similarities between african traditional religion and christianity pdf

In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. 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. 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 . 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). "useRatesEcommerce": false For this reason, l am writing on the topic, which says, Comparing the concept of Spirit and Soul in the Traditional Religion of the Akan and Ewe Tribes to that of the Bible. M!eJ/"0Nq"3_ad!+;\4C2-0"+5qu|Rw!9KkC~V3M$ 2d yFT!Jf"ez:~ U S dE{hbaERVTGeqBzk2^oP)R}7Qv#.dQF4^%y+X-o"wr+l+B?{lb="akK;qurpDB ~O` Hn5~:D]xDS-V3tVgP`Axx8Mi2.O4g5=t DTW?ne![Cc?"C+E|o&Ks0`7_BiXHyJ8;B>7AfvuPTZV(3JW|/+Ywy"EtBEVYlNFc[5%X8@o|^DHD\*=z.)P??6`! And if these shrines are not properly cared for by the designated descendant, then misfortune in the form of illness might befall the caretaker. However, in African religious thought God is distanced from the task of moral affairs because the task of moral retribution and maintenance of effective moral norms is usually performed by spiritual agents of much lower standingthat is, by spirits of various sorts, by ghosts and even by human practitioners of spiritual arts. Other characteristics that show the contrast between (Western) Christian thought and African Traditional Religion,according to Green, are the nonexistence of concepts of heaven and hell in African Traditional Religion, the lack of messianic expectations and hope, and the absence of eschatological thought with God stepping in to right all wrongs or to punish wickedness. And although African Traditional Religion affirms the continuation of life after death, where the person is believed to join the spirit world of the ancestors to continue life in some ways similar to the life before death, this belief does not constitute a hope for improved existence or for ultimate reward and punishment since a persons moral depravity or moral rectitude [does] not count in the beyond and whatever penalties or rewards those may bring have no bearing on life after death.. Featured Image:Edo people, Queen Mother Pendant mask, circa 16th c.; Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0. They do this by having Africans increasingly identify themselves as either Muslim or Christian, thus denying their unique African worldview that has always viewed as evidenced in their creation myths everything as unified and connected to the land, the place were ones clan, lineage, and people were cosmically birthed. . The cup of wine symbolises the blood Jesus shedand the bread symbolises His body which was broken for us. But for many Africans, religion can never be separated from all these. Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond, A Critical Analysis of Byang Kato's Demonology and Its Theological Relevance for an Evangelical Demonology, INITIATION IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Kirsteen Kim, Amos Yong: Interdisciplinary and Religio-Cultural Discourses on a Spirit-Filled World, Encounter - Journal of African Life and Religion, 12 (2017), REGNUM STUDIES IN MISSION Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity An Edinburgh Centenary Reader, Van Rheenen, Gailyn: Missions - biblical foundations. The ancestors are believed to be the most immediate link with the spiritual world, and they are thought to be constantly near, observing every thought and action of the living. A follower of African diaspora religions has many choices in terms of seeking spiritual help or succor. A sacrifice refers to an animal that is offered to God, e.g. Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. The continued influence of traditional African religion is also evident in some aspects of daily life. They have also fostered a greater feeling of individual self-worth by acknowledging important milestones in ones life, including becoming an adult or an elder. Feature Flags: { Mbiti makes a very controversial point when he claims that in African societies there are no acts that would be considered wrong in themselves. I also celebrate and honor the kings festivals and ceremonies in my hometown and other places where I live and do research. Christ Jesus, God's own son, takes the "groaning" of humans to God. Mbiti says that: According to Mbiti, human beings have a privileged position in the universe. Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA. 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.. 2 0 obj This power is not accessible to everyone, and in most cases it is inborn, but the person has to learn how to use it. stream Baptismis by being sprinkled on water or being dipped in water. OLUPONA: I was raised in Africa during the 1960s, when the Yoruba community never asked you to chose between your personal faith and your collective African identity. For example, in 14 of the 19 countries surveyed, more than three-in-ten people say they sometimes consult traditional healers when someone in their household is sick. Eternal Rest of the Soul. Neglect, it is believed, might spell doom. The religious functions, especially of chiefs and lineage heads, are clearly demonstrated during such periods as the Odwira of the Akan, Hogbetsotso / Tedudu of the Ewe, the Homowo of the Ga-Adangbe, or the Aboakyir of the Efutu (coastal Guan), when the people are organized in activities that renew and strengthen relations with their ancestors. But as we learnt in Unit One, Christians can also worship Him attheir homes or other places. In this paper, Ill bring the understanding of African traditional adherents into the light of the Holy Scriptures; to explain what the Bible teaches about soul and spirit in relation to God and man. The other question: Stereotype, This essay deals with the relationship between Christianity and other religions. (Hebrews 1:1,Matthew 5:17,Exodus 34:10-28). 