Jacob K Olupona & Julian E Kunnie. Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices. Editor: Thomas Riggs, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, Gale, 2015.
Overview
Africa, viewed by most scholars as the place of origin of all humankind, is characterized by numerous political and cultural regions, reflecting its diverse range of histories, ethnicities, languages, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Its various indigenous spiritual systems, traditionally called African indigenous religions or African traditional religions, are multifarious. The strongest reflection of indigenous African religions is evident in those ancient land-based cultures that trace their historical origin to 60,000 years ago in southern Africa, such as the San people, and those that have refused to assimilate into modern Western cultures, including the Tuareg of North Africa, a matrilineal people; the Maasai, Samburu, and Ogiek of East Africa; and the Bambuti of Central Africa, a forest-based group. The cultures of these ancient people are rooted in tradition and have resisted governmental and dominant cultural pressures to surrender their historical traditions and ways. For example, the San still practice hunting and living harmoniously with their ecology on traditional lands in ways that their ancestors practiced for tens of millennia; however, their lives are consistently threatened by mining corporations and contemporary capitalist economics of African governments that have dispossessed them of their land.
There are more than 2,000 major languages spoken in Africa and hundreds of ethnic and kinship groups on the continent. These peoples have developed complex and distinctive sets of religious beliefs and practices. Despite their seemingly unrelated aspects and divergent cultural practices, there are common features to these systems, suggesting that African indigenous faiths form a cohesive religious tradition. Although a large number of Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, these two world religions inevitably have been influenced by the pervasiveness of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cultural practices, such as ceremonies honoring ancestors or giving thanks for a fruitful harvest. Furthermore, African cultural practices contain elements of indigenous religions. Thus, indigenous African cosmologies (narratives about the nature and structure of the world) and beliefs continue to exert significant influence on Africans in a range of overt and subtle ways, underscoring that, although Western materialistic culture has invaded and occupied the African continents for more than four centuries, the indigenous essence of Africa has never really disappeared.
Since the seventh century CE northern Africa has been predominantly Muslim. West Africa consists of both the Christian faith and Islam in places such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon, with the rest of this region being principally Muslim and adhering to traditional cultural practices and ceremonies or blending both Christian and Islamic elements in many instances, like in Senegal and Gambia. The impact of Western economic and cultural globalization in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has significantly weakened the pervasiveness of indigenous African cultural and religious practices, particularly among the continent’s younger generations. Furthermore, ecological devastation due to expanding oil and mineral production in many parts of Africa has resulted in many traditional cultural and religious practices being compromised or even abandoned, as rivers and mountains long considered sacred suffer pollution and plunder by transnational corporations seeking energy sources. The displacement of indigenous peoples by open-pit mining and oil drilling has wrought environmental havoc all over the continent, particularly in the west, southwest, and south, undermining sacred sites and further eroding ceremonial practices on such sites.
History
For indigenous African peoples, “history” is not necessarily a documentation of chronological dates but instead often refers to accounts of events as expressed through anecdotes, aphorisms, poems, music, songs, and dances. African cosmologies view the universe as timeless, limitless, and spaceless, with no beginning in linear time. Although such oral histories, which have evolved and demonstrated their resilience for millennia, can be difficult to cross-reference with linear historical world events, the truths and myths conveyed through oral cultures are as legitimate as those communicated through the written word. In some instances they may be even more reliable, considering that oral traditions are the key to preservation and continuation of indigenous knowledge. Indigenous elders and storytellers are required to maintain the authenticity of the stories; indeed, spiritual knowledge is sacred and cannot be vitiated or altered during its transmission. Most of the spiritual knowledge particular to indigenous cultures regarding cosmogony, communication from and with spirits, and healing cannot be conveyed to nonindigenous people or people from outside a particular community. It is believed that the failure to keep certain sacred elements secret erodes or undermines the power of such elements and its usefulness.
Interestingly, archaeological finds, carbon dating, and astronomical knowledge have corroborated certain elements contained in African myths, legends, and narratives. However, indigenous African cosmologies do not subscribe to evolutionary theories of life that are intrinsic to Western philosophical thought. Life is a spiritual circle and viewed as a gift from the Creator or Creation Spirits. Knowledge is derived from the spirit world, and all human beings and other forms of life are reflections of and dependent on the spirits for their existence and for shaping their intellectual perception and projection. There is no universal sense of reason, since notions of reason are determined by the particularity of cultures. What may be considered rational in one culture may be viewed as irrational in another. Since the essence of life is spiritual—and the spirit is eternal—African indigenous religions focus on the eternal as opposed to being preoccupied with the realm of the physical, which is temporal and finite.
Over the years African indigenous religions have both grown and diminished in regional importance according to social and political changes. One of the biggest influences on these religions has been cultures from outside Africa, particularly Western European and Islamic cultures. Christianity, itself influenced by the ancient North African and Eastern world of two millennia ago, began to take hold in the first century CE with deep roots in places such as Egypt and Ethiopia. Subsequently, the arrival of Islam in the seventh century—frequently by military incursion, commercial trading, and the nonviolent missionary efforts of merchants through encounters with communities in North Africa—sparked an era of rapid religious and community transformation with links to the Arab and Asian Islamic world. Persian and Arab merchants introduced Islam in East Africa by trading with coastal towns up and down the eastern seaboard. Islam was more easily adaptable than Christianity in many instances because of its relative openness to African indigenous religions and its Eastern roots. By the 1700s Islam had diversified and grown popular in many parts of West, North, and East Africa, melding both indigenous cultural practices and Islamic religious observances.
In the 15th century Europeans invaded and occupied African lands, primarily on the coasts, and began to import indigenous peoples as slaves. This marked the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, during which Africans were used in part to remedy the labor shortage in the New World as resources were being exploited by European countries for power and profit. With the colonizers were missionaries armed with the banner of Christ. They depended heavily on the protection of European colonial military forces like the Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, Italian, German, and Dutch and used Western medicinal remedies and medical missions to coerce Africans into accepting the ideology of Christianity. The military subjugation of Africa and the ensuing colonial occupation of African lands inevitably favored Christian religious hegemony, and the African people accepted the new religion with Jesus Christ as center, in part because the missionaries promised material and heavenly rewards.
Dispossession of ancestral lands dislocated African cultural moorings, and the reality of political domination and economic marginalization forced Africans into a dependence on the missionary occupiers. By using local languages and converting Africans from their ancestral religions to Christianity, missionaries paved the way for the entrenchment of Western colonialism in parts of West Africa, East Africa, and southern Africa. Western colonialists negotiated and drafted treaties with African leaders who were willing to cooperate with them, further alienating ancestral lands and opening up fertile lands to European colonial settlement. African societies were thus thoroughly destabilized, and African systems of governance were forcibly overthrown, precipitating an era of perpetual chaos and devastation of indigenous economies, whose legacy is manifest on the African continent of the early 21st century. African communities were denuded of their deep cultural roots in many regions, and lineage continuity was fiercely arrested by the colonial-missionary onslaught. By the 1900s Christianity was firmly entrenched, especially in southern Africa and parts of West and East Africa.
In the early 21st century Muslims worship throughout much of Africa and are most heavily concentrated in North and East Africa. The success of Islam is partially a result of its integration of indigenous beliefs and practices and the strong emphasis on a community unified by belief in Allah, the centrality of the Koranic (Quranic) scriptures in Arabic, and a set of customs and practices that Muslims all over the world practice uniformly each day, regardless of culture. Muslims globally observe the Five Pillars of Islam: shahada, attesting to God’s oneness and the primacy of the Prophet Muhammad; salat, praying five times a day; zakat, giving and donating to the needy; sawm, fasting during daylight hours of Ramadan; and the hajj, making a pilgrimage once in a lifetime to Mecca, the Holy Center of Islam.
However, the political history of both Islam and Christianity has led to criticisms of both when it comes to political conflict in Africa. During the creation and administration of Sudan by the British via the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, beginning in 1899, the British encouraged Islamic expansion in the north while keeping the south Christian. Subsequently, Sudan had a protracted civil war that lasted for many decades and intensified military conflicts between the predominant Muslim north and the principally Christian south, the latter made possible through the evangelizing efforts of Christian missionaries permitted by British colonial authorities. Somalia, a predominantly Muslim country in the early 21st century, became a state in 1959 after having been divided by Italian colonialism in the south and British colonialism in the north. Kenya, which was under the yoke of the British, refused to acknowledge a unified Somalia, since some of the territories included in the new boundaries had been part of Kenya. The result is that many Somalis of the Muslim faith still live in Kenya, often in conflict with their Christian counterparts, who are part of Kenya’s majority.
Cold war conflicts between the United States (essentially viewed as Western and Christian) and the Soviet Union (Communist) played themselves out in Somalia when Mohamed Siad Barre (ruled 1969-91) became leader of Somalia and was supported by the Soviet Union; neighboring Ethiopia was backed by Britain and the United States. This led to intensified wars between the predominant Christian Ethiopia and Muslim Somalia, a legacy still evident today. In Rwanda, Christian adherents were held responsible for the country’s ethnocide in the mid-1990s, and Muslims were viewed as being culpable for the enslaving of black peoples in places such as Mauritania and the Sudan. The legacy of the colonial divisions of Africa across ethnic, clan, and family bonds that have exacerbated feuding and conditions of marginalization have been at the core of fratricide and social conflicts on the continent in places like Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, the Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.
The rapid spread of Pentecostal Christianity and fundamentalist Islam—the former from charismatic Western Christian churches and the latter arising as a reaction to Western political hegemony especially in North Africa, the Arab world, and South Asia— has greatly affected the role of indigenous religions in African societies. These religions have creatively responded by formulating new ways of survival, such as developing literature, institutionalizing certain traditions and practices, and establishing associations and training schools for priests. Moreover, they have projected the scope of their influence outside Africa and contributed markedly to global cultures, especially in African diasporic communities.
