. Spencer Trimingham. Islam in Africa. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold Co., 1969.

-          Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon, 1973

-          Reis, João José. Rebelião escrava no Brasil: a história do levante dos malês em 1835. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003.

-          Trimingham, J. Spencer The Influence of Islam on Africa. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968.

CONCLUSION CONTEMPORARY TRENDS

The contact of the native worldwide and the European missionary action lead to the emergence of an African Christendom: African-Initiated churches and African Theology, Pentecostalism and Evangelism.

Harrist Movement in West Africa, Kimbanguism in Congo, Zionism and Ethiopianism in Southern Africa, Aladura Movement in Nigeria, all were movements founded by Africans for Africans, with theirs own rituals, beliefs and organizational structure.

Pentecostalism came to Africa with American missionaries in the early twentieth centuries to find a fertile soil to expand from initially Liberia, South Africa, and Burkina Fasso to the entire continent. The African Pentecostalism has been typified as an autonomous movement, generally without being dependent from foreign denominations.

Also, following the decolonization Africans trained in the European theological tradition challenged the view that the African religions were “demoniac”. Theologians like John Mbiti and Jacob Olupona, made groundbreaking and extensive research, proofing the consistency and epistemological validity of the insight of traditional religions as well as the native expressions of Christianity in Africa.

Parallel to the expansion of Christianity, Islam also presented a very significant growth from the Sahel to south in the recent century. In nations like Nigeria and Sudan this encounter with Christendom has not been so peaceful, with violent conflicts arousing.

In some instances the conflicts come from New Religious Movements (NRM), when the association of messianic hopes with socio-political interests manifested into violent forms. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God and others NRMs in Uganda and East Africa was called attention of the media for their practices.

In general, traditional African religions has been retracted by the advance of Islam and Christianity, but some ethnic varieties, like the Yoruba religion, has entered into  the new century with a solid appearance.

Bibliography

-          Anderson, Allan Zion and Pentecost: the spirituality and experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa Press,  2000

-          BBC Documentary. Cults: Why East Africa? London, 2000.

-          Barrett, David B. Schism and renewal in Africa: an analysis of six thousand contemporary religious movements. Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1968.

-          Ritchie, Ian. African Theology and Social Change: An Anthropological Approach. Doctoral Thesis. 1993.

-          Southern African Missiological Society http://www.geocities.com/missionalia/aic.htm

-          Sulayman Nyang. Islam, Christianity and African Identity. Amana Books, 1984.