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Are Africans Religious People or Fetish Inhabitants? Do They Have a Unifying Religion and Culture? Towards a Pedagogical Response! (Part 3)

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Author: Gerald Ogbuja
Posted to the web: 2/19/2011 3:45:33 PM


RELIGION AND TRADITIONAL AFRICAN BELEIFS AS IT SHAPES LIFE AND CULTURE

          The object of misguided concept about Africa or about some Igbo values and beliefs systems abound everywhere.  Anywhere you look, you will see its ominous presence and repercussions. A look at the 'Ahiajoku lecture ” or nomenclature is one of those concepts that have received Achilles remark as modern 'pagan' discourse.  Nothing could further spring forth from this creative discourse because before the advent of Christianity, the concept of Chukwu (Almighty God) was already ingrained in the Igbo culture and cosmology. Professor Afigbo called it '... an attempt to wipe the cultural slate of the Igbo people clean' (Afigbo, 2000). On the other hand, the Odenigbo Lecture was delivered precisely in Igbo language spicing our orature as the lecturer takes his audience into the myth of African worldview. In 1999, Chinua Achebe presented an oratural lecture titled: Echi di ime, taa bu gboo (Tomorrow is pregnant Today is Early Enough). The oratural and philosophical meaning of these words shapes African traditional beliefs systems and concepts about the reality of the future and the reality of the here and now. Therefore, it is early to value as well as recognize African traditional values now because tomorrow is not feasible. Indeed, now is time to say enough because the future in which we don’t know is inconclusive. And to say that we must be proud to acknowledge values and beliefs that make Africa what she is calls our attention to some indubitable facts. In the past there exist African cultural modes that are indubitable, and these cultural modes and realities must be acknowledged now. We must not wait till tomorrow comes to acknowledge those facts otherwise doubt and hesitation will creep in just in the middle of our slumber and reap where they did not sow. This was why Late Prof, Donatus Nwaoga (1984) in a lucid but telling narrative in the Ahiajoku lecture dislodged such doubts while narrating an old story that identifies a people in a culture, thus paying greater attention to the demands of the “now.” In that arresting story Nwaoga notes:

“Chief S. U. Chukueggu, Director of the Mbarị Art Centre once produced a piece of sculpture which he called Ajala Eziudo. The sculpture represents a grove of trees, showing mushrooms, skulls, and a god towering above the whole forest. Chukueggu's art is mythical, representing the meeting point between religion and the imagination, the transition from doctrine to social thought. His explanation of the symbolism of the sculpture referred to the contemporary events in Eziudo and what was supposed to have happened when the sacred grove of Ajala Eziudo was cut down. The key tree in the grove was an anụnụede tree. It was reported that the anụnụede tree sent forth some mushrooms which some people of the town ate with delight. Thirteen people were killed by the mushrooms. The story of the anụnụede tree was confirmed by a well-educated Eziudo man who added that two women went to farm in that land and one cut her toe in the farm and that evening the two women died. The story of the anụnụede tree got even more complex. An Ọhafia informant added that the anụnụede tree sometimes goes on a walk and that is when the medicine men who come and wait beside the forest enter the forest and pick up bits and pieces of the anụnụede, strips of bark or dried twigs or leaves, with which they concoct very powerful medicines. These medicines are sometimes used by thieves such that they could blow the powder of it towards your house and you would fall deeply into sleep while they stole even from your bedroom. At other times, with anụnụede medicine you could become invisible to your enemies. And if the diviner tells you to go and offer a sacrifice to the anụnụede tree, your luck will determine whether sacrifice will arrive when the husband anụnụede is awake or the wife anụnụede. The importance of which one accepts your sacrifice is that if it is the man, he will do whatever you request and will not care whether it is for your good or not; but if it is the woman anụnụede that is at home she will make sure that what you ask is good for your home and compound before she fulfils your wishes. An Ichie of Ogbunike independently wrote of brother and sister anụnụede (Ọdụche). Just as Ezi Udo people believe in the ritual symbolism of anunuede and the sepulture so do other cultural tribes in Nigeria and African believe in something other than anunuede. Just as Sri Lankans pay respect to the sacred city of Anuradhapura , the   Japanese shrine known as Toshogu is revered as sacred stable carving depicting the three wise monkeys, “hear no evil, see no evil, and speak on evil.” The site of this stable art is revered as “hallow ground” or “sacred soil.” For a very long time, the sacred city of Anuradhapura has remained a halo spot of Sri Lankan civilization. Traditional African worshippers have for a very long time revered “Amadioha” or “Anunuede” as sacred places to be dreaded. Amadioha or anunuede ranked along Nineveh , Toshogu and Babylon in its colossal effects and proportion.