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. Christianity forbids human sacrifices in worshipas it is murder. 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. When we speak of African Traditional Religion, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. Maybe this is why I am not an Anglican priest. For all Ghanaian ethnic groups, the spirit world is considered to be as real as the world of the living. Some Africans believe that the ancestors are equal in power to deities, while others believe they are not. These shrines were built near waterbodies, next to big trees or near other sacred places. But after braving that first blizzard in a land far from his native Nigeria, Olupona stuck it out and earned his Ph.D. Odozor's Morality Truly Christian, Truly Africanpublished by theUniversity of Notre Dame Press. 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. However, Christians can offer animals to the church where they canbe sold or reared to give the church income. Youll never experience a black hole, but Avi Loeb can help you imagine one. 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. Traditional Africans believed in the power of magic and medicinemen. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. Magesa discusses the African tradition in its various manifestations: its understanding of the human person and of life in general; aesthetics, politics, ethics, and of course religion, which he shows to be the architectonic basis of these other expressions or manifestations of African tradition. SUMMARY OF REFORMED THEOLOGY IN 10 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. Different fathers played a role in the development of this religion. The Yoruba believe in the existence of the Supreme God called Olurun andthe lesser god, Obatala. Nevertheless, they also display enough family resemblances for us to be able to delineate their main features and to a very reasonable extent fall on them to represent the whole. Encyclopedia of religious and spiritual development, Adopting Primary Taoism as a Protoevangelion for Contextualization of the Gospel into Asian Culture, Toward a Liturgical Approach to Re-Routing Mission, TOWARDS A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING IN THE MIDST OF PROSPERITY THEOLOGY WITHIN THE PENTECOSTAL AND EVANGELICAL CHURCHES IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA, PARTICULARLY YANGORU, Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology (with Julie C. Ma, Oxford: Regnum, 2010), The strategic level spiritual warfare theology of C. Peter Wagner and its implications for Christian mission in Malawi, Evangelism Handbook of New Testament Christianity, The Role of Caprivian Virtues in the Search for Common Moral Discourse A Conversation with Peter J Paris, Sexuality and Judaism, Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (pg. as a burnt offering. 24 October 2016. The writing of this paper is another opportunity given to me so that l would use my talents given by the Holy Spirit to help our relatives still under the worldview of Satan to see and come into the Light of Life. It was believed that Vodun was a representativeof the Supreme God known as Mawu. Some ancestors may even be reincarnated to replenish the lineage. All life, power, and existence flow from God, and by right of their primogeniture and proximity to God by death God has granted the ancestors a qualitatively more powerful life force over their descendants. Who constitutes the world of the ancestors? Therefore, the universe has dimensions of order and power as follows: first of all, there is order in the laws of nature. In the part two of my writing, l will expand on the world populated by spirits called Vodou alongside that of the Akan. As a resident fellow, Sherman will teach a study group on negotiation and diplomacy this semester. Some scholars have rightly observed that the centre of gravity of Christianity is shifting from the West to the two-thirds world, that is Asia, South America and Africa. It appeals more to social scientists than to those working in religious studies, particularly scholars of specific religious traditions. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential. OLUPONA: Yes, its a mixed bag because in the African diaspora mostly due to the slave trade starting in the 15th century indigenous African religions have spread and taken root all over the world, including in the United States and Europe. Pp. 