African Traditional Religion – By Very Rev. Prof. Noah K. Dzobo
10/04/2006

The indigenous idea of religion in Africa South of the Sahara has gone through an interesting history of  misrepresentation and misinterpretation simply because as our elders say, If you are not prepared to lick your lips during the harmattan season (harmattan is a parching land wind which blows from December to February in West Africa) the harmattan will chap it for you. And so one time African traditional religion was characterized chapped as animism and is supposed to be a belief in the existence of spirits and practices that go along with it, and that human beings live in a spiritual universe and the spirit of God the Creator permeates all his creation (Immanence) both animates and ananimates. Africans who are neither Moslems nor Christians are therefore religiously called animists. This term is still used to refer to Africans in Southern Sudan who are not Moslems not Christians.

At another time African Traditional Religion was described as fetishism which comes from the Portuguese word meaning idol and so Africans were referred to as idol worshippers. This was followed by such ignorant characterization as heathenism, spiritism and paganism. Paganism comes from the Latin word Paganus meaning rural dwellers. At another time African Traditional Religion was fashionably described as polytheism. That is, the worship of many gods as over against monotheism which is the worship of one god.

At another time African Traditional Religion was described as ancestor worship. It is my contention that Africans do not worship their departed relatives but they value and cherish the relationship that exists among them in this life and death does not terminate this relationship and so it extends into the next world. Through the ancestral veneration thisrelationship is reinforced and cherished. In African society, as Wilbur C. Harr said, Human existence is a (relational)responsibility and not a self-centred isolationism. Pierce Beaver, 1960, p. 200).

African Traditional Religion was once called a superstition, that is, fears and beliefs that have no rational grounds. African indigenous cultures, like any other cultures, contain some false and irrational fears, but the essence of African Traditional Religion is not false beliefs and fears that it may contain, but rather it is the unique and ultimate spiritual principle ofcomprehension that it has evolved for understanding our human existence. African Traditional Religion is therefore something more than a superstition and for that matter it is more than magic. All these characterizations are loaded with value judgements and are intended to create the impression that Africans are worshipping wrong objects either from nature or created by human beings, in short they are worshipping the creature and not the Creator. African Traditional Religion is therefore taken to be based on false natural revelation instead of on historical and personal revelation as we have in Judaism and in Christianity.

On the basis of this false western Interpretation and Characterization of African religious awareness the Christian West came to the conclusion that either African Religious Culture is a Tabularasa or has been sown with religious false tares and so Africans must be saved, converted and taught to worship the one true God called Yahweh. The question is, what is the true nature of the religious / spiritual awareness that the West encountered in Africa, South of the South during their first contact with the African continent?

My answer to this question is in two parts: the first answer will deal with some general aspects of the African Traditional Religion and it will be brief; the second answer will take up a specific traditional spiritual apprehension as is found among the Ewe and Akan of Ghana. What is African Traditional Religion?

African Traditional Religion is the cultural product of our forebears and it is their attempt to explain and give ultimate meaning to our human existence. It is our world view, that is, our normal way of looking at the world and experiencing life itself. It is therefore a part and parcel of the African Culture heritage which goes back thousands of years. It has been integrated into different areas of our cultural life and so in different African languages there is no word for religion as such. There are words for religious ideas and objects, for practices and places, and there are local words / names for the gods but not for the religion organized around the gods.

African Traditional Religion therefore has developed along with the other aspects of the culture and so it belongs to each people among whom it has evolved. It is not propagated through persuasion because you are born into it and like your mother tongue you imbibe it from the cultural milieu. African Traditional Religion is an integral part of the way of the people, it goes along with the devotees wherever they settle to work and as such the gods of Ewe fishermen are found on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and some market women go to the market with their gods.

African Traditional Religion is a problem solving religion and so its devotees adopt a practical and pragmatic attitude towards it. It has therefore provided answer for the problems of the people even though some of the answers may be spurious, it has all the same provided some answers and a direction in life and so people are not willing to leave it. It gives its followers a sense of security and protectedness against the negative and destructive forces of human existence, and above all it gives its followers a sense of identity and belongingness.

African Traditional Religion is an essential part of the way of life of each people and its influences cover the time you are an idea in the minds of your parents, all the way to your birth and long after you have departed this life. It is spread by its fruits i.e. by what it does and so has no paid missionaries to spread it, and this is one of its limitations and its strength at the same time.

Source: www.ghanaculture.gov.gh – National Commission on Culture

Generated: 7 January, 2009, 21:05