From the 1500s to the 1900s the European-controlled transatlantic slave trade took African religions to the Americas and the Caribbean. Contact with Catholicism in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago produced new forms of religious syncretism called Candomblé, Umbanda, Santeria, Vodun, and Shango, involving ceremonies in honor of the spirits of the gods of Africa and venerating saintly figures from both Christianity and African traditions. Since the 1980s the religions of African immigrants have influenced cultures in the United States; this has been followed by a new wave of conversion to indigenous African traditions, especially among diasporic Africans. For example, new forms of the Yoruba religion have been emerging that are quite different from the Yoruba orisa (deities) traditions in Nigeria. These forms have introduced African healing practices in diverse communities in the United States. In addition, there are a number of West African babalawos (divination specialists) of African origin practicing in Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City, and other urban centers.
The interaction between Western and indigenous African religious traditions has influenced religious innovations in Africa, such as African Initiated Churches (Christian churches founded by Christian converts in Africa as opposed to missionary-led churches) and Islamic mystical traditions (Sufism). As a result, Islam and Christianity have become more indigenized in various parts of the African continent, significantly changing the character of the two traditions and leading to a distinctly African cultural aura in the practice of these respective faiths.
Central Doctrines
Unlike other world faiths, African indigenous religions have no predominant doctrinal teachings. Rather, they have certain vital elements that function as core beliefs. Among these beliefs are cosmogonic accounts (origin stories), myths describing divine power and the role of spirits, the presence and power of deities, ancestor veneration, and divination.
In African indigenous religions the sense of time is often described in cyclical rather than linear imagery. For instance, in the cosmology of the Dagara, an indigenous group of the Niger region in West Africa, the wheel or circle represents the cyclical nature of Earth and everything living on Earth. According to the Yoruba, an indigenous group residing in Nigeria and parts of Benin and Togo, the life force that pervades all phenomena exists in an eternal cycle of complex interactions between cosmic forces; these need to remain in balance so that the endless universe stays in balance. Cosmogonic accounts usually describe humans appearing near the end of creation. In many creation stories the Creator is likened to a potter who creates humans out of clay and then pours the breath of life into them. For example, the Dinka from the Sudan describe the Creator giving life to Abuk and Garang, woman and man, from small pieces of clay in a big pot.
African religions rely on the memory of oral stories. Doctrine thus tends to be more flexible than is the case in text-based religions and changes according to the immediate needs of religious followers. African indigenous religions reflect communal endeavors, and it is not essential that an individual believe in every element of a particular tradition. Instead, they may participate in ways that benefit their interests, community roles, or status as religious leaders. However, because religion permeates most aspects of indigenous African cultures and assumes supreme significance in the well-being of African societies, if an individual opts to reject the religious basis of her or his culture, she or he may become isolated from family, friends, and the community.
Narratives about the creation of the universe (cosmogony) and the nature and structure of the world (cosmology) form the core philosophy of African religions. These narratives are conveyed in a linguistic form that many Western scholars often refer to as “myth.” The term myth in African religions refers to sacred stories that are believed to be true by those who adhere to them, unlike the make-believe feel of Western myths. To adherents of African indigenous religions, myths reveal significant events and episodes of the most profound historical truths and of transcendent meaning relevant for all time. Myths are not fixed, because accounts may vary from generation to generation or even among individuals who tell these stories. They do, however, retain similar structures and purposes: to describe the way things were at the beginning of time and to explain the cosmic order, for example. They generally involve “superhuman” entities, gods, demigods, spirits, and ancestors.
The Western notion that myth is nonrational and unscientific, while linear materialist history is critical and rational, is not accurate and does not make sense to practitioners of African indigenous religions. Many African myths are concerned with events and occurrences that devotees consider as authentic and “real” or as symbolic expressions of historical events. Furthermore, modern scholars increasingly assert that the supposedly accurate records of missionaries, colonial administrators, and the indigenous elite were susceptible to distortion due to the weight of ideological baggage surrounding these records. The fact that myths have endured for generations gives them their authority in African religion. Each generation expresses and reinterprets the myths and spiritual accounts that seemingly defy human explanation, so that the extraordinary nature of such myths becomes relevant to contemporary conditions.
Although historically many non-Africans have exoticized indigenous religions in Africa and other parts of the world by misunderstanding their multiple deities and ancestral spirits, there are other features worth noting. For example, African cosmogonies (creation accounts) posit the existence of a Supreme Being or Beings who created the universe and everything in it, who is ineffable, and who spans the endless universe with no beginning and no end. The Nguni peoples of southern Africa refer to the Creator as Unkulunkulu and Mvelinqangi, translated as “one who is the First, the one who is the Essence of all existence” and “whose greatness is beyond any other,” the Creator. Of course, as Robin Horton points out in Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West (1993), it is unclear whether the concept of a singular Supreme Being as being the original creative force has always been a part of ancient African traditions or if the emphasis on a single being among communities such as the Shona of Zimbabwe, the Igbo of Nigeria, the Acholi of Uganda, and the Nyakyusa of Tanzania and Malawi was principally influenced by monotheistic Christianity.
In several cultures stories are told in which a Supreme Deity or Deities perform creation through mere thought processes. In other cases the Supreme Being instructs lesser deities on how to create by providing them with materials to undertake the process. For instance, the Yoruba believe that the Supreme Being, Olódùmarè, designated the orisa (deities) responsible for creating the universe. In the creation story of the Abaluhya of Kenya, the Supreme Being, called Wele Xakaba, created the universe in a manner that resembles the seven-day creation of the world by God in the Bible, with the seventh day being a time of rest. There are myths that say the world was created out of an existing abyss or a watery universe uninhabited by animate beings. In African cosmological narratives creation is always portrayed as a complex process, whether the universe is said to have evolved from preexisting matter or from divine thought.
African cosmogonic myths contain a people’s conception of divine beings—the Supreme Being, the divinities, the demigods, and the spirits that operate in the created world. The African pantheon of gods, goddesses, spirits, and other powerful beings is difficult for some outside observers to comprehend. Deities are varied in number and complex in character. In most places in Africa it is believed that the “supernatural” is contiguous with the natural and that spectacular miracles reflect the dynamic power of the spirit world acting in nature. The lives of gods and humans are thus inextricably interwoven with each other in daily experiences. The gods and goddesses often populate the expression of core community beliefs, and people make frequent and daily references to them. Deities inhabit a world primarily created for humans and their interactions with the rest of the natural world, and these spiritual beings exercise tremendous influence over day-to-day human affairs. Because the spirits inhabit the natural world, no practical distinction exists between the natural and the supernatural. The term supernatural belongs to the vocabulary of Western philosophies, where nature is viewed as performing routine processes and anything that functions outside such processes is considered otherworldly, or supernatural.
The Fon of Benin, in West Africa, and their neighbors, the Yoruba of Nigeria, share many elements of a highly intricate cosmology. They worship a number of the same deities, with slightly different names used, including Sango, god of thunder and lightning; Ogún, god of war and iron; Èsù, messenger of the gods; and Ifa, the god of divination. There are similar motifs in the cosmological narratives of both cultures, though the Fon narratives are typically more complex than the Yorubas’.
Interestingly, in the Fon creation myth the Supreme Being, Mawu, is of indeterminate gender, and creation occurs through two complementary beings. Mawu is sometimes female and sometimes male. Mawu, when female, is often associated with a male partner, Lisa. In one version, Nana Buluku, a creator god, gives birth to Mawu and Lisa. As a female, Mawu is associated with Earth, the moon, the rising sun, and the western universe. Lisa, as the male, is responsible for the setting sun, the sky, the day, and the eastern universe. Together, Mawu-Lisa gave birth to another set of twin deities, who in turn beget seven pairs of twin offspring. (Twins, not surprisingly, are esteemed in Fon culture.) Mawu-Lisa once gathered their children together to distribute what they owned among them. To the most senior set of twins Mawu-Lisa bestowed authority to rule Earth. Another set, “Twins of Storm,” retained authority to govern thunder and lightning. Representing iron and metal, the most powerful pair maintained jurisdiction over the manufacture of iron implements such as knives, hoes, arrows, and, beginning in the 20th century, guns and automobiles. According to the mythology, these twin gods took command of vital functions in developing the Fon economy: cultivating land for agriculture, building roads and paths, manufacturing tools, and improving farming, hunting, and weapons of war.
Mawu-Lisa positioned human beings in the region between the sky and the underworld, commanding humans to dwell there, with each to return to his or her own abode after a specified number of years. Mawu-Lisa also created spirits and deities, bestowing upon each a special “esoteric” ritual language through which they communicate among themselves. By ministering to deities and humans alike in liturgical worship, the spiritual practitioners learn these rituals and languages and in so doing become instruments of sacred power. In this particular narrative, Legba (messenger of the Supreme Beings and other gods) gained knowledge of all sacred languages of the divinities, enabling himself to initiate communication among other deities.
Other West African cultures have similar creation myths and social traditions that are akin to each other in many respects, reflecting dialectical interactions among various cultures of the region. The Winye of Burkina Faso also center their creation myth on female and male twins, primordial parents whom the Creator Being sent to establish human life in the created world. Their rebellious behavior, however, caused dismay since they resorted to acts of sorcery and refused to submit to the natural succession of generations. The female twin held back her own offspring for a year, and after she finally gave birth, the children—twins themselves—rebelled against their parents by establishing themselves as an autonomous pair. Ironically, recognizing the authority of their own children, the parents pledged to obey them and sacrificed a goat in acknowledgment. This story conveys the division between two generations that causes disharmony in familial relations. Only through sacrifice is a balance of social relations and order restored. This anecdotal account also acknowledges the importance of primordial beings and their innate procreative power, which ultimately benefits civilization.
Several other African cosmologies are also characterized by an emphasis on primordial disorder and on how harmony is restored. Though such disorder at first comprises “negative” forces, ultimately it falls into place by being balanced with “positive forces” so that a workable social universe is maintained. The emphasis in such anecdotes and African cosmogonic and creation stories is the balance and complementarity of spiritual forces in the universe, like day and night, without one assuming power over the other. In some indigenous African cosmologies primordial divinities have a dispute in which subordinate gods must take sides. While the Creator Spirit serves as the adjudicator in such conflicts, one demigod eventually takes command over the others. Such myths of conflict often provide humanity with unwritten guidelines for establishing institutions of morality, ethics, and behavior.