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. One is also sometimes givena new name after baptism. A third scholar of interest to us here is Laurenti Magesa, the central thesis of whose book on African religion is captured quite succinctly in the subtitle: African religion constitutes a tradition of abundant life. 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. Janson, Marloes 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. and These act as Gods associates, assistants, and mediators, and they are directly involved in human affairs. Observing this moral order ensures harmony and peace within the community. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 1630-1633), HEBREWS' CHRISTOLOGY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY APPREHENSION IN AFRICA 1, New Mind, New Heart, New Strength (A Paradigm on the New Man), Dissertation ETD Libermann and EA in Dialogue Dec 2013, Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia and Beyond: An Inter-disciplinary Analysis. The reasons for this shift are varied and complex. The commitment to theory, 2. This hierarchy is also evident in human society, where there are chiefs, clan heads, family heads, older siblings, and so on. 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. 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. Focusing on Luo Muslims in Kenya, Dr Lawrence Oseje looks at the interaction of Islam and traditional Luo practices, especially those around death and burial. of the people which are all together. The spirit medium is required to possess moral probity and integrity. The ordering of the universe and its continuance depends on God. 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. 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. GAZETTE: It sounds like African indigenous religions are dynamic, inclusive, and flexible. They claimed or argued strongly that in the light of the more objective or scientific study of religions, ATR can no longer be justifiably characterized as stupid, since the worshippers do not worship the said material objects per se, but the Spirit of the Creator reflected in them. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. 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. x][oH~GroA $9,f K3d~VU_% fYU]q{Z?Fo?>w&j/n>>]?b5M._GYTQ|_W/_c\yA,bQQ)xn0ZtK*Q/Xb)zetab~x2e*w1Ym2n}{%2Kt[nQ,^'D^}WI_:'ym;eup|5>)$c4"y"E_C/ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. GAZETTE: How would you define indigenous African religions? <> These facts, however, does not necessary suggest that the educated Ghanaian has totally abandoned tradition; some educated and mission trained individuals do consult traditional oracles in times of crises. Secondly, there is moral and religious order. When a missionary asked Africans in Zanzibar to tell him something about their God, they simply said, "God thunders!" The cleric had travelled across the seas in the 19th century to tell "the heathens without religion" or "people with a primitive religion" about God. For the full article, see, New religions, independent churches, and prophetic movements, https://www.britannica.com/summary/African-religions. Christians pray toGod through Jesus Christ. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Again, it doesnt reflect the multiplicity of ways that traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. 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. Thus, to assert as Mbiti does that there are no secret sins or that something or someone is bad or good only according to outward conduct is too careless a statement to make. 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. There is even a community deep in the American Bible Belt in Beaufort County, S.C., called Oyotunji Village that practices a type of African indigenous religion, which is a mixture of Yoruba and Ewe-Fon spiritual practices. 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). Since God is seen as the Creator, various aspects of the universe are permeated by the sense of the sacredthe religious mentality affects the way people see the universe. Some traditional African societies like the Yoruba believed in the existence of lessergods. endobj To understand African tradition, one needs to understand the position of African Traditional Religion on God, the human person, and creation. Christians do not believe in the existence of any other godapart from the Supreme Being. I had it. GAZETTE: But yet you said its a mixed bag? Human beings maintain active and real relationshipswith the spiritual world, especially with the living dead, through offerings, sacrifices, and prayers. Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. The missionaries succeeded in spreading Christianity in Africa at a time when tribal religions were ignored or denigrated. To some African societies and in some aspects of daily life privileged position the... Next to big trees or near other sacred places they are directly involved in human affairs, spell! Development of this religion and diplomacy this semester and determine whether to revise article... Mediators, and spirit beings fathers played a role in the universe and its essential characteristics is God. 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