Indeed, rituals also form part of African religious rites. Since the time of Malinowski, British and Irish anthropologists have interpreted activities dependent on such beliefs as means of fulfilling functions in other spheres of human life. Rituals, for example, were seen as facilitating some essential activity such as agriculture, fishing or trade by raising morale. It was altogether seen as enforcing the requisite values or giving organizing power to magi or co-religious activities. Essentially, rituals were 'useful' as a means of enforcing tribal ethics, supporting indigenous authorities, making possible to appease gods and re-forming of groups and the assumption of new roles after marriage, peace-making and death (see A. I. Richards). Unlike anunuede, there are also ritual numbers, and sacred places for example, the circumbulation of sacred trees- seven times in places. Therefore, actions, such as sacrificial offerings, are considered sacred. As a result, there are man-made places (altars, shrines, temples and graves), but most of these sacred spaces are natural in its functions (Mbiti, 1975). They include groves and forests, trees, waterfalls and rivers, lakes, rocks and mountains. These places symbolically are the melting-point between the heavens and the sky or between the earth and the land, and finally between the invisible and the visible world. People according to Mbiti use these places for rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices, offerings and praying. Such places according to African cultural beliefs are not put to common use because they would be desecrated. Where necessary, there are people who look after the general tidiness of these places. In any case, there are ritual and religious leaders who take charge of any public use of these places, and they see to it that they are kept in order where and when necessary.

Religion also influenced most aspects of traditional African lives. Sequel to rituals, religion was important to individuals and helped reinforced order, law and community integration. In the past and as we have said earlier, Africans worshipped many different gods just like the Icans and the Aztecs. They celebrated the sacredness of the sun, moon and star gods. This is why in African cosmology, there were god of fertility (chi omumu) , god of protection and harvest; god who is the maker of the universe (chi okike ), god of rain and god of peace etc. Some gods were good, some evil, and sometimes both. As a result, believers of African religion worshipped their gods in various forms. They prayed and made offerings of food, flowers and incense. Sometimes, they carried out animal sacrifices to different gods of the land. This was done by shading animal blood on the shrine of gods; as they look up to the heavens believing strongly that this act would appease or nourish them. Traditional African worshippers believed that animal sacrifice pleased gods or kept the village or the community at peace or the world in balance. Through the worship of gods, they found meaning in their existence and related to one another in a humanized way. In his classic work, “An Afro-Christian vision “OZOVEHE!” Towards a more Humanized world,” Ehusani (1991) pointed out that what has often been called the Christianization of Africa was in fact their westernization of Africa religion.” He continued that “European missionaries, thinking sincerely that they were bringing religious faith to the Africans, were in actuality bringing them European culture in which the faith had been given expression for many centuries.” This made Europeans lost the ability to communicate a religious faith without its European cultural manifestations (Fitzpatrick, 1987).

Joseph Ratzinger (1962), in a scholarly journal on Theology Digest note that the West is not the whole world and that it can no longer overlook the rights of people in other cultures. Ratzinger was indignant to say that Western theology, on the other hand, together with the whole external appearance of Christianity, is so completely westernized that it appears to people of other cultures to be a foreign import. He reaffirmed that since the Christian faith is an absolute and divine phenomenon, there must be something wrong when it appears “foreign” to people of any age or any culture. The religious notion of equal rights for all societies and cultures before the word of God is as old as theology itself. Indeed, this notion is as old as ontology or any radical discourse. This is why theology was founded on these multicultural or multi-religious premises. On the same note, the anthropological notion of equal dignity of all men who are created in the image and likeness of God is as ancient as theology or as old as Adam or the exegesis of human creation. This is the more reason why the premise “imago dei” is founded on the universal equality of all men before God the creator. Therefore, if Christianity, theology, orature, anthropology, and cultural equality should surrender before God the maker of all things, then no culture or religion should assume a privileged position over another faith or arrogate superiority over another culture. Therefore, we all are human beings subject to the same laws of nature. Hence, African traditional religion is not inferior spirituality to Christian faith because both religions have basic belief systems, icons of worship and symbols of reverence. Christianity as well as traditional African religion emphasis holiness, harmony, loves of God and love of neighbor. Both religion emphases form of social order and peace. Indeed both religions and both cultures emphasis that human beings are higher and spiritual than mere animals. This is a case why I argue that “homo sapiens ” is also “home religiousus .”  Both men and women, western or African, at one time worshipped gods. Consequent upon this, they created religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam or Confucianism). This is why there exist primitive cultures and pagan worships in other part of the world as well. By the time the council of Trent (Dec, 13 1545 to Dec, 4 1563) was provoked, Western churches had already suffered one of the greatest losses of its culture and history: the disintegration of its cults, which became as Luykx would argue an affair solely for worshipers, and of its piety, which became a purely private concern. As a result, Roman liturgy which subsequently became Germanized finally absorbed the defeat that characterized Western history which finds meaning in the growing resentment renting anger after anger against everything occidental. The repeat of this is what Africans through enculturation and adaptation must try to avoid. Traditional African religion can avoid such dislodgment by fittingly incorporating their orature and theological approach, regulating their liturgy and worship to serve as a framework incorporating indigenous cultures and cults into the universal church without excluding all positive values of the Roman rites and traditions. We are aware that the ancient near East that surrounded Asia and the Sumerian were pagans at one time. Sumerian medicine was a combination of magic, prescriptions and surgery. Sumerians believed that demons and evil spirits caused sickness and that magic spells and prescriptions could drive them out. Overtime, some prescriptions worked, and some did not; and in this slow but empirical fashion, medical understanding grew and flowered. Egyptians on one hand understood their pharaohs and gods to be the living embodiment of faith and culture. The god Horus was seen as source of law and morality, and the moderator between gods and humans.