Certain African societies have creation myths that correlate with their social and political organization. An example is the northern Yatenga society of West Africa, in which the Nioniosse “rose up” from the underworld and the Foulse descended from the sky. The Nioniosse oversee the “cult of the Earth” and other rites relating to fertility, and the Foulse command the reigning monarchy, personnel, chiefs, and kings. The two complementary realms represent the world’s administrative governance and agricultural life on Earth. This myth gives credence to the importance of the spiritual underworld as the sphere that nourishes human life. Unlike much of Western mythologies that seem partial to the reign of sky beings and portray heaven as the abode of the Supreme Being, many African cosmologies consider the sky and Earth as equally significant spheres through which the divine creates and maintains an enchanted universe.
African belief systems revolve around numerous lesser deities who assist the Supreme Being while performing diverse functions in the created world. The Supreme Being is too much of a mystery and too awesome to be involved directly in the mundane activities of humans and other beings. Earth is one of the most powerful spirits and reflects awesome divine power. The Akan of Ghana, for instance, honor the Earth goddess, Alá, and the Anlo consider Earth, Anyigba, as the “spouse of Heaven, underscoring the interwovenness and complementariness of the celestial and the terrestrial, or Heaven and Earth.
The pantheon of deities is often given a collective name. For the Yoruba of Nigeria, for example, it is orisa, and for the Baganda (the largest indigenous group in Uganda) it is balubaale. The intricate myths and legends describing African deities provide ample evidence of their habits, functions, powers, activities, status, and influence. In several traditions, anecdotes portray the divinities as anthropomorphic beings who share many characteristics with humans. They can speak, are visible, and endure punishments and rewards. Yet they are unlike humans in that they are immortal, superhuman, and transcendent, without bodily form.
The most significant superhuman being is the Creator Spirit, who represents universality and greatness. The myths of many African cultures describe the Supreme Being’s global significance and place her or him above the other deities in the pantheon. At times supreme gods are understood to be females and males who complement each other as wife and husband or sister and brother, similar to Mawu-Lisa in the religion of the Fon of Benin. In some cultures the pair’s kinship bond may signify the unity of divine energy.
Although the Supreme Being is a Creator god, the work of creating the universe, especially when such acts entail physical labor, is often delegated to subordinates who act according to the Supreme Being’s instructions. The Supreme Being may also be seen as a divine principle embodying the idea of life abundance and the blessings of human procreation and agricultural fertility. In many myths the Supreme Being withdraws to a comfortable distance after creating the universe and delegates the affairs of the universe to lesser divinities. Some African groups have cults dedicated to the Supreme Being, but in general the Creator does not have a special cult of devotees. This is because the Supreme Being occupies the realm beyond the physical abode of humans and thus remains outside their immediate influence. In some southern African religious groups, however, the Supreme Being is not considered to be remote. One example is the regional cult of Mwari (a Creator god) in western Zimbabwe and eastern Botswana. Members of the Mwari cult engage primarily in rituals that are intended to influence the economy and maintain environmental balances. However, there are questions as to whether the Mwari cult was an ancient Shona practice or of more recent origin.
In indigenous African cosmologies, all of life is imbued with spirit. The spirit is the essence of human existence, and bodily form is merely the physical envelope containing the fundamental core of a human being. Spirits are the connection between the living and the invisible worlds. Anyone can communicate with the spirits, but priests, priestesses, prophets, and diviners have more direct access to invisible arenas of the world due to their distinctive spiritual histories and roles. Practitioners of indigenous religions understand the founders of their religions to be the Creator or the Creation spirits themselves, the same beings who created the mysterious universe and everything in it. Nature is the realm where all life thrives, and what may be considered supernatural in Western religious eyes—such as healings; unusual movements of mountains, rivers, streams, or celestial phenomena; and communication of animals, birds, insects, or plants with humans—are viewed as normal activity of spirits within nature.
The Minianka of Mali, for example, describe the interior of a person as indicating his or her true character and declare that all of life is dedicated to cultivating and nurturing the interior spirit of a person. The relationship to spirits occurs at the levels of nature spirits and those of humans who have passed on to the spirit world—viewed as the place from where all life emanates. Furthermore, there is no such phenomenon called “death”; rather, death is viewed as a passing into or returning to the spirit world. Individuals who have passed into the spirit world, usually ancestors in particular lineages, constitute human spirits. These spirits play a role in community affairs and ensure a link between each clan and the spirit world. Natural phenomena such as rivers, mountains, trees, forests, and the sun, as well as forces such as wind, rain, lightning, thunder, and water, signify nature spirits. Animals and other forms of life also may be considered the sources of clans. For example, a lion is one of the ancestral animals of clans from the Karanga people in Zimbabwe in southern Africa and provides territorial protection. The crocodile is an ancestral animal of certain clans among the Dagara of Burkina Faso in West Africa.
Most indigenous Africans practice ancestor veneration. Ancestors are generally the elders (of either gender) who have passed on from the realm of the physical living to that of the spiritual. They retain membership in their family, community, clan, and kin groups. Beliefs and practices of ancestor veneration vary according to the local culture and religious traditions. For example, among the Komo of the Congo (Kinshasa) the ancestors play a role equally prominent to that of deities. They serve as guardians of the living, and they pass down the various Komo rituals. In some communities notions of ancestors are more expansive and may include various categories of human spirits; in others, ancestors include spirits of children who have passed away. The Ba Thonga, a group of indigenous people living in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and South Africa, have a welldeveloped ancestral system. Ideas and ritual practices relating to the cult of those who have passed from the physical world to the spiritual are central aspects of community life.
Communities in the Congo, like many other African cultures, often view kinship, lineage, chieftaincy, and elderhood as factors that unite the ancestors with the living. For example, among the Ba Kongo—a group of indigenous peoples who largely reside in Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), and Angola—and the Kaguru of Tanzania, the elders are closest to the ancestors and they wield much influence on how to consult and propitiate them. The elders determine what displeases the ancestors, whom to blame for the ancestors’ displeasure with the living, and who will interpret the ancestors’ will. Ancestors maintain a strong moral authority over the living; the elders speak for the ancestors when they intervene in and resolve conflicts. Ancestral propitiation takes many forms in Kaguru society, including cleaning the graves of those who have died, pouring libations of beer, and making offerings of flour or tobacco. Crises call for more elaborate sacrifices, such as the slaughter of chickens, goats, and sheep. In many instances the Kaguru ancestors are approached communally.
Indigenous African cultures have various prerequisites and conditions for attaining ancestral status and spirituality. There is no single criterion or widespread characteristic of ancestorhood, but there are similarities. For instance, ancestors often attain their status after they have received proper burial rituals. Gender is a major factor in many indigenous ancestral cultures, with males tending to be central. The Manyika of Zimbabwe and Mozambique bestow ancestor status only on males, and the status is not necessarily associated with fatherhood; a childless Manyika adult male who dies may become an ancestor if a nephew includes him in his own ancestor cult. Even a child may become an ancestor, and the Sukuma and Nyamwezi people of Tanzania believe that twins are ancestors because multiple births indicate an excess of fertility.
The influence of European and Islamic patriarchal cultures on Africa over the past 15 centuries poses questions as to whether the preponderance of male ancestor veneration is of more recent origin. Gender complementarity rather than dominance has been at the heart of ancient African cultures. The matrilineal agricultural Bemba people of northern and eastern Zambia, for example, view Lesa, the Supreme Being, as both female and male, symbolizing the future and the easterly direction where the Bemba people see their own future. The ancestors (Ifikolwe) of the Bemba are signified by the west, from where the Bemba understand their origin to be, and ancestral rites are thus performed in this direction.
In the African cosmological vision, death is neither terminal nor annihilates human life; it is merely the inevitable transition and a return to the spirit world from where all life originates. Proper burial rites and ceremonies are performed to ensure a peaceful passage. For the Bambara of Mali, one who passes away from physical life causes great anxiety, confusion, and unpredictability. It is thought that the fortunes of those who have died and those of their descendants become equally volatile and that the community is thus temporarily endangered. The Bambara fear that the passing away of a lineage head may disturb the entire clan. The Yoruba believe that the death of an elder who has worked diligently to provide unity and strength in the lineage generates a void and causes fragmentation of the entire household and community.
In most African communities a person who has passed away must be properly buried to become an ancestor. Proper burial entails a performance of elaborate funeral ceremonies and participation by all members of the person’s descendants. In addition, the deceased must have died from positive causes: many Africans regard the premature or sudden death of a person that results from an accident or a “shameful disease”—such as smallpox, leprosy, and AIDS—to be dreadful. Some question whether modern Western Christianity has influenced such notions of shamefulness. For example, branches of conservative Christian churches have attributed epidemics such as AIDS to “divine punishment for sinfulness.” Generally, ancestors are constituted by those who have passed away after living to an advanced and old age, accruing wisdom and knowledge from their expansive life experience. When an elderly person dies, Africans religiously avoid using the word death. The Yoruba, for example, refer to a traumatic event or death circuitously by using metaphors such as “the elephant has fallen” (erin wo) or “the tiger is gone” (ekun lo).
Ancestor veneration is also tied to long-term memorialization of those who have passed away. The African notion of immortality is contingent upon the ethical life a person lived on Earth and the presence of many children and community members who can continue the lineage. Among some peoples of East Africa, it is considered tragic when a person passes away with few family or community members to remember her or him.
In African indigenous religions it is believed that ancestors sometimes experience what is generally referred to as reincarnation. The ancestors are responsible for perpetuating their lineage not only by making possible the procreation of the living members of the lineage but also through rebirth. The Yoruba hold that children born soon after the death of grandparents or parents are reincarnated (if they are of the same sex as the one who has passed away). For instance, a girl born after the death of a grandmother or mother is called Yetunde or Iyabo (mother has returned), and a boy born after the death of a grandfather or father is called Babatunde (father has returned). The Yoruba believe that such children reflect the traits and characteristics of the elder who has passed away. While the Kaguru have no such generic naming system, their naming patterns are closely associated with ancestral veneration. Newborns are said to come from the place of the ancestors, not necessarily in actual physical rebirth but in terms of the particular qualities of the one who has died. Through divination ceremonies every Kaguru infant is given the name of the closest ancestor.
