African Religiosity Research Articles

Africa’s Aquifers

While John S. Mbiti (1931–2019) is highly acclaimed for his scholarly contributions to the fields of African religion and philosophy, little attention has been paid to his reflections on African Christian spirituality. Arguing vehemently against “imported Christianity,” he contends that only a genuine encounter between African religiosity and the Christian faith will quench the spiritual thirst of African peoples. This essay identifies and explores a few key contributions Mbiti offers in this regard and outlines certain critiques of his work. The central argument is that like the tremendous resource of Africa’s vast aquifers, African religiosity is a deep, enduring reservoir for enriching the understanding and experience of African Christian spirituality. Examples of the wellsprings of African religiosity that African Christian spirituality draws from include prayer, a unified worldview that does not erect dichotomies between the physical and spiritual realms, and a deeply communal orientation. Mbiti also underlines that certain elements within African religion require discernment in light of the gospel, so that Africans’ prior religious experience might be transposed into the fullness of life in Christ. Thus, African Christian spirituality can enhance not only the faith experience of African believers, but also followers of Jesus throughout the world who seek to deepen their spiritual lives.

A decolonial analysis of religious medicalisation of same-sex practices in South African Pentecostalism

Same-sex practices are commonly medicalised in various global spaces. Some societies view same-sex practices as some form of disease that needs to be cured. In Africa, the influence of Christianity has prompted many communities to conclude that there are spiritual forces behind same-sex orientations and practices. Therefore, same-sex practices are demonised, and those identifying with these sexualities and gender identities are viewed as sick, or as having some form of mental illness. As a fast-growing and influential movement in South Africa, Christianity plays a critical role in this narrative. Against this backdrop, this article examined how some Pentecostal pastors in South Africa use God-talk to propel the narrative that medicalises same-sex practices and how these pastors claim to have miraculous powers to heal these practices. Consequently, the gender and sexuality commonly accepted within African religiosity and spirituality are pushed to the peripheries. Therefore, it is argued in this article that the colonial-missionary discourses regarding African sexualities and genders are at play within the religious medicalisation of same-sex narratives. Thus, there is a need to problematise and transform this narrative. This act can contribute to delinking African genders and sexualities from Western repressions and subjugation agendas. The discussion moved from the premise of decoloniality while adopting a multidisciplinary approach that incorporated theology, gender and sexuality studies, psychology, health, and socio-political sciences. Again, the article used secondary literature analysis to examine this phenomenon and to gain a thorough understanding of how African Pentecostalism continues to use God-talk to medicalise same-sex practices in contemporary South Africa and the repercussions thereof.Contribution: The study contributed to the existing knowledge that addresses religious challenges faced by people identifying with non-normative sexualities and genders in Africa. This can contribute to the transformation of religious medicalisation of same-sex practices in South Africa, and elsewhere.

Pentecostal church and politics: Interdependent instruments of God’s mission in Africa

The debate about the interdependence or the dichotomy between the church and the state or politics is not new. The discourse is neither over nor something that will pass any soon. Both perspectives provide concrete reasons depending on the viewpoint from which an individual is writing and arguing. Both the ecclesia and the state or politics enjoy social capital. Of the two, however, the Church’s social capital is resilient and consistent, unlike the political capital which is seasonal and only rigorous in the pursuit for political position.In recent years, there is an immense emergence of Christianity that blend charismatic practices and African religiosity. An increased pursuit of political leadership is being witnessed by the church leadership and the secular community. One of the motivations has been the derivatives from the positions, which are mainly monetary and honourability. This can be linked to a struggle to meet a status threshold set and determined by a postmodern society which the clergy and the political leader must uphold. Anyone who lives below that ‘standard’ does not fit that position. It is for this reason that both the church and state or politics has been commercialised. The commercialisation aspect resulted in the two competitive entrepreneurial enterprises. Thus justice has been retailed to commercialisation and consumerism.This article therefore firmly holds the possibility that church and state or politics have common elements that, if reworked, can become tools in the mission of God. The assumption is that both institutions are reviewed as organs and not organisations because, as organisms, they are both fit for transformation into suitable instruments for the mission of God. Institutional reforms are dictated by the reformed human resource. This article leans towards the interrelationship between the Pentecostal tradition and the state or politics in viewing their role in doing justice to the mission of God. Thus a comparative framework fits this work.Contribution: The interdependence of the church and political enterprise is exposed to a constructive critique and further writing. It has advanced affirmed the comparative methodology as a ongoing study alternative.

