Encyclopedia of African Religion (original) (raw)
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AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, 2024
This paper examines the evolution, core tenets, and contemporary relevance of African traditional religions (ATRs). It highlights the interplay between ATRs and other religious traditions, analyzes their adaptation to modernity, and underscores their enduring socio-cultural significance. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the study draws from historical texts, oral traditions, and ethnographic studies to offer a nuanced understanding of ATRs. This paper will also examine the philosophy and the contribution of traditional religion in fostering co-existence among the African people and how this religion also acted as an agency in deterring colonial rule. Then I will also show aspects that have challenged this religion hence it’s gaining of a negative definition in the modern times.
Rencontre des Traditions Religieuses de l’Afrique avec le Christianisme, L’Islam et la Laicite: A partir des Ecrits de Leopold Sedar Senghor
It has become fashionable for scholars of religion writing through the medium of European languages to employ the use of the term, “African Traditional Religion” (ATR), to refer to the autochthonous religions of Africa. It is my considered view that this is incorrect. In addition, it seems that the use of this term “ATR” seems to diminish from the value of the indigenous religions of Africa as authentic religions. Some scholars even use the term “ancestral religion”. Both of the terms seem to imply that the indigenous religions of Africa are not real religions in the full sense of the word.
The Need to Re-Conceptualize African ‘Traditional’ Religion
African Research Review, 2013
Reality is a universal philosophical problem that people try to explain its underlying principle from their subjective perception. Religion is one of those ways to explain this unknown principle with spiritual connotation. In this connection, Africa as an entity looks at reality in a different perspective, which in this work we term African Religion. But as this work observes, a misconception about African Religion gave birth to a contraption called "African Traditional Religion". On this note, this work sets forth to re
The scholarly study of African religious theology began nearly a century ago with the first extensive accounts by anthropologists and missionaries. Over the decades, it has passed through several phases, each involving different purposes and points of view. These developments may be reviewed briefly by examining the meaning and the implications of the words African, traditional, and religion that have shaped the study of the subject. In recent years, scholars have recognized the important ways in which “African” and “religion” and ‘’theology’’ are western constructs involving both misconceptions and changing perceptions, especially concerning religion.
Philosophy of African Religion
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, 2021
The African conception of God, since antiquity, has been manifested both in names that describe God's inventiveness, such as the "Father creator" who never ceased to create, and created "things in an ordered fashion" (Mbiti 1990, 40), and in the belief that God actively participates in the daily lives of people. Yet, some eager European missionaries, explorers, and travelers, scouting Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sought to deny the significant place of religion in African lives, and curiously concluded that "the African mind was in too crude a state to be capable of religious feeling or perception" (Wiredu 1997, 34). Scholars are now, however, agreed that Africans are preeminently religious (Mbiti 1990, 2) and that assertions that Africa did not form part of the religious world is simply "cheeky ignorance" (Wiredu 1997, 34). European Christians (see christianity), blinded by prejudices and a sense of eopr0070
AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS IN TRANSITION
Contrary to the writings of early Western Scholars, prior to the invasion of the slave traders and colonialism, the African was religious within a descriptive context of relative awareness of his existence, not in comparison with any other. The African has never been irreligious and ignorant of the existence of a Supreme being or the spirit realm. In the era of increasing advancement in technology, modernization and globalization, the African, in the practice of his indigenous faith, appears to be succumbing to several influences. The invasion of Islam and Christianity have also had their respective toll on African Traditional Religious beliefs and practices.
African Religion in our Contemporary Society
Jumuga journal of education, oral studies, and human sciences, 2024
Characteristically, African Religion is a resilient enterprise that cuts across centuries of interaction with other religions such as Christianity and Islam. This research article sets out to unveil its resilient characteristics, as it underlines the fact that it is part and parcel of the African cultural heritage. Methodologically, it highlights the multi-dimensional ways in which the African Religion has permeated into the lives of Africans to date. In the context of Christianity and Islam, it has remained a 'controversial' area of research among theologians, as some fail to understand its relevance. On the flip-side, there are other scholars who contends that it needs to be recognized as an independent and self-fulfilling religion, just as it is the case with Christianity, Islam, and other world religions. To address the divergent views, an application of an Afro-Biblical Dialogue, as a theory, has been proposed to address this development. As the dialogical methodology, this model which was first adopted by the Jerusalem Christian Council in the wake of Hellenism (Acts 15), will thus attempt to answer the question regarding the place of Gentiles who became Christians. Were they meant to abandon their religio-cultural backgrounds?