 Egyptians also developed views of an afterlife that reflected the world around them. This view was reflected and symbolized in Igbo culture of Nigeria and in the respect for the dead, respect for ancestors and belief in reincarnation. According to Egyptian mythology, Osiris, a fertility god associated with the Nile, died each year, and each year his wife, Osiris, brought him back to life. Osiris eventually became King of the dead, and he weighed human beings’ hearts to determine whether they had lived justly enough to deserve everlasting life. These are one of the many samples of both African and Western examples that justifies that the West at one time worship gods before the emergence of Christianity. One also can develop supporting evidence to justify his own claim that Africa was not the only primitive continent in the global religious history; that she is not all that irreligious and that her faiths were not populated by magic and spirits.        Other logical evidence could be found in Mbitiâ's declarative opinion “because religion permeates all departments of life, there are no irreligious people in Africa. Where ever the African is, there is his religion: he carries it with him to the beer party or to attend a funeral ceremony; and if he is educated, he takes religion with him to the examination room at school or in the university; if he is a politician he takes it to the house of parliament. Although many African languages do not have a word for religion as such, it nevertheless accompanies the individual from long before his birth to long after his physical death.” Mbiti concludes that “religion is in their whole system of being.”

Davis (1986) adequately adds that “the success in controlling what non Europeans produced were carried over into conquering and controlling what they also believed, as far as possible. Thus the conquest of matter and control of spirit constituted for missionaries and their centuries an important form of divine sanction. Any other query as to why Africans sacrifice animals to the gods can only highlight the “whatness” of a problem but can never give decisive insight into the “whyness” of it. Sacrifices are defined as blood offerings and there are mentions of sacrifice in much of African traditional culture as found in Jewish and Mediterranean cultures too. For Mbiti (1975) what has been sacrificed may be consumed by traditional priests, by participants in the ritual, left at the ritual site, or returned to their owners. The reason is because there are intermediaries between gods and spirits, and between God and humans. Therefore, Africa is not the only continent that have bathed in this kind of ditch waters or soaked in this kind of drench. Other cultures were drowned too in one thing or the other that made them what they are. For so long, I have continued to evaluate the veracity of these statements (irreligious, fetish and barbaric people) and with some degree of scholaristic objectivity discover them as untrue, biased and illogical. The same illogical thoughts see African reality as one of irrational entity of anthropological poverty. Besides these illogical remarks, there still remains a framework or a hub of some moral and rational characteristics that surrounds what I mean by “African reality.” In my opinion, African reality is the Sitz-im-Leben (situation in life), the decisive and definitive context of an African world-view, and the decisive and definitive context of an African cosmology. By this I mean the peculiar way Africans perceive realities around them and in their own world and not in an imposed manner. Therefore, if Africans perceive reality in a particular fashion or craze, it means that Western scholarly prejudice of irreligious- primitivity holds no water. When all is said and done in this pedagogical discourse, respect for the sacredness of life for which African traditional religion is founded seems to have become a supreme value with which Africa could nourish herself, the world and humanity. Just as Christ is word (logos ), so is reason or intellect in the Christian religion. The same word we extol is life in traditional African religion. Therefore, whatever that is sacred and vital is therefore spiritual in traditional African culture. Likewise whatever that is reasonable and intellectual is therefore Christian, because of an identity linkage between reason, intellect, and Christ. The union between traditional African religion with anything sacred results not from a linking together of heterogeneous elements, but from a long-standing kinship. Similarly, the union between Christianity and Greek philosophy results, not from a linking together of heterogeneous elements, but from a longstanding reason or understanding. Both principles are taproots of both Christianity and traditional African religions. Both have always remained ready to receive any offshoot of the logos that is found in world religions. Traditional African faith, religion and culture do not present a close door policy (strictly prohibited), but one that opens upon boundless vistas.