“Metamorfoses decoloniais”: o inconsciente animista e transmutações como cosmovisão nas Literaturas Africanas

ABSTRACT Metamorphosis is a term inherent to colonial reality in which ontological and identity paradigms and conceptions reveal a recurring question in African literature: Who am I? Based on this, this article aims to analyze the phenomenon of metamorphosis/transmutation as a characteristic of real-animist texts, which is an aesthetic consequence arising from the animistic conception of perceiving the world. We will discuss how the presence of the imaginary of traditional African religiosity translates into recurrent unusual episodes, such as transmutations, through the works of African writers such as Nigerian Amos Tutuola, Angolan Décio Bettencourt, and Mozambican Mia Couto. Finally, we will observe that the presence of this phenomenon translates not only into a mythical imaginary but also into becoming-individual and becoming-nation in societies fragmented identity-wise by colonialism.

Spiritual warfare in Africa: Towards understanding the classical model in light of witchcraft practices and the Christian response

The socio-religious panorama of the African religion deserves a close observation of its foundation and function. The perception of the spirit world is dominant in Africa. Similarly, spiritual warfare in the African context is prevalent in the mind and worldview of an African. Spiritual warfare derives its framework from African Traditional Religion (ATR). Hence, understanding ATR’s complexity helps us with the understanding of spiritual warfare. Some essential questions to understand would be what is spiritual warfare from an ATR perspective? How do Africans perceive spiritual warfare? And how do Africans engage in spiritual warfare? What is the place of ATR in spiritual warfare? African Traditional Religion acknowledges the reality and functionality of witchcraft. The perception of the reality of evil forces in Africa attracts all forms of spiritual rites, seeking more extraordinary spiritual powers for defensive and offensive spiritual warfare. This article argues that the effectual Christian response to spiritual warfare with witchcraft practices in Africa is ‘the classical model’ of spiritual warfare. The article provides a synopsis of the models of spiritual warfare, that is, the classical model (CW), world systems model (WSM), ground-level deliverance model (GLDM), and strategic-level deliverance model (SLSW). Subsequently, the article provides the framework for African spiritual warfare and witchcraft practices from traditional and contemporary perspectives. Lastly, the article argues that the Evangelical Christian Response to witchcraft practices is rooted in ‘the classical model’ of spiritual warfare.Contribution: The article contributes to African religiosity within the African context. It reveals the ongoing argument about the continuity and discontinuity of the ATR beliefs and practices in Christianity. The article adds to the evangelical or classical arguments in support of the discontinuity of ATR beliefs and practices in Christianity.

“Building Community through Death”: Freed African Religiosity and Faith-Based Social Networks in Nineteenth-Century Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

This article adds to existing discussions on slave religions by offering the analysis of four post-mortem testaments left behind by formerly enslaved African women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia to elucidate the different roles that faith and religiosity played within their lives, communities, and understandings of self. After contextualizing these primary sources within the relevant historiography on African and African descendant religiosity in Atlantic slave societies, it focuses on the centrality of baptisms, strong pleas for forgiveness, elaborate funerary arrangements, irmandade membership, and lives spent within the precepts of Roman Catholicism present in the testaments. It also considers the realities of enslavement and the Atlantic slave trade as important factors that shaped the considerations of freed Africans when faced with the imminence of death. In a world where life was fleeting, death became a major site for community formation, for the assertion of principles, and for exercising agency. The proximity of death and the realities of Atlantic slave societies shaped libertos’ considerations of justice and honor, as well as the final rites they required for their dignified passage to the afterworld. This article concludes that Africans in the diaspora constantly managed, negotiated, and enlarged the small spaces for self-determination, and for the preservation and recreation of identities and communities, with which they were left, while they also carved out other parallel spaces for themselves. Among these, Roman Catholic-derived religious communities and affiliations, and the continuation and creative adaptation of African religious practices, were of essential importance to the identities and community formations of libertos.