The simultaneous belief in ancestor veneration and reincarnation presents a contradiction: How can the ancestors live in the underworld and at the same time return to their lineage to live again? The religion of the Lupupan people—a subgroup of the Basongye, an indigenous group of the Congo (Kinshasa)—illustrates how this belief is sustained in most African communities. The Lupupan believe that the body (mbidi) houses the spirit (kikudi) and that when one passes away, the spirit immediately leaves for elungu, a special land that the ancestors inhabit. Wild pigs protect and guide elungu and run errands for the ancestors. If the living maintain a cordial relationship with the ancestors, one of the spirits returns to be reborn into the lineage. In principle, an individual’s spirit can reside on Earth in another body three times, after which the cycle is complete; that individual may appear a fourth time as a fierce ancestral creature, perhaps a leopard. Rebirth of the spirit of the one who has passed away occurs through a grandchild (not a child), because the spirit must skip a generation, the Dagara of Burkina Faso being examples of this notion. Thus, newborn grandsons take the name of their grandfathers who have passed away.
Western doctrines of the afterlife came to the Lupupan people in the 19th century with the arrival of Christianity. They incorporated Christian ideas into their religious belief systems, as is the case with other indigenous communities of Africa. While other traditional African societies may possess fewer elaborate details of reincarnation, several of them hold the view that ancestors are born into their lineage.
Another essential aspect of African indigenous religions is divination, which devotees use to gain access to the sacred knowledge of the deities and the cosmos. The process of divination allows the deities’ feelings and messages to be revealed to humans. Individuals or groups of people practice divination to discern the meanings and consequences of past, present, and future events. Perhaps the most common form of divination is the appearance of signs that the elders consider to have significant meaning—for themselves, the people around them, the family, the clan, or the village. For instance, howling dogs signify the impending passing away of a relative in many communities. An injured toe means that a visit will be dreadful. A nightmare indicates the coming of an unpleasant event.
Evan Zuesse, a scholar of religious studies, suggests that the Fon people of Benin practice three basic types of divination: possession divination, wisdom (also called instrumental or interpretive) divination, and intuitive divination. In possession divination a spirit possesses the diviner or sacred objects. By contacting the eternal realm of spirits, gods, ancestors, or other divine beings, the diviner attains a state of possession or shamanic trance, usually through dancing and other ritual performance. The spirit possesses the diviner and speaks in spirit voices, which are then interpreted by the diviner’s assistants. In wisdom divination the client seeks help from a diviner, who uses certain divination instruments to diagnose the cause of illness and prescribes appropriate ritual sacrifices and medicine. Intuitive divination uses the deep spiritual insight and vision of the diviner, who has great power to reveal issues and concerns of the client.
The Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria practice perhaps the most complex African divinatory process, a classic form of wisdom divination called Ifa. Ifa divination spread in West Africa between the Edo of the Benin kingdom (now in southern Nigeria) and the Fon of the Republic of Benin, as well as among the people of African descent in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States. In Ifa divination a client consults a diviner (babalawo), who throws a divining chain (opele) made of nuts on a mat and then recites the message of the Ifa deity who appears. Clients listen to the poetic recital and identify aspects of it that relate to their problem. A precise response emerges through additional inquiry, and the diviner prescribes appropriate sacrifices.
Moral Code of Conduct
Although African indigenous religions have not embarked on a systematic theology, the myths, rituals, and stories of the gods and ancestors point to a statement on ethical justice. The gods and ancestors are guardians of ethical values and practices. They profess habits of truth, justice, honesty, good character, and diligence. They reward deeds that enhance life and punish deeds that diminish and deny life. Many traditions talk about judgment, through which destructive deeds are punished and life-enhancing deeds are rewarded.
African indigenous religions focus on ethical actions in this world, and rewards are accorded and punishments are meted in the contemporary world, as opposed to the otherworldly doctrine of salvation in Christian teaching. In many instances, one’s ethical comportment or unethical behavior in this life may affect the welfare of future generations of individuals. Punishment may be communal or may pass from one generation to another. Lineage or familial misfortune signifies punishment for the unethical past deeds of members of the lineage. Certain antisocial behaviors, such as theft, witchcraft, and sorcery are taboo, and offenders may suffer punishment of death or a severe, debilitating illness.
Various African cultures have developed intricate sets of ethical customs, norms, injunctions, and taboos that are embedded in the religious ethos and cosmology of the particular community. Many believe that their morals originated with the Supreme Being and the ancestors and were imparted to humans as elements of the original creation of the world. For example, the Achewa of Malawi observe that the tropical forest is a place where plants and animals, along with humans, live conjunctively as part of the virgin sacred forest, signifying the intrinsic unity between humans and the cosmos. The Igbo people of Nigeria’s Owerri region believe that Alà, goddess of Earth, together with Amadióhà god of thunder and lightning, oversees the essential aspects of village life. As goddess of peace and mother of her people, Alà provides for and protects them, deriving her strength from the land. If offended, however, she can exhibit violent reactions that include earthquakes, lightning, illness, or termination of one’s physical life. Any criminal act is considered as defiling Earth and thus offending Ala; violations include incest, adultery, larceny, birthing abnormal children, hostility, kidnapping, and murder.
Specific deities are ordained by the Supreme Being as custodians of rectitude. Ogún, for example, is the Yoruba god of justice. The gods are concerned with many issues in the day-to-day life of the people, including their fertility, agricultural production, governance, and health and well-being. The gods are aware of a person’s values, morals, and sense of justice and respond according to the manner a person conducts herself or himself as a person living in the community and society.
In most indigenous African cultures ethical norms are of two classes—those that underpin individual conduct and those that govern social and community relations. Fundamental human rights are important not just for the sake of individuals but for the collective survival of the group, which is paramount. Community ethics govern the family unit, from maternal and paternal relatives to extended families, clans, and lineages. Family members must adhere to specific roles, privileges, and rights. Societies have established taboos and consequences for breaking ethical codes of conduct that promote and protect the welfare of communities. For example, marriage to a close relative, incest, and disrespect of property and life are taboo. The young are expected to respect their elders, who are acknowledged for the wealth of their experiences, their contributions to community growth, and to their close proximity to the world of the ancestors. It is believed that elders will play a role in individual and social well-being upon their departure to the ancestral world.
Sacred Books
Adherents of African indigenous religions rely on no scriptures, canonical texts, or holy books to guide them. Instead, ethical guidance is provided through instruction from spiritual powers through ceremonies and through myths and stories that are handed down orally from one generation to the next. Elders, priests, and priestesses have served as guardians of the sacred traditions. Throughout Africa, myths explain the creation of the universe, how humans appeared, the origin of the culture, and the reason and manner that humans find themselves in particular locations.
The people who instruct and pass on sacred knowledge, such as diviners, herbalists, and healers, are viewed as sacred custodians of knowledge for future generations and are held in high esteem by the community. Highly trained diviners have largely been responsible for memorizing and transmitting important historical and cultural events to the next generation. It would be virtually impossible to know what indigenous religions were like 500 or 1,000 years ago without the established sacred traditions from the past attested to by knowledgeable seers today. African indigenous religions remain flexible and adaptable according to the needs of their followers. Accordingly, if religious believers no longer find a belief or ritual useful for daily spiritual life, it may be permanently abandoned by such believers.
Among some indigenous African communities sets of oral narratives serve as sacred texts. A classic example is Ifa divination, which is popular among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria. The Ifa corpus is a large body of 256 poetic oral narratives that are memorized by diviners and recited during divination performances. If a person is seeking to learn about his or her divine will and directives, an Ifa babalawo uses 16 specially selected palm nuts or an opele made of eight half palm nuts tied into a chain. The diviner holds the chain by the middle and throws it on a mat, making a U shape so that four nuts fall on each side of the mat. The nuts expose either convex or concave sides, thus displaying 16 possible forms of Ifa signature. Each signature stands for a symbol called an odu, each of which corresponds to a chapter (also called an odu) containing several verses of oral poems. The diviner then recites the odu that appears in the divination castings.
After the recitation the client tells the diviner if any of the verses is relevant to his or her crisis. At that stage the client may reveal to the diviner the nature of the inquiry. The diviner recalls and interprets an appropriate text and, through further questioning, arrives at a definitive cause of the client’s quest. The diviner prescribes a remedy, usually a sacrificial ritual, but in cases of grave illness, medicinal herbs may offer a cure.
Sacred Symbols
Indigenous African art is known worldwide for its ability to represent abstract ideas and denote spiritual forces. African artists produce sacred icons and symbols of indigenous religions in a wide array of forms, both abstract and representational. Indigenous artists typically carve images that express the powers of the Supreme Being, demigods, ancestors, and spirits as intermediaries between deities and humans. A royal stool may depict powerful creatures such as leopards, tigers, and elephant. Practitioners of African indigenous religions are generally familiar with the symbols and icons of art forms, but usually only a few trained individuals can interpret their religious significance in initiation, divination, and secret societies.
In addition to abstract forms, many religious artists borrow from forms found in the rest of the natural world—such as insects, trees, leaves, mammals, and birds—to produce intricate design motifs. Common creature motifs are the chameleon, centipede, butterfly, lizard, snake, tortoise, and fish. Many species of birds, including the ostrich, vulture, dove, and heron, inspire artists. Cultural objects and status symbols such as amulets, royal crowns, staffs, cowrie shells, divination signs, and dance wands often stimulate artistic designs. Such designs are incorporated into everyday objects such as a writing board, a comb, a game board, or scissors.
In certain regions of Africa indigenous hairstyles have their own religious significance. A male priest or an indigenous ruler may wear his hair long to signify a female deity, thereby assuming the persona of the deity and establishing a special connection with her. Shrines, religious objects, and sacred places are adorned with many forms, shapes, and colors to express religious concepts.
Early and Modern Leaders
While there have been great female and male religious leaders throughout Africa’s history, none can be elevated above others in their importance to religious history. In indigenous traditions the leaders are the mythic beings and culture heroes who were responsible for founding empires, civilizations, clans, and lineages that later formed the core of the religioethnic traditions of their peoples. Such mythic figures and culture heroes include Oduduwa in Nigeria; Shaka, the Zulu-speaking leader in South Africa/Azania; and Osei Tutu in Ghana.
