The Historical Study of African Traditional Religions

Abstract

Abstract Until recently, most studios of African religions have concentrated on various aspects of beliefs and practices while paying little attention to their historical development, When scholars have considered the history of religions in Africa, they have tended to focus on lslam and Christianity and to restrict their interest in African traditional rnligions to the processes of conversion to and syncretism with “world” religions. Current textbooks on African religions have focused on certain comparative themes in the study of religions and have assumed that the ethnic divisions related to these religions have endured for centuries. Historical chap1crs, if included at all, address the impact of colonization, Islam, and Christianity but overlook other typos of religious change. For example, John Mbiti, the author of the most widely read textbook on African religions, addresses the issue of precolonial religious history in two paragraphs of his introduction, before asserting what he sees as a fundamental obstacle to such studies: “In the traditional set-up where the African concept of time is mainly two-dimensional, human life is relatively stable and almost static. A rhythm of life is the norm. and any radical change is either unknown, resented or so slow that it is hardly noticed.” Such a representation of African religions both reflects and reinforces a basic assumption about “traditional” societies, that they have little sense of their own history. What changes have occurred arc, from this perspective, merely fine-tunings to preserve a spiritual equilibrium, not major shifts in fundamental religious ideas. For Mbiti, significant religious changes begins in “the second half of the nineteenth century and swiftly gaining momentum towards the middle of the twentieth cen-tury” with the beginnings of colonization.