The Mbiti-Cone Debate and the Study of African Religiosity

Abstract The study of Africana religiosity has often focused on African influences on African diaspora religiosity but rarely the other way round, that is, on African diaspora influences on African religiosity. The rare instance when the focus was on African diaspora influence on African religiosity was the case of Black theology. However, when Black theology came to the continent, it was mired in the debate of its relevance to Africans. This debate was prosecuted by John Mbiti and James Cone in the 1970s. While the debate centered on Christian theology, this article reads it as raising the larger question of the relevance of African diaspora religiosity in Africa. It argues for the need to seriously study African diaspora religiosity in Africa, noting that such study may provide theoretical tools with which to understand the development of African religiosity in the continent and the African predicament in the modern world.

Regaining the values and Appealing to Religious Resources for Social Transformation in Kenya: A Critical and Appreciative Perspective

Religion creates a complex part of Kenya as a country. In Kenya, almost all aspects of life; social, political, and commercial life are punctuated with religious lexes and rituals. Whereas Kenya and Africa as a whole are immersed in religiosity, poverty, ethnic politics, tribalism, and bribery are prevalent in African countries and the list cannot be complete without mentioning them. The inquiry thus arises as to whether African religiosity gives inducement to corruption and poverty or religion contributes to people’s involvement in corruption, poverty, and tribalism and how can religion be used to transform the country? By using the concept of religion, this paper will explore in what sense religion can be said to be a way of life for Africans; investigate why there is a loss of religious morals in the contemporary Kenyan society. Thereafter, the study will sort to appreciate the role religion can perform in the social change in Kenya and how resources of religion can be reclaimed and involved in the change of the Kenyan society. The paper will argue that even though religion seems to be a predicament to social disharmony expressed in issues such as corruption, conflict, and poverty in Kenya, it remains a vital constituent of ‘Africanness’ and may well contribute to social transformation by permeating the economic, political, and social life of the people.

Is Giriama Traditionalism a Religion? Negotiating Indigenous African Religiosity in ‘Interfaith’ Cooperation in Coastal Kenya

Abstract This article explores how Giriama elders represent their ‘traditional religion’ (dini ya jadi) through ‘interfaith’ cooperation with Christians and Muslims in the coastal Kenyan town of Malindi. Based on extensive ethnographic research, the article analyses how Giriama Traditionalism relates, in complex and ambivalent ways, to normative assumptions and ideals with regard to what religion entails, and in turn how Giriama elders seek recognition as representatives of a religion in this setting. Such claims are made in a context where Christians, Muslims, and state actors sometimes doubt whether Giriama Traditionalism is worthy of being called a ‘religion’ at all. The article demonstrates that although in the context of interfaith cooperation Christianity, Islam, and ‘Traditionalism’ are formally recognized as equal religions, this does not necessarily create a level playing field. Instead, it requires Giriama elders to appropriate terms, norms, and ideals that are not necessarily of their own making in order for Giriama Traditionalism to be recognized as a religion. Through this analysis, the article aims to contribute to theoretical debates about religious diversity in African contexts by demonstrating how negotiations about what properly counts as (good) religion in coastal Kenya are deeply informed by the copresence of Christianity, Islam, and indigenous African religiosity in one religious field.

