Rituals are often associated with important human events: birth, marriage, death, planting, and harvest.įinally, it is important to recognize that although the Western world may not be familiar with African Religions, these religions are not primitive, weird, or unusual in comparison to other religious perspectives. ![]() Rituals serve to reinforce important religious beliefs through meaningful activities that bring comfort or joy and thus strengthen the unity of the followers of the religious tradition. Rituals are cultural or religious ceremonies that celebrate or commemorate specific events that have deep religious significance. Just as with Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, children growing up in African religions learn right from wrong, and what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior in every situation that they face.įifth, like all world religions, rituals are important to African indigenous religions. ![]() Similarly, the world-view (values, attitudes, beliefs) that an individual learns from the time s/he is a baby provides a mechanism that influences how s/he understands all that happens to her/him, her/his community and the world in which s/he lives.įourth, African indigenous religions provide a system of morality that establishes right from wrong, good and appropriate from bad or inappropriate behavior. Words and their meanings help shape the way we see, and therefore how we explain, events. But words come with their own meanings, we cannot simply change the meanings of words when we use them to explain or to understand events or why we live the way we do. Can you imagine how hard it would be explain or understand everyday events and occurrences if we did not have language-words? Words are essential tools that help us explain and understand events and occurrences. Maybe we can think of a world-view as being like a language. A world-view can be thought of as a system of values, attitudes, and beliefs, which provide people with a mechanism to understand the world in which they live and everyday events and occurrences. Thirdly, African religions provide people with what some scholars call a world-view. Among indigenous African religions, religious belief and practice are not restricted to one holy day each week, be it Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, but are present in the most common daily activities as well as in special ritual ceremonies. That is, religious beliefs impact the way people live their everyday lives, from what they eat (or cannot eat), the way they farm, do everyday chores, hunt, make tools and clothes, arrange themselves in families, marry, divide work among family members, educate their children, treat illness, and bury the dead. Secondly, although the supernatural -God and spirit world -are important in African religions (as you will learn in the next section), religious belief and practice are central to all aspects of life in Africa. Just as there are differences in religious practice in the United States -not just between Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and others, but even within Christianity (Roman Catholics and many Protestant groups), Islam (Sunni, Sh’ite, Nation of Islam) and Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform) -so too there are differences in religious belief and practice among African religions. It summarizes some important issues related to indigenous African religions.įirst, it is important to remember that while there are similarities between African religions, there are also differences. This long quote is from a person who has studied African religions for many years. Robert Baum in Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African American Experience, 1999 These ideas are expressed in sacred oral traditions, handed down from generation to generation through the performance of ritual and through intensive periods of education, including rites of passage. They uphold certain types of ethical behavior. Like most religious systems African religions focus on the eternal questions of what it means to be human: what is the meaning of life, and what are the correct relations among humans, between humans and spiritual powers, and with the natural world? African religious systems seek to explain the persistence of evil and suffering, and they seek to portray the world as operating with some degree of order and predictability. ![]() They are not limited to beliefs in supernatural beings or to ritual acts of worship, but effect all aspects of life, from farming to hunting, from travel to courtship. African religions are often closely associated with African peoples’ concepts of ethnic identity, language and culture. While it is true that Africans do not have a word equivalent to the term “religion” there are a number of terms in African languages that describe activities, practices, and a system of thought that corresponds closely to what most Westerners mean by religion.
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