Many people are involved in religious leadership. A single religious tradition can have priests and priestesses, sacred kings and queens, prophets and prophetesses, and seers, all of whom are considered important religious leaders. This diversity accords with a general indigenous principle of avoiding the concentration of spiritual powers in the hands of a single individual. Leaders impart religious wisdom and guidance to all adherents, and roles are not clearly demarcated with an individual’s religious title. Roles are thus interchangeable: a priest can be a diviner, a king can be a seer, and a prophet can be a priest and a diviner. These roles carry distinct names in West African languages. A priest connected with a god is referred to as an obosõmfo, vodunõ, olorisa, and atama in Twi, Fon, Yoruba, and Igbo, respectively. A seer is an okõmfo, a bokonõ, a babalawo, or an amoma. Similarly, the names for medicine healers are sumã, nkwafo, amawato, onisegun, and dibia, respectively.
Many religious leaders offer sacrifices or make verbal demands on the behalf of believers. The most powerful are spirit mediums who are members of a family or clan and are responsible for communication between an ancestor and his or her descendants. Diviners are vital for communicating with the spirit world. People consult diviners for any number of issues, but the most common reasons are for misfortunes, such as sickness, the death of a loved one, or a calamity. The spirits are the true custodians of knowledge in all indigenous cultures and have authentic knowledge about the causes of particular misfortunes. Diviners signify repositories of vast secret knowledge and are highly intuitive about human nature, yet such sacred knowledge is not openly accessible to the public because of its susceptibility to abuse by practitioners of witchcraft and destructive forces.
Priests and priestesses are natural leaders because they are in direct service to the spirits and dedicate themselves to the gods for life. The oldest woman or man of the family or community is often a priestess or priest because she or he is the closest to the spirit world and has lived the longest life. In most villages in Africa a head priest, who leads the other priests, is often chosen by his predecessor or elders or by an administrative council.
According to indigenous religious beliefs, there are powerful spirits who act through spirit mediums and are involved in historical events in Africa. For instance, Mbuya (grandmother) Nehanda, a spirit medium in Zimbabwe, played an important role in mobilizing people in the fight for national independence from British colonization beginning in the late 19th century. Nehanda, considered an incarnation of an oracle spirit, was eventually hanged by colonial authorities in 1898. Her spirit lived on through other spirit mediums and worked closely with the freedom fighters in the chimurenga (guerrilla struggle) that successfully realized the independence of Zimbabwe from British colonization in 1980. Similarly, the role of Kinjikitile Ngwale in the fight against European colonialism in Tanzania was an indication of the powerful role that spirit mediums play in political struggles for justice and liberation. In the 1960s the Mau movement in Kenya was based on koirugo, the blood oath to Earth that Kikuyu warriors took in defense of the Kenyan homeland and that empowered them to reject divulging any tactical information to their British colonial captors when arrested.
Contemporary African religious leaders include those who have been interested in reviving indigenous religions. One of the foremost of these is Wande Abimbola (1936- ), who was selected by the elder babalawos in Nigeria to be the awise awo agbaye (chief spokesperson of Ifa and Yoruba religion and culture) in 1987. From 2003 to 2005 Abimbola was appointed the adviser on culture and tradition to the president of Nigeria. Es’kia Mphahlele, a South African teacher and scholar, was another leading revivalist of traditional cultural practices in white-dominated-apartheid and postapartheid South Africa.
Major Theologians and Authors
The first academic studies of African indigenous religions were written in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries by Muslim and European scholars. These works generally disparaged traditional practices and beliefs as “paganistic,” “heathenistic,” or “fetishism,” essentially dismissing African religions as cases of superstitious magic. Muslim and European colonial traders, travelers, slavers, missionaries, military personnel, mercenaries, anthropologists, and administrators frequently recorded naive and ethnocentric-based accounts of African cultural customs, traditions, and religions. The bulk of these records were fraught with prejudice because they were compiled by people who had little or no knowledge of indigenous languages and, more importantly, did not accord full respect to Africans as human beings. These non-Africans generally imposed their own ideological perspectives on indigenous African experience.
Much of the early authorship on indigenous religions was conducted by anthropologists working for colonial governments or by Christian missionaries. Their studies avoided describing African cultures in indigenous terms. They were expected to assess colonial projects, predict the behavior of the indigenous people, distinguish between rumor and fact, and develop mechanisms for colonial command and control. This legacy of both anthropology and Christianity being culpable in the dispossession of indigenous African societies during colonization has never been seriously redressed in most contemporary scholastic works on Africa.
During the height of the colonial period in the 1800s, two main schools of thought prevailed, both of which reflected a racist ideology that influenced the initial study of African religions. The first questioned the origin of indigenous African civilizations and religions. Scholars attempted to link African cultures with external sources—for instance, suggesting that Africans below the Sahara had come from the Middle East or Egypt. This notion was built upon evolutionary theories that posited that cultures gradually evolve, becoming “less primitive” over time. The second school put forward a diffusionist, or “contact,” theory of development to explain sophisticated African belief systems and artifacts (such as intricate bronzes and terra-cotta sculptures). Great Zimbabwe, for example, was viewed for two centuries by Western scholars as a product of Asian (Chinese and Persian) trade and influence, since the British colonizers of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) viewed the indigenous Shona and Ndebele people as incapable of constructing such monumental structures. The diffusionist theory held that religious ideas of the Mediterranean region had proliferated, eventually reaching the peoples of Africa. Diffusionist theorists also suggested that Africans lacked a Supreme God and instead were “polytheists,” falsely assuming that monotheism is a supreme religious notion that underpins all human civilization.
The early African scholarship of J. B. Danquah (1895-1965) from Ghana and J. Olumide Lucas from Nigeria in the early 20th century produced interesting studies of African indigenous religions. By the 1930s colonial governments in Africa had opened several colleges (as offshoots of European institutions) across the continent. However, the curricula at these institutions generally reflected a Eurocentric ideology, and little attention was paid to the study of African religions. European Catholic and Protestant schools included some religious instruction in Christianity. During the 1940s and 1950s departments of religious studies were created in universities in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, although colonial offices continued to govern universities and colleges.
It was not until the 1940s that Africans entered into a scholarly discourse on African indigenous religions due to the historical domination of the study of them by anthropologists, missionaries, and colonial officials. The major characteristic of the overwhelming majority of these African scholars was that they were Christian and Western trained. Since European Judeo-Christianity claimed to be superior to indigenous religions due to the former’s monotheistic basis, African scholars such as John Mbiti from Kenya and E. Bolaji Idowu from Nigeria became intellectually embroiled in reacting to the biased and distorted claims by Christian missionaries. They devoted much of their early works to demonstrating their contention that Africans indeed had notions of a Supreme Being who signified the monotheistic God of Christianity. Mbiti’s work Introduction to African Religions (1974) subsequently inspired numerous studies on the Supreme Being in African religions.
Idowu, who did research on the Yoruba Supreme God, published Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief in 1962. Idowu, with J. O. Awolalu and Geoffrey Parrinder (an English Methodist minister who taught religion in Nigeria), put in place a structure for the study of African religions that later scholars adapted for their own studies. These three scholars established the idea of the centrality of a Supreme Being surrounded by myriad lesser gods, influenced heavily by Christian missionary teaching and ideology. The epistemological limitation was substantiated by the fact that there were no significant indigenous African scholars who were themselves practitioners or adherents of African indigenous religions. Some of the academic priests, including Parrinder, Father Placid Tempels, and Zaireois V. Mulago, were impressed by the inclusive views of liberal theology developed by Protestant and Catholic academic theologians in North American and European universities. They began to abandon their doctrinal, orthodox, and Christocentric views of African religion, though they remained firmly within the Christian religious and philosophical camp.
Departments of religious studies appeared in East Africa in the 1960s, and around this same time in West Africa colleges gained autonomy during the struggle for independence. With autonomy came a revitalized study of religions, which recognized the religious pluralism of countries that had become politically independent from European colonial powers. The emphasis on Christian studies that had long dominated the religious studies field was replaced by a postcolonialist attention to Islamic studies and African indigenous religions.
From the postcolonial years in the 1960s to the early 1990s, many scholars of African religious studies were passionately nationalistic. At the forefront was Idowu and Ugandan writer and anthropologist Okot p’Bitek, one of the foremost critics of African religious scholarship. In African Religions in Western Scholarship (1971), p’Bitek writes that the viewing of African religions through Euro-Christian spectacles should cease, because it does a grave injustice to the authentic study and appreciation of indigenous religions in Africa and ultimately fails to advance the study of these traditions.
During the 1980s and 1990s many African scholars began to study abroad. A growing number ended up teaching at Western universities and colleges in departments of religion or religious studies, compelled by restive political and devolving economic circumstances in their home countries. In the early 21st century the study of African religions is a global phenomenon, with methodologies and theoretical approaches that range from collecting ethnographic data to addressing the works of missionaries who worked to convert the indigenous people to Christianity. The overwhelming majority of scholars in religious studies departments teaching African religions in Africa and abroad are now Africans.
Organizational Structure
In contrast to structured Western religions, African indigenous religions are organized with relatively little concern for formal structure. They rely on no single individual as a religious leader but instead depend upon an entire community to do religious work. Priests, priestesses, diviners, seers, griots (storytellers), healers, elders, chiefs, kings, and other authority figures may perform sacred and ceremonial rituals. Depending on the kind of religious activity, various religious authorities may preside over specific rituals.
Despite little formal structure, African indigenous religions specifically define the structure of their cosmos. The universe, considered the source of all spiritual power, is manifested in particular spaces, places, and forms. From greatest to least significance, African indigenous religions generally understand the source of life emanating from a Supreme Being or Beings. Following this are divinities and ancestral spirits who represent the invisible world. The priests and holy persons who are intermediaries between the seen (the living) and the unseen worlds follow this spiritual circle. Finally, living humans and other creatures remain in the visible world before returning to the spirit world. Members of indigenous religious traditions are often divided into the initiated and the uninitiated. The initiated are priests and priestesses and may hold titles within the cult or community of adherents. They carry out specialized duties. The uninitiated are the rest of the members of the religious group who have not performed any major initiation rituals that qualify them to serve in the group’s inner circles.