African Initiated Churches as interlocutors of African spirituality of liberation against colonial spirituality of the empire

Prof. Vuyani Vellem was a scholar of Black Theology of Liberation. However, he placed the African Initiated Churches (AICs) at the centre of his heart as a basis for African spirituality of liberation. He believed that the whole of African life is infiltrated by spirituality which is based on African religiosity. He mentioned African religiosity as an alternative to what he expressed as ‘authoritative salvationist dispensation of Western religiosity’. The AICs present a formidable platform for ‘un-thinking’ colonial religiosity. He extended the notion of ‘un-thinking’ the West beyond the cognitive space and embraced spirituality, hence cognitive spirituality. This article, therefore, argues that the AICs are the protagonists in the interlocution project of African spirituality of liberation. They are formidable giants in unshackling African spirituality from Western Christian spirituality and its expansionism that attempts to unseat the liberation paradigm of African spirituality. The author’s approach will, therefore, be to identify and analyse selected areas in the ministry praxis of AICs in their quest for African spirituality of liberation. In order to reach this objective, the author will examine the subject of African spirituality, by discussing colonial spirituality of the empire that gave rise to the AICs and find out the liberating spirituality of the AICs. At the end of this discourse, the author will conclude that the AICs succeeded to not only preserve, but also to construct, contextualise, protect and promote African spirituality of liberation against the antics of the empire. Contribution: Based on the thoughts of the late Prof. Vuyani Vellem about the role of AICs within the space of African spirituality of liberation, this article not only provides insights and better understanding, but also highlights the ministry praxis of the AICs on this subject against the imperial spirituality. This study, therefore, combines the notions of multi and transdisciplinary religious elements of the focus of this journal.

Between Rejection and Revitalization: Tokunboh Adeyemo and African Traditional Religions

Abstract This article analyzes Tokunboh Adeyemo’s assessment of African traditional religions in relation to his allegiance to the worldwide evangelical tradition. In the 1970 and 1980s, Adeyemo, who served as the General Secretary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, was involved in the so-called salvation debates within evangelical circles. Concerned about the rise of contextual theologies on the African continent, Adeyemo, like his predecessor Byang Kato, advocated the exclusive character of Christianity in terms of salvation. Therefore, he is sometimes described as someone who attempted to replace African religiosity with a Westernized form of Christianity. This article argues that while Adeyemo reiterates the uniqueness of salvation in Christ, as attested within the international evangelical movement, he offers a nuanced assessment of pre-Christian religiosity. Navigating between the two positions of rejection and revitalization, he pioneered new ways of developing an authentic evangelical theology that is grounded in the African context.

Change Communication Strategy in Media Campaigns and Covid-19 Rising Infections in Nigeria

Coronavirus is the latest pandemic that is challenging all spheres of the human economy globally. The popular "lockdown" which is a means used to ameliorate the devastating effect of this pandemic, was adopted by all the countries of the world mainly to soothe human health condition while other sectors of the global economy were also punctured. The long-term preparation towards the year 2020 for "Vision 2020" otherwise, “sustainable development” was horrifically traumatized. Moreover, African religious culture expressed as God's sovereignty and communalism suffers a great deal. This work seeks to investigate the effect of coronavirus pandemic on African religiosity. The paper adopts the historical/ descriptive method. It attempts to trace the present pandemic with previous ones as well as articulating the strength of African religiosity in the face of any pandemic situation. The finding shows that the sense of communalism has since been hijacked in recent times when political leaders think selfishly only of themselves at the detriments of the community's common members. The work concludes that the global pandemic has not only been a misfortune but also a blessing, God's sovereign over the universe may allow the pandemic, so that as the whole world is coerced into quarantine or lockdown, the earth may have a natural management and rejuvenation.

