similarities between african traditional religion and christianity pdfdave sumrall net worth 2020

GAZETTE: How would you define indigenous African religions? Marshall, Ruth You can download the paper by clicking the button above. 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). 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. OLUPONA: The role of ancestors in the African cosmology has always been significant. He is not only the covenant giver He gives the power to keep the covenant. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Devoid of essential personal characteristics they represent the essence of what might be called structural personality. This is a universal belief among Africans. 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. Also, how the Christian organizations help free women and girls from the grip of slavery. 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. They did this as theyoffered libation by pouring water or any other drink to the ground. 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 Spirit medium is in many ways a subordinate agency within the layer of retributive order. The voice and action of the spirit medium connect the community with these moral and spiritual entities who help shape human destiny. Below is the article summary. 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. OLUPONA: Your question underscores an important facet about African spirituality: It is not a closed theological system. What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. 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. Mbiti emphasizes that Africans view the universe religiously. These intermediary agents include the ancestors, members of the community who at death become idealized. Updates? Christians do not offer animal sacrifices to appease God. The other very big difference between African Traditional Religion and Christianity is the worship. 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. When Christians are sickthey do not go to magicians or traditional healers. I had it. There is also a mystical order of the universe. African religions behavior is centered mainly on the human person and his or her life in this world, with the consequence that religion is clearly functional, or a means to serve people to acquire earthly goods (life, health, fecundity, wealth, power and the like) and to maintain social cohesion and order.. Postcolonial, Abstract Interfaith dialogue is commonly used in building peace and understanding among religious groups. Their significance lies in the genealogical positions and the rights and duties which derive from them. Ancestors uphold right conduct by punishing moral violations, demanding respect and attention, and getting angry when not given due respect. This supreme . 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. hasContentIssue true, Copyright International African Institute 2016. Consequently, traditional Africans have different ideas on what role the ancestors play in the lives of living descendants. 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. 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. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. For Christians itsa church. People may complain to God and the ancestors, but they will never accuse them of any moral wrongdoing. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. It is essentially a postcolonial approach to what AIR and its essential characteristics is: God and humanity, sacrifices, afterlife and ancestors. It is a way of life, and it can never be separated from the public sphere. endobj [D@dIS(P]y`ne]y:fjGZ3yEAVOI QFY- (See the glossary for more information on juju. However, to them, the entire universe is filled with spirit such as trees, rocks, and rivers. 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. View all Google Scholar citations %PDF-1.5 endobj psC68k}(`eMTO} }3sUO?JH`dMQois6I{r[}Doq?L0}ze^WZ\|r?3Z %g~bs_*@F`b, vw`qRk3xnnH6NSKF vFK](S?I.$@\$OC(N#a6oJc!0 sm!$!'TGzmSvw)+Na?1s K{o?!I 2 0 obj Fardon, Richard They do not offer any libation. These could be caves, forests,mountains and so on. 4 0 obj The introduced religions of Islam (in northern Africa) and Christianity (in southern Africa) are now the continent's major religions, but traditional religions still play an important role, especially in the interior of sub-Saharan Africa. 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. Traditional Africans did not practice baptism. Both have places of worship. The award allows Olupona a year of study and research in Germany; he is on leave this year (201516). Like Mbiti and Green, Magesa notes that the world of African Traditional Religion is a hierarchically ordered place where, On the lowest rung of the ladder are spirits, who are active beings distinct from humans and reside in nature and phenomena such as trees, rivers, rocks, or lakes. 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. Pratten, David 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. The Christian idea of church has similarities with African traditional life in which brotherhood and the extended family play a central role. Using Ghana as a case history, I shall evaluate this ministry to find out its positive and negative effects. To understand African tradition, one needs to understand the position of African Traditional Religion on God, the human person, and creation. Hostname: page-component-7f44ffd566-79tgq Furthermore, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice that totally pleased God and there is no need for any other. I should also state that there are signs of the revival of African indigenous practices in many parts of Africa. These gods are generally perceived as intermediaries between the Supreme Being and society. These images could be of a lion or another animal carvedfrom a tree to represent a god. According to Mbiti, Africans came to believe in God by reflecting on their experience and through observation of the created universe. The recipient of many prestigious academic honors and research fellowships, Olupona also received the 20152016 Reimar Lust Award for International and Cultural Exchange, considered one of Germanys most prestigious academic honors. It was believed that Vodun was a representativeof the Supreme God known as Mawu. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades. a trans-moral suspension of retribution in the face of self-confessed and inescapable human wrongdoing. Green notes a similarity between this deep structure and that which has developed in Christian theology over centuries of effort at grounding human moral striving in the face of the experiential difficulties that assault moral idealism. In this Christian theological system, the idea of God as creator and sovereign expresses the moral requirements of impartial regard for all. Exodus 20:3-5 tells us not to make or worship images ofanything in heaven or on earth. . between African traditional religion and the Christian faith. Sacrificial meals in the traditional Africanreligion are the equivalent of the Holy. Since Christianity came in contact with the traditional religion, there has always been a sharp conflict between traditionalists and Christians. In respect and honor of my culture, I also dress in my traditional Nigerian attire when Im in my country. These are called Taboos. However, Christians can offer animals to the church where they canbe sold or reared to give the church income. Philosophers, sociologists, theologians, The conversion of indigenous converts to Christianity is often perceived as a linear process, which marks individuals rebirth and assumption of a new identity as they are assimilated into the, In the early 19th century, missionaries flocked to Central and Southern Africa to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 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.. University of Notre Dame, McGrath Institute for Church Life The contact was in fact,between two. Despite the presence of Christianity, traditional religions in Ghana have retained their influence because of their intimate relation to family loyalties and local mores. Download chapter 3 in full (3-page PDF, <1MB), Photo credit: Sebastien Desarmaux/GODONG/Godong/Corbis, Part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, 1615 L St. NW, Suite 800Washington, DC 20036USA Pp. The Church is the Christian family, in which all are accompanied to one another through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ. And if these shrines are not properly cared for by the designated descendant, then misfortune in the form of illness might befall the caretaker. 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. Copyright 2023 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. There are also the lesser gods that take residency in streams, rivers, trees and mountains. endobj 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. Everything is said to center on them. In four countries, for instance, half or more of the population believes that sacrifices to ancestors or spirits can protect them from harm. 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. In the Ewe thought they are called Vodou (Vodu or Vudu in Benin and Togo; also Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, or other phonetically equivalent spellings. 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. 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. Has similarities with African traditional religion, there has always been significant the person. Christians do not offer any libation another through belief and baptism in Jesus Christ can download paper! 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