Houses of Worship and Holy Places
Every indigenous African community has its own religious places and sacred sites, which can assume several forms. Certain mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, plains, or places around or close to the sea may be considered sacred because of spirits who have been seen or are active in such places. In the event of a revelation that a practitioner experienced or witnessed at a certain place, the site could become designated as a “holy” place. Places where elders or a religious leader have been buried may also assume sacred significance.
Some structures are built for specific religious purposes—for example, to protect the faithful from inclement weather or to protect religious objects from the elements. Larger buildings such as temples function exclusively for religious purposes; there are numerous temples for the worship of various deities. Temples are located all over the continent, especially among the ethnic groups in southern Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda. In some cases kings, queens, and other nobility are buried in temples. Some harbor shrines and ancestor graves.
Shrines, the most common religious structure, exist throughout Africa. Shrines may be exclusively for family members or for public use. They usually contain revered religious objects and are used for religious activities such as pouring libations, performing rituals, saying prayers, and making offerings. Shrines are usually the center of a family’s religious life and are the connection between the visible and invisible world. Priests or priestesses watch over both community shrines and family shrines. In Nigeria, for example, a shrine in honor of the Earth goddess, Alà, is found in Igbo communities. The Dagara of Burkina Faso have ancestral shrines with wooden carvings of birds and other creatures that are considered essential for the protection of the community.
Altars are small structures where offerings can be placed and sacrifices performed. They may be in shrines or temples, or they may stand on their own. Shrines and altars are most often found in natural spaces or in locations that are considered powerful places for connecting with the invisible. A taboo frequently restricts the kinds of materials used for building shrines and altars. Only local materials found from the immediate vicinity may be used to build these structures in many instances, since substances from outside the area may have been contaminated by evil or witchcraft spirits.
Shrines are often established above familial and ancestral grave sites; the grave itself may also serve as a shrine. Families memorialize relatives who have passed away and honor lineages at their grave sites. At such shrines the living may communicate with the departed person; the family may also convey messages to the Supreme Being through the ones who have been buried. Graves play a more important religious role for farming communities than for pastoralists who are constantly moving from one place to another. The location of graves varies from group to group. In most West African communities, burials take place on pieces of land within the family’s compound; these are regarded as secured places where the family members who have passed away will be at eternal peace and bring good fortune to those who remain. Graves may also be located in a sacred forest where the spirits of the ancestors are concentrated. Death via suicide or murder may result in the person being buried in the “waste bush” away from the immediate community to discourage the spirit of the buried one from reincarnating or disturbing the peace of the living.
Natural religious sites are vast in number, and every indigenous African culture has many. These sites include forests (or parts of forests), rivers, lakes, trees, mountains, waterfalls, and rocks. They are thought to be the meeting places between Heaven and Earth and between visible and invisible worlds. Thus, they are important places to communicate with spirits of those who have died, with the Supreme Being, and with the celestial realm. The faithful usually designate natural places as sacred sites based on historical or special events. Such natural spaces are usually set aside from everyday uses such as grazing cattle, washing clothes, growing crops, or playing grounds for children. Failure to honor such sacred sites can lead to catastrophic occurrences in communities such as disease, drought, and floods. Sacred sites are used only for ceremonies, rituals, prayers, and sacrifices. Ósun Grove in Ósogbo, Nigeria, is a good example of an environmental landmark that has been moved into the realm of the sacred. Mosi-oa-Tunya (the smoke that thunders), popularly known as Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, is considered sacred because of the generative water power witnessed in the massive falls. The Nyakweri Forest in Kenya is a sacred forest for the Maasai people because of its life-sustaining elements.
What Is Sacred
The African worldview is based on a belief that every living and inanimate object is sacred on some level because each being reflects some of the divine spirits of the universe. Certain beings are deemed more sacred than others. Devotees of indigenous religions recognize domesticated and undomesticated animals as sacred and full of great power. Dogs, goats, and roosters are often used for sacrificial purposes, and some of their body parts, such as feathers, nails, entrails, horns, beaks, and blood, are used as offerings and for divining.
Many creatures who live in forests and plains are sacred because they have divine knowledge, wisdom, and powers. Seen as embodiments of spirits, these creatures are understood in some cultures as being messengers sent to Earth by the Supreme Being to communicate with humans. An example is a story among the Zulu-speaking communities of southern Africa in which a chameleon and then a lizard are sent to Earth by the Supreme Being to explain to humans that their physical lives are finite. The story has resulted in a continuing belief about the sacredness of lizards and chameleons in Zulu culture.
Devotees attach great importance to and respect for such creatures since they may be preparing to deliver a message to humans from the spirit world.
Various herbs and plants contain special powers that are useful for religious purposes. Certain herbs are sacred, and those priest specialists who have deep knowledge of how to use them are called herbalists. In addition to having medicinal uses, the herbs carry symbolic properties and qualities that make them appropriate for religious uses.
Holidays and Festivals
In indigenous African cultures festivals are scheduled to occur during major rites of passage, including birth, circumcision, coming-of-age initiation, marriage, and death. Community festivals are designed to purify villages or larger communities (ridding them of evil and bad fortune), to carry on lifesustaining activities successfully, and to bring harmony to the village. They are often accompanied by sacrifices and offerings to ancestors and deities, who are believed to then transmit information to the Supreme Being. Many communities maintain elaborate calendars of festivals that run throughout the year. Seasonal festivals commemorate annual events such as field preparation, planting, harvesting, hunting and fishing periods, and the New Year. Other festivals celebrate victory at war, the coronation of kings or chiefs, and changes in leadership.
Harvesting festivals like the Yam Festival of Ghana and Nigeria are elaborate. At this festival yams are offered to the spirits and the ancestors in thankfulness. One of the largest festivals in Africa is the Homowo Festival of the Ga people of Ghana. People spend many days celebrating this historic event, which has its roots in the struggle to overcome famine and to emphasize that communities become stronger when they share their resources. The Osun Osogbo Festival is part of Yoruba tradition in Osogbo, Nigeria. It is held to celebrate renewal and rebirth and is characterized by dances, song, and a pilgrimage with ceremonial rites to the river Osun. The Olojo Festival in Ile-Ife honors ancient deities of that city. The Oke ‘Badan Festival in Ibadan, Nigeria, celebrates Lagelu founding the city of ancient times and involves sacrifices of a goat and a dog at the Oke-Badan shrine at Oja-Oba.
It is common for the various African gods and deities to have their own yearly festivals. Deities who usually do not garner much attention during daily and weekly worship schedules often draw massive crowds during their annual festivals. These are usually colorful affairs with dancing, music, eating, drinking, praying (and other religious activities), wearing masks and costumes, and general merrymaking.
In African indigenous religions certain days are declared by community leaders to honor the gods. During such days ordinary community activities—fishing, farming, and buying or selling at the market—are prohibited. In festivals commemorating the deeds of the gods, ancestors, and sacred kings, devotees take time off from farming, hunting, and fishing to dedicate themselves to celebrating with the community or region. They observe certain taboos, such as abstinence from sex and refraining from alcohol or intoxicating drinks, or they make pilgrimages to sacred forests, rivers, and mountains in honor of the deities.
Mode of Dress
Modes of dress in African indigenous religions vary depending upon the kind of devotee, the geographical location, and a person’s age. However, certain clothes, accessories, and permanent or temporary bodily accoutrements distinguish devotees from others.
Priests and followers often wear white clothing as a sign of purity and cleansing. Deities are usually represented by signs or symbols on clothing or the skin. Colors adorning the body identify devotees and carry meaning. For instance, Yoruba devotees of orisa (deities) wear red and white marks on their foreheads. Painting the body with white chalk or another substance for ceremonial purposes is also a common way to identify a devotee’s beliefs or stage of life. Priests usually carry signs of their social status, including horsehair whisks, brass figures, embellished staffs, jewelry, diamonds, gold, feathers, or priestly stools or chairs; they may also wear white chalk on the body.
Scarification or tattoo is a permanent mode of cultural adornment that signifies identification with beliefs; motifs are often based on abstract designs, leaf forms, and ancestral symbolic flora and fauna. Raised scarification designs have been associated with Ògún (the Yoruba god of iron) because Yoruba body artists use iron implements to create intricate patterns and shapes on the skin. Specifically, a palm tree design is identified with Ògún, because indigenous weavers manufacture textiles from palm fronds and because Ògún’s preferred food and drink come from the oil palm tree.
Dietary Practices
In indigenous African cultures family members habitually offer food and drink to their ancestors. Such offerings are often placed in or on family shrines, which are usually located behind the family house or compound. All kinds of seeds and the most delicious parts of domesticated crops are appropriate for ritual offerings. Materials may be ground into powders and mixed with other substances. Offerings may be given for purification, protection from adverse forces, and divination.
According to African indigenous beliefs, deities normally prefer certain foods and drinks and abstain from others. In Yoruba religion, for example, each deity has likes and dislikes, and care is taken to respect the deities’ preferences. Órìsá-Nlá loves snails cooked in shea butter, Òrúnmílá prefers rat and fish, and Èsù loves rooster. These deities consume no other foods, except perhaps kola nuts, a standard ritual ingredient in many African cultures. Órìsà-Nlá disdains palm wine, and Èsù dislikes adin (palm-kernel oil). It is taboo to bring unfavorable foods near the shrines, and devotees of these deities refrain from partaking of these foods. Because of their personal associations with a divinity, priests and certain religious specialists honor food taboos; it is also thought that, by doing so, they can perform rituals effectively for observers of these restrictions. Food is a necessary evil, a Dagara elder, Bakyhe, notes in the book Of Water and the Spirit (1994), by Malidoma Somé. African priests are thus very selective about which foods are eaten during and for ceremonies.
Accordingly, dietary prohibitions and peculiarities are associated with those who have died and the diets of those who inhabit the heavenly world. Eating habits and diet differ vastly among regions of Africa. They are based on seasonal availability and environmental, social, cultural, and religious differences. Dietary restrictions take place for various reasons, including a person’s stage of life, gender, or social class. For example, a twin in Yoruba culture is forbidden to eat the meat of the colobus monkey, because the Yoruba believe that twins have kinship relationships with them. Among the Remba of Mberengwa, Zimbabwe, there are ritual practices around the slaughtering of animals for food, some of which were influenced by contact with Arab traders in the Zambezi Valley. Meat slaughtered by a community member is the only meat that can be eaten.