Numinous Thirdspace: Recrafting the City in Ken Bugul’s Rue Félix-Faure

In Rue Félix-Faure (2004), novelist Ken Bugul, with her own inner fire and light, refashions the downtown Plateau arrondissement of Dakar, Senegal, radically re-imagining the capital’s real-life city center as a place where social contradictions can be laid bare and havens of interpersonal and moral harmony re-established through community (rather than police) investigation of the scene of a ritually executed leper, discovered at the beginning of the novel, in the usually festive Rue Félix-Faure. This excruciatingly estheticized scene links city structure, public health, sexual violence, and the spirit world, framing Ken Bugul’s violent rectification of gender inequality, her espousal of communities of mutual respect, and her redefinition of African religiosity. Story-telling, blues singing, writing, filmmaking, and arts of the spectacle thoroughly inform this reconfiguration of Dakar-Plateau. Via her artistic characters, the novelist crafts what Edward W. Soja in Thirdspace calls a “real-and-imagined” place, a contestatory “spatiality” where justice can be sought and an African city’s future can be replotted as the intersection of numinous hidden spiritual fields (as defined by Otto Rank and Sylvester Ogbechie) with true-life urban, medical, and esthetic geographies. Ken Bugul’s Rue Félix-Faure is an alternative space of self-governance and fantasy where an improvisational, creative, blues collective develops its version of civil society, thanks to the melding of spirit worlds and daily life. The street’s numinous zone requires those who walk it to recognize, respect, and fear the spirits that pervade its estheticized urbanism and ethics.

James Cone vis-à-vis African Religiosity: A decolonial perspective

This article builds on my recent engagement with James Cone’s binary view of Africanness and Christianity which focused on his Western locus of enunciation and the criticism he received from his African American colleagues. I believe that analogical questions regarding Christian theology’s attitude towards Africanness in general and African religiosity in particular present themselves to us who live in and try to make sense of South African reality today, including white people like myself. I start by introducing a decolonial perspective as it manifests itself through the recent #MustFall student movements. In this context, I offer three theses regarding the decolonial perspective on African religiosity, each of which constitutes a more or less direct critique of Cone’s ambivalent attitude towards Africanness, and African Traditional Religions in particular. The first thesis concerns the distinction between postcoloniality and decoloniality; the second thesis concerns engaging African religiosity as a requirement for decolonising Christian theology; and the third thesis concerns problematising the relationship between the categories of blackness and Africanness.

Decolonisation as Unlearning Christianity: Fallism and African Religiosity as Case Studies

ABSTRACTThe students whose protests have captured the public imagination of South Africans since 2015, seem to, by and large, have replaced Christianity with a new “religion,” namely decolonisation. On the other hand, many African Christians seem to remain oblivious to the #MustFall movement’s revolutionary manifesto. And yet I argue that unlearning Christianity by the fallists and learning it anew by African Initiated Churches, among others, are two sides of the same coin. This article interrogates a few chosen facets of the intricate and multifaceted relationship between the decolonial project and Christianity in South Africa today. After locating my own voice within the decolonial discourse, I seek to interpret fallism as an overt act of a decolonial resistance, and juxtapose it with a covert one, namely the praxis of African religiosity. With Vellem and others, I argue that this praxis offers a powerful resource for liberating Christianity from its colonial/imperial entanglement.

Cone’s Binary View of Africanness and Christianity Through the Eyes of his African American Critics

Unlike some of his American colleagues, James Cone tended to distance Black Theology from Africanness in general and African Traditional Religions in particular. Throughout his life this tendency has evolved, but never disappeared altogether. This article sets out to achieve three goals. First, I give a historical account of Cone’s relationship with Africa, particularly with African religiosity, focusing on the criticism he received from his colleagues in the U.S. (notably Gayraud Wilmore, Cecil Cone and Charles Long). Second, I analyse the tension between the Christian and the African in Cone’s theological outlook by probing his notion of indigenization/Africanization among others. Third, I seek to interpret Cone’s binary view of Christianity and Africanness in the light of his chief locus of enunciation, namely Western Christianity (albeit contested). My attempt here is to lay foundations for an engagement with Cone’s attitude toward Africanness from the current South African (decolonial) perspective by considering it, first, within its original African American context.