        In order to keep that door ever open, Western scholars and missionaries should bear in mind that culture to an African man is life and life to him is culture. The two are intertwined and inseparable. Thus, Africanâ's political, economic and social realities are de-facto inseparable part of African life.  The inseparability of the duo to an African man is tantamount to the dualism of body-soul- prison of Plato. It is in this dualism (life and culture) that gives an African person his indefatigable anthropology and identity. It is what informs his “Status-quo-ante ,” his life-blood, faith and religion. It is what enkindles his spirituality, his psychology, and his closeness with divinity. Infect, it is what informs his Sacrality (holiness). Western scholars and church historians should therefore proceed with greater modesty in accessing and viewing African religion and spirituality with dignity. They are to develop what Elochukwu Uzukwu called “Larger ears,” and “open hearts” in accepting African wisdom and realities. Larger ears or open hearts are antecedent towards treating Africans like people of the same rational instincts who by nature have true religion and true faith in God almighty. Larger ears do not mean large plugs or Orejones (Big Ears) the Incan nobles wore in their earlobes. Open hearts and larger ears would help missionaries to understand that African traditional morality and spirituality is not primarily an immaterial spirit distant from the Holy Spirit of the Pentecost. The modern meaning of “spirit” has always followed the Greek interpretation and connotation.  Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English languages are suitable tools for conveying Christianity just as Igbo, Efik, Tiv, Yoruba and Hausa languages or other African languages are suitable tools for conveying traditional African faith and culture.  To say there is only one God, the Greeks speak of “monotheism” while Hebrew speaks of “a jealous God.” And to say there are many gods, Africans speak of “polytheism ” “umu mmuo” or deities . This religious logic drags our pedagogical response to an analogous of prejudice.  An analogous problem exists within Christianity and Western theology with little difference in traditional African mythology. These differences are less acute because languages are of the same general family but of different branches and offshoots. Greek thought is not the same as Latin thought, just as Hebrew expressions are not the same as English expression or Igbo language. Hence, whether we regard languages, expressions of thought, or procession of culture, or of faith, we still find that unique diversity is a constitutive mark of Christianity as well as conservative symbol in traditional African culture and religion. Yet, this diversity is unified in Christianity as it is conserved in traditional African religion and culture. To me these logical analyses demonstrate that the law of Christian thought has two guiding poles contrary to multiple duality of the traditional African religion. One is the spontaneous impulse of the human intelligence to truth; the other is Godâ's revelation of the essential elements of this truth to man. Between these two radical poles, Christian theology expands all its dynamism as it attempts to make explicit, to penetrate, and to understand by utilizing all the resources offered by the human wisdom and intelligence. Based on this level of utilization, I hold this to heart that Western assessments were responsible for the destruction of African cultural perspective and her glittering understanding of life after the missionary encounter. The aftermath of prejudice on African faith and culture cut across the frontiers of African life to Politics, economy, morals and ideologies. Such ideological hubris or prejudice amounted to the dehumanization of an African personality and the fragmentation of his personhood.

        Attention of readers therefore, needs to be drawn to another thought-provoking issue. This thought provoking issue conjures feelings that “missionaries and students of comparative religion alike robbed African Religion of its universal character. Such genealogical hubris not only condemned Africans but humiliated them to perpetual nonage.” The act of robbing one his character as it pertains to humiliation compelled Africans to an endless incarnation of the Christian message into what is truly “others.”  The truism that the missionaries robbed Africans their indigenous spirituality and religion to me is an indisputable fact. After the so called robbery, a great damage was done and a cultural gulf and spiritual vacuum was created in the cosmology and religious lives of Africans. These vacuum formed the corner stone to missionary wrong judgment on the objects that forms the bedrock of African religiosity that was condemned to perpetual nonage. After such condemnation, everything about traditional African religion began to be viewed as fetish and unspiritual in the eyes of the outside world.  But in the mind that is inside heart, African traditional worship became nothing less than idolatry. Sequel to that, African sense of the sacred which initially was part of African respect for divinity was condemned as the worship of the earth goddess. Such condemnation robbed African traditional religion its universal charisma, its traditional character and its cultural glamour and coloration. After she lost her religious glamour, it became impossible for her to incarnate or Africanize the gospel into the life blood of natives. Simply put, African church otherwise native ecclesiology lost itâ's “a prori” faith, its enduring theology about God, its towering spirituality before the guest faith. All these led African natives to consider this Guest spirituality as domineering, oppressive, imposing and incapacitating.

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