Rituals
Ritual and ceremony are the most important entry points to understanding the religious life of African communities. To the observer of religious practices, rituals are more visible than mythic narratives, but rituals often relate to myths by conveying and reinforcing the meanings and values that communities hold sacred. Ritual can have an extremely broad meaning that refers to many aspects of human life.
All indigenous religious practices incorporate ritual, although the forms vary greatly from region, ethnic group, and even from individual to individual within the same religious tradition. Not every member of society performs all rituals; instead, a particular ritual may be prescribed for certain members of a community. In hierarchical African societies a few skilled elites who possess status, knowledge, authority, and power are chosen to use sacred ritual icons. In nonhierarchical societies individuals share authority and power equally.
In spite of their differences, African religions share certain common features, especially in their rituals and ceremonies. They always involve larger groups of people or entire communities. For example, agricultural rituals function communally to benefit the group. Great numbers of Africans continue to work in subsistence, cash crop, and other agricultural economies, and they have preserved spiritual practices and sacred rituals to induce the gods to ensure rain, successful harvests, and abundant agricultural production. Rituals related to rain, which feature dancing, singing, and chanting, are considered communal because the availability of water affects the lives of so many.
Many religious rituals, including those related to hunting, healing, and rites of passage, take place at shrines, temples, and altars. These are rituals performed to cement the bond of unity among a community or to celebrate the achievements of individual members of the group. During these important occasions, the faithful honor their gods, ancestors, and spirits with ritual festivals, ceremonies, divination, and offerings of sacrificial animals, libations of water or alcohol, or small amounts of favored food. Sharing food reinforces the communal bond between the participants, the ancestors, the Supreme Being, and the lesser deities. In the case of drought, flooding, volcanoes, famine, illness, and other disasters, devotees offer a sacrificial animal to appease the spirit deity thought to be responsible for the calamity. The Ingessana of the Sudan, for example, will sacrifice a cow to ward off the evil effect of nengk, considered a frightful spirit that causes illness or misfortune to members of a household or food crops. If someone from a family dies and appears with the nengk in a dream, an additional sacrifice of a smaller livestock animal inside the house of the person who dreamed the dream occurs. The sacrifices are the precondition for the restoration of harmonious relationships between the spirit forces like nengk and the community and among people in the community.
African religious traditions and ritual practices have been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. Although ritual has changed over time according to the social, political, environmental, and spiritual needs of individuals, it continues to be a real and valuable connection with the past.
Rites of Passage
The primary rites of passage in African religious life are birth and naming, when newborns are welcomed into the community; puberty, when young people approaching adulthood undergo elaborate initiation ceremonies during which ancestral powers are displayed and initiates are prepared for responsible living and community obligations; marriage, which provides the key to procreation and continuation of the family line; and funerals, which are extensive and held over many days in most traditions so that the person who has died may have safe and protected travel to the spirit world and continue to offer protection to those who remain behind on Earth. Certain cultures, like the Owo Yoruba (a subgroup of the Yoruba people of Nigeria) and the Maasai (of Tanzania and Kenya), also hold ceremonies to commemorate the transition of members of their community to the honored elder status.
Rites often contain aspects of both communal and personal ritual. For example, the Fang of west-central Africa retain a personal ritual associated with birth, the biang ndu, or biang nzí (sometimes called the “roof medicine” ritual). If delivery becomes difficult, the father of the child climbs onto the roof of the house to a spot above the mother’s belly. After piercing the thatched roof with a hollow banana stem, he pours medicinal water through the stem directly onto her pregnant belly. Only the father can perform the biang ndu, which is witnessed by family members and neighbors.
Celebrating the transition from childhood to adulthood takes many forms. Typically, a youth undergoes the rituals with children of the same age at a location apart from the community to preserve an aura of mystery for initiates. Initiation often takes place for several days or months in auspicious natural locations, such as forests or grasslands, where the initiates are afforded closer contact with the invisible realm, the spirits, and the Supreme Being. Participants are taught about their people’s beliefs, history, and traditions as well as about raising a family, the secrets of marriage, and other practical information. Initiation is a deeply religious affair and a sign of unity with the larger community and the ancestors. Before, during, and after initiation ceremonies, the community offers many prayers and sacrifices to the Supreme Being; they ask for blessings and good luck for the youths. Female and male circumcisions are often a part, but not the focus, of initiation rites.
The Luguru of East Africa undergo initiation during the ng’hula ceremony, where initiates are fed a diet of chickens over four weeks and perform special rites in a forested setting led by the kisepi, the initiation specialist. The central tree of the community is uprooted and used to brew beer; it is cut into smaller lengths and mixed with other ingredients into a medicine bundle that the initiates carry. Instructions on how to conduct themselves as men and respect the mores and teachings of the tradition are imparted to all initiates, and taboos are described so that they are aware of actions that can destabilize the community.
The Xhosa-speaking people of South Africa (Azania) are renowned for their historic initiation ceremonies (ubukrwala) that have persisted for millennia. Male initiates (ubukwetha), often between the ages of 18 and 23, are taken to remote bush locations in the Eastern Cape for anywhere for a month or two or three months, depending on their availability from work or study. They undergo instruction in traditional Xhosa culture and circumcision that signifies their readiness for adulthood. Traditional circumcision at such ages is often very painful, and initiates are required to demonstrate their bravery in undergoing such practices. For 10 days after circumcision, initiates are fed an austere diet of coarse porridge meal. Following this period of healing, they remain secluded for a month or two. On the appointed day, a goat is sacrificed, and the initiates have their bandages removed, their red blankets stripped off, and they wash themselves in a river for final cleansing. Melted butter anoints their bodies, and they are given new blankets and staffs as symbols of attaining manhood. A huge feast involving the entire village is held in celebration of the initiates, and the initiation lodge is burned to the ground to signify the passing of youthfulness and the entry into adulthood. Despite negative media publicity around circumcision and initiation ceremonies in Xhosa-speaking cultures, particularly where inexperienced or even fake initiation leaders have conducted circumcision in ways that have harmed the sexual organs of some initiates or caused serious infections, the practices continue to be central in this indigenous culture.
Among the Maasai in East Africa, circumcision among both female and male is mandatory, and those who are uncircumcised are clearly differentiated from those who are. Circumcised females are called esingaki (maidens), and uncircumcised females are described as entito (small girls). For males, the circumcised are called ol-murani (young warriors), and the uncircumcised are referred to as olayoni (small boys). In many African societies where female circumcision is practiced, those who are uncircumcised are considered unclean and unworthy of marriage. However, female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation (FGM), is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other groups to be a human rights violation. Providing no health benefits, the procedure can result in shock; severe, sometimes recurring pain; significant risk of infection; sepsis; tetanus; infertility; later childbirth complications; and even death. It has been losing popularity among many African societies, including with the Maasai, and has been outlawed in some African countries, including Kenya.
The death of a member of an African community often involves extended and complex rituals. With one’s passing away comes a permanent physical separation between the ones who have died and the living, and ritual helps to accentuate and understand this transition. There is great variation in the traditions and rituals surrounding passing away. Attendants use natural objects to wash, clothe, and bury the body, which is often covered in animal skins, leather, cotton, bark cloth, or leaves. These objects emphasize that the body, conceived in Earth, returns to Earth. Though the person’s physical form has been terminated, his or her soul remains a presence in the lives of individuals and must be respected by the living. In indigenous African cultures, the world of the ancestors and the abode of the dead is understood as a sphere beyond the realm of the living.
Among the Karanga of Zimbabwe, for example, the deceased are considered to be more powerful than when they were physically on Earth. Even people who are on the verge of passing away experience a ritual called kupeta (folding), where the eyes of the dying person are closed, hands and legs are straightened for burial, and the body is washed and anointed with oil and clothed before preparing for the journey back to the spirit world. Children are prohibited from seeing the person being buried, lest they become susceptible to the blinding power of the spirits. The dead are always buried in the morning or evening when it is coolest and when the family spirits are ready to receive the one who has just passed away (spirits rest during the heat of day). Burial rituals are seen as a way to ensure that serious illness, diseases, and misfortune do not plague the family members left behind on Earth. A year after the funeral, a ritual called kugadzira mudzimu (the spirit returning home) or kurova guva is conducted, with feasting and dance around the grave of the deceased. The property of the person is then distributed among family members, and the spirit takes its place as the guardian of the family and at rest.
Membership
African indigenous religions typically limit membership solely to birthright. Members of Igbo, Maasai, and Edo groups, for example, historically belonged to and practiced the religion of their lineage, clan, and family. However, with the advent of Islam and Christianity in Africa and the widespread conversion to these two traditions, the numbers of adherents to African religions has dwindled. To compensate, devotees of indigenous religions have become more inclusive, extending the criteria for membership. Some African indigenous religions have incorporated elements of both Islam and Christianity so that there are no rigid demarcations between Islam and indigenous religions in parts of West Africa (Senegal and Nigeria) and in North Africa (Sudan) and between Christianity and indigenous religions such as in Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa and the Congo in Central Africa.
Throughout the centuries of the trade in human cargo initiated by European slave traders, enslaved Africans took their religious practices to the Americas and the Caribbean. The large numbers of Africans living in North, Central, and South America introduced enduring forms of African religious culture through music, dance, festivals, and martial arts. Candomblé and Umbando in Brazil, Shango in Trinidad, Vodun in Haiti, Santeria in Cuba, and Obeah and Myal in Jamaica all reflect the transmission of traditional African religious forms and expressions into the Western Hemisphere, albeit under yoke of slavery. Capoeira in Brazil—and recently in the United States—is a carryover of martial arts from the indigenous cultures of Central Africa. Other places—such as Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico, where indigenous African and Indian peoples struggled together during genocidal conquest and enslavement—also reflect deep Africanisms in culture and religion (Surinam in South America is a classic example). The melding of African orishas (divinities) and Catholic santeros (saints) has produced syncretized religious traditions in many parts of South America and the Caribbean.