Fire This Time: James Baldwin, Futurity, and a Call and Response

This article explores the relationship of Afrofuturism and the liberation and transformative form of African American preaching, as well as the intersections of religious styling and performance, particularly “call and response.” I explore that, as the concept of Afrofuturism continues to take shape, it expands to encompass African religiosity, mythology and cosmology, including also African religious thought, myths and rituals. Even more so, it in turn inspires religious language, discourse and stylings of African and African American peoples through the African American sermon and preacher. As such, this article explores scholar James H. Harris's liberation and transformative theology with the work of James Baldwin and his essay, “Letter to My Nephew.” In addition, I establish Baldwin as a futuristic prophet calling for radical change, liberation and the transformation of Black life from the margins of oppression, and into the center of power and enlightenment.

Taming the Spirit? Widening the Pneumatological Gaze within African Caribbean Theological Discourse

This paper is divided into two parts and is concerned with the need to revisit contemporary concepts of the Holy Spirit, particularly in African Caribbean theological discourse. Firstly, it explores the colonial context in which the Caribbean Church's concept of the Holy Spirit was formalized. The argument advanced here is that within the context of colonial religio-cultural oppression and the intense “othering” of the African person, pneumatologically oriented African Caribbean religiosity (and spirituality), has simultaneously been a place for reformation in the context of a colonial Christianity and the driving force behind African Caribbean forms of resistance and self-affirmation. Secondly, it argues for a “hermeneutic of embrace” where theology within the African Caribbean religio-cultural milieu will explore the continuities between the elusive nature of the Holy Spirit within Scripture, Christian history, and the very African religiosity particularly expressed in African Caribbean religio-cultural productions. Such an exploration would combat a Western theological tendency, as it always has done, to dismiss what are, clearly, powerful resources for Christian pneumatology.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN AFRICA: A CRITICAL AND APPRECIATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Religion constitutes an inextricable part of African society. As such, political and socio-economic activities are often flavoured with religious expressions and rituals. Whilst Africans are steeped in religiosity – this is expressed in many ways – poverty and corruption are rife on the continent. The question thus arises as to whether African religiosity gives impetus to poverty and corruption on the continent or whether religion has a crucial role to play in the liberation of African societies from poverty and corruption. By using the concept of religion in relation to African Traditional Religion, Christianity and Islam, this article investigates the role of religion in the crisis of poverty and corruption in African society and argues that whilst religion has been instrumentalised in some instances to perpetuate poverty and corruption on the continent, it remains a crucial component of ‘Africanness’ and could contribute to moral, socio-political and economic transformation.

Zionism and Aladura's shared genealogy in John Alexander Dowie

In this article, the author historically describes the process by which Faith Tabernacle Congregation was established by an Evangelist (and later Overseer) in John Alexander Dowie's Christian Catholic Church in Zion. He then explains the similarity of both churches' African missions – the Christian Catholic Church in South Africa and Faith Tabernacle in Nigeria. Both American churches, with a distinct genealogical relationship to one another, significantly affected very similar Christian movements, which were the Zionist movement in South Africa and the Aladura movement in Nigeria. Both of these movements are frequently credited with institutionalizing divine healing within African Christianity, and many scholars argue that African Pentecostalism begin within these movements. In the conclusion, the author reflects historiographically on this relationship: the Christian Catholic Church to Faith Tabernacle and particularly Zionism to Aladura. He argues that the historical relatedness between the two churches challenges the generally held notion that healing in African Christianity is only an expression or continuity of a ‘primal African religiosity.’ The Christian Catholic Church in South Africa and Faith Tabernacle in Nigeria did not represent the conjoining of opposing cultural forms, as in discussions of syncretism, but the hybridizing of very similar religious beliefs and practices with respect to disease, health, and healing.