As African religious cultures spread from Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad, and other places of the diaspora to the United States, new forms emerged that catered to the spiritual needs of many peoples. One of these pioneer movements is the Yoruba-inspired traditions in African descended communities in the United States. Beginning in the late 20th century hundreds of African Americans embraced Yoruba traditions by founding the Kingdom of Oyotunji African Village near the city of Sheldon, South Carolina. It was named after its namesake Yoruba kingdom in West Africa. The Gullah people, who live off the coast of South Carolina, are extensions of the indigenous cultures found in places such as Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, glimpses of which are captured in the 1991 film Daughters of the Dust, produced by Julie Dash, the first major African-descended female film producer in the United States.
Religious Tolerance
African indigenous religions do not proselytize because these forms of religious expression are accepted as particular to an ethnic group. Religion is so intimately tied to place that African religions do not give themselves easily to the influence of exogenous groups. African cultures are, however, often resilient enough to absorb and incorporate values and traditions from other religious belief systems. Competing indigenous religions may incorporate useful or similar aspects of each other. The most common religions that have been incorporated into indigenous belief systems are Christianity and Islam. Even if followers of African indigenous religions convert to Christianity or Islam, they often continue to practice their indigenous rituals, as is evident in the plethora of indigenous African Christian churches such as the Aladura Church of West Africa, the Zionist Christian Church and the Nazarite Church of southern Africa, and the African Orthodox Church and the Agikuyi Spirit Church of Kenya. These churches were sparked by the rigid institutional cultural structure of Western Christianity, which failed to include the religious sensibilities of African people. Islam, however, has generally been more amenable to and tolerant of African indigenous religions and cultural practices. Ancestor veneration, marriages with more than one spouse, circumcision, spirit healing, and beliefs in spirits (jinn in the Islamic tradition) and other divinities are common in both popular Islam and African indigenous religions.
Practitioners of African indigenous religions have been victims of conversion and intolerance. Adherents to Western religions have sometimes viewed African religions as superstition and “primitive.” These pejorative expressions have heaped significant prejudice against the cultures of the indigenous peoples of Africa not only during the colonial era but also into the early 21st century. Such discrimination and negativity has resulted in many Africans doubting the power of their own cultures and religions. For example, in his novel Things Fall Apart (1958), Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) discusses the ethnic slurs used in his native Igbo language; Christians refer to followers of traditional religions as “nonbelievers, heathens, and lowly people (ndi nkiti).” And in Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani (Nigeria and Niger) societies, some Muslims call indigenous believers keferi (unbelievers) and people of jahiliyya (local and inferior tradition).
Tensions between African indigenous religions and Islam and Christianity are generally minimal since Africans have often melded their ancient indigenous traditions with their subsequent Christian or Islamic beliefs. However, political and social polarization between Christianity and Islam in places such as northern Nigeria and the Sudan are still a part of these nations’ landscapes.
Social Justice
Major social concerns for followers of African indigenous religions include poverty and the environment. A contemporary response to the crisis of poverty in African villages is the linking of development with ethno-religious identity. In Nigeria, Ghana, and other parts of West Africa, for instance, village and town associations meet for purposes of economic unity and social development. Although these groups are no longer connected to the worship of indigenous gods (most of them have converted to Islam and Christianity), they have established a platform that involves the reinvention of traditional value systems such as sacred kingship; ancestral concepts; retention of certain animals, birds, insects, and plants as sacred founders of the clan or group; and ancient spirits reconceived in modern secular idioms. By invoking indigenous cosmological and cosmogonic stories and historic symbols, African adherents galvanize members of their communities at home and abroad to contribute to the economic well-being and social enhancement of villages, towns, and communities. Africans are thus actively involved in addressing historical and contemporary problems and responding to the crises of environmental devastation and impoverishment using their own metaphysical and epistemological worldviews and indigenous cultural resources.
Many indigenous African communities have been trying to preserve sacred natural places from mining, oil drilling, and other land exploitation by establishing certain land-use restrictions. However, in parts of Africa where large-scale mining occurs, such as in southern Africa and the Congo, or where incessant oil drilling is the main form of a country’s revenue, as it is in Nigeria in West Africa and Angola in southern Africa, indigenous people have had to resist repressive and exploitative commercial and government practices that favor economic gain at the cost of vitiating long-term ancestral sites and sacred places. The Ogoni and Ijaw people of Nigeria challenged oil drilling and environmental devastation of rivers and forests, with the result of the killing of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995 for protesting against Shell Oil and the lethal damage to the ecology of the Niger Delta caused by oil companies. Conflict over ancestral land rights continues in the early 21st century, including in the gold-mining industry of Tanzania and the coal mines of Limpopo, South Africa.
Social Life
In indigenous African cultures marriage, raising children, and fulfilling familial obligations are religious duties. Marriage agreements usually involve both sets of parents of the couple to be married. Binding the couple is accompanied by exchanging gifts, which is largely a way of thanking the parents of the bride or groom for bringing up their child in a good manner. The gifts do, however, hold some local legal weight, because if a marriage does not last, it is expected that the value of gifts be returned to the family who gave them. In some parts of Africa, dowries like cows are given by the family of the bridegroom to the bride’s family, called lobola in southern Africa; this tradition signifies the manner that exchange of wealth transpires in indigenous African societies.
Religious traditions reinforce the idea that family members must adhere to specific roles. Younger generations must care for their elders; children must obey their parents and elders; and parents must teach, provide, and care for their children. At times, parents must care for their sibling’s offspring. Respect for elders, particularly the aged, is an absolute religious principle in all African societies, because the elders pass away to the spirit world and intervene and intercede on behalf of the members of the community when they reenter the spiritual realm.
Controversial Issues
In contemporary Africa the persistence of sacred practices is a source of conflict between devotees of African religions and outsiders. When outsiders (especially Western outsiders) evaluate indigenous cultures and religions, they often judge certain cultural practices and beliefs—such as veneration of ancestors, reverence for sacred places and sites, witchcraft, ritual killing of animals, female circumcision, polygamy, and approaches to gender relations—as problematic and even immoral. These judgments are predicated on Western and Eurocentric norms of culture and reflect the legacy of Western colonization and imperialism. Among the adherents of African religious traditions, however, these practices generally do not cause controversy.
Indigenous religion in any culture affirms the identity of that culture, provides a source of knowledge, and defines a people’s existence. Religion provides an education for individuals and is a rich source of cultural knowledge about many different subjects. It also signifies a continuity with the past that derives from the earliest accounts of creation and continues into the present through cycles of time and space.
The impact of colonization beginning in the 16th century and the imposition of Western capitalism since the 19th century has generated deep schisms and cultural confusion in African cultures, as noted by renowned writers such as Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Two Thousand Seasons (1973), The Healers (1978), Osiris Rising (1995), and Fragments (2006); Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o in Weep Not Child (1964), The River Between (1965), Petals of Blood (1977), The Devil on the Cross (1982), Wizard of the Crow (2006), Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (2009), and Dreams in a Time of War (2010); and Ghanaian playwright and author Ama Ata Aidoo in Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa (1970), Our Sister Killjoy (1977), No Sweetness Here (1995), and The Girl Who Can (2003). Indigenous cultures continue to be besieged by the hegemonic values of Western globalization that have contributed to entrenched distrust, personal greed and self-gratification, monetarism, and materialist accumulation, values alien to the spirit of traditional cultures. In addition, proselytization and conversion to Christianity and Islam in Africa not only have created conflicts between indigenous religions and these two traditions but also engendered hostile and fractious interrelations between Christianity and Islam.
Cultural Impact
African indigenous religions and African arts dovetail with each other. Religion gives meaning and value to all forms of African artistic expression, including literature, music, visual arts, and dance. Indigenous societies are mainly orally-based traditions expressed in poetry, proverbs, ancestral aphorisms, and mythic narratives, all of which serve as sources of African literary traditions. Examples are Ifa divination verses, which amount to 256 chapters of text, and the art of Isibongo (complex and didactic praise poetry) among the Xhosa-speaking people of southern Africa, both of which are well known.
Many scholars in the early 21st century are realizing that the “nonliteracy” of indigenous societies does not equate to inferiority or unreliability. In many instances, oral-based traditions reflect accurate recollections of past events that have also been described from a more scientific, written point of view. The Dogon of Mali, for example, possess ancient astronomical knowledge about stars and planets such as Sirius B that reflects the high level of scientific insight of indigenous peoples much earlier than literacy-based Western societies.
Similar to the oral traditions, the arts of architecture, design, sculpture, textiles, dance, drumming, and music function as sacred “texts,” transmitting and reinforcing traditional religions for new generations. The arts are semiotic in character and are used to convey feelings, illustrate proverbs, express the wisdom of the people, and give spiritual meaning and function to all forms of life, including objects or things. Shrines and temples are adorned with elaborate carved images of the deities that convey the power of the gods and ancestors. Rites of passage are particularly important in the religious use of arts. Carved ancestral-origin and ritual objects may serve as important sources of knowledge for the newly initiated. Masks, costumes, and body design also accompany religious ceremonies. Masking and spirit possession are often interwoven with each other, extant in women possession cults such as Bori among the Hausa of Nigeria and Niger and Zar among the peoples of Sudan and Somalia. Interestingly, the initiates in these practices are possessed not by divinities but by spirits and, as with many other masking cults, reflect realms of the animal and the human. The Chewa and the Mang’anja of Malawi have an ancient mask society that uses masks depicting animals and humans, symbolizing the original harmonious coexistence of all creatures with human beings. In masking cults the initiate is possessed by another creature and is covered by a mask or a fully clothed costume.
Like all elements of African indigenous religions, artistic expressions are integrated with everyday life. African arts and religious meaning overlap in visual symbols, music, dance, proverbs, riddles, names of people and places, myths, legends, beliefs, and customs. In this sense, artists, along with dancers, musicians, drummers, storytellers, soothsayers, seers, carvers, sculptors, writers, and all other members of society contribute to African indigenous religions’ living oral texts. Renowned artists such as Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997) of Nigeria, popularly known as Fela, practiced traditional Yoruba ceremonies at the music club where he performed in Nigeria. Busi Mhlongo (1947-2010), a famous South African/Azanian musician and singer, sang songs about the sacredness of women and ancestors. The Gambian National Cultural Dance Troupe celebrates indigenous cultural traditions using many instruments, particularly the kora, a 21-stringed lute that dates back to the 13th century. The troupe also enacts the Lenjengo, an indigenous Mandinka dance that is performed at the conclusion of the harvest season.