Showing papers in "Journal of Religion in Africa in 1969"

Daily life in the kingdom of the Kongo: from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century

Abstract: Anticipating Japan by more than 300 years, the kingdom of the Kongo embarked on an ambitious programme of Westernization in the first half of the sixteenth century. This experiment and its consequences, which will always remain of unique interest to the student of Africa's contact with, and reaction to, the outside world, is here examined by a distinguished French sociologist. The documentation provided by the succession of missionaries and other European visitors to the Kongo is also uniquely abundant for Africa south of the Sahara, and, through the work of Canon Jadin and other scholars, it is now becoming increasingly available. With his personal knowledge of the area, Professor Balandier brings an anthropologist's insight to the study of this source material, and his book, now translated into English, is a most readable piece of scholarly popularization. A quick survey of the dynasty's encounter with the Portuguese is followed by a full description of the economic, social, artistic, and religious life of the ancient kingdom. This is of permanent value for the numerous occasions where he is able to explain, expose, and assess the reports of contemporary European observers, whom he quotes lavishly, and he successfully conveys a vivid and balanced impression of the deficiencies and considerable achievements of this culture. As a piece of historical analysis, however, the book is a disappointment. With his model of Kongo culture, he has underestimated, and at times has even failed to notice, the process of change. Thus J. Vansina has recently given (Kingdoms of the savanna) a far more perceptive account of the fundamental and crucial political transformation which occurred in the last half of the seventeenth century, while Professor Balandier's treatment of what is in many ways his central theme, the Kongo's reaction to Christianity, is seriously deficient. The fact that by the late nineteenth century Christianity was almost non-existent in the Kongo is, on Professor Balandier's analysis, to be explained by the solid strength of the traditional religion, which for three centuries successfully assimilated and transformed the alien faith, appropriating ' its symbols for ends which the missionaries indignantly condemned'. But to assume that syncretism was a one-way process is, in this case, to distort history. It overlooks, for instance, the royal commitment to Christianity, which endured into the nineteenth century, and which, at least in the case of the two kings we know best, Affonso I and Garcia II, is by no means to be explained solely by political considerations. It overlooks the persistent influence of the maestri or catechists, who as late as 1814 were described by a Kongo king as the fire under the cinders, preserving ' the Holy Faith ever alive in this kingdom '. It is therefore quite wrong to suppose that Dona Beatriz and her sect of the Antonians (1704—8), with which Professor Balandier closes his description, marks the end of the encounter. Rather, this separatist incident could be interpreted as a response, significant yet transient, to the traumatic changes of the late seventeenth century, and the final decline of Christianity is to be explained not merely by the disintegration of the Kongo state, but also by events in Europe : by Pombal's expulsion of the Jesuits and the Revolutionary suppression of seminaries and religious orders, with the result that for nearly a century the Kongo received no reinforcements of priests from Europe. An historian surveying the scene before the late eighteenth century, far from being impressed by the resilience of the traditional religion, could well conclude that the Kongo was becoming increasingly Christian and that the direction and dynamic of syncretism was very different from that assumed in this study.

Libation in Ga Ritual1)

Abstract: In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the anthropological analysis of religion, in general, and of ritual symbolism, in particular. 2) This paper is intended as a contribution to his growing body of literature. It presents a descriptive analysis of libation as a sacrificial act in order to elucidate certain ideas about the ordering of the universe and about the meaning of sacrifice in one West African society, the Ga of southeastern Ghana. The Ga, a cognatic Kwa speaking people who number about 236,ooo, inhabit a series of coastal towns and villages on the Accra Plains. Traditionally fishermen and cultivators, the Ga constitute a highly modernized. group within the contemporary Ghanaian population Nevertheless, aspects of the traditional social system persist even within Accra, the capital of Ghana. In this paper I am concerned with traditional Ga religious conceptions and relations as they are expressed in the ritual of the kpele cult, which Ga believe to be their indigenous religious system.

Religious Change in Yoruba Society - a Test Case

Abstract: A little over fifteen years ago Parrinder 2) could speak of the 'twilight of the gods' of the traditional Yoruba pantheon. There can be little doubt indeed that within the present century there has been a considerable drift away from the ancestral cults. The old patterns of belief and ritual no longer have any significant formal following, and it is only among the older generation that one finds any enthusiasm for the traditional orisas, as opposed to Christianity or Islam. According to the figures of the 1963 census only 7.9% of the population of Nigeria were other than formal adherents of Islam or one of the Christian churches.

The Beloved City: Commentary On a Kimbanguist Text

Abstract: The Eglise de JIsus-Christ sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK), which claims a membership of at least a million, is the leading indigenous church of the Republic of Congo and has legal status equivalent to the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Salvation Army. 1) Most Kimbanguists are Bakongo from the western Congo, but the church has important congregations in Kisangani (Stanleyville), Lubumbashi (Elisabethville) and other towns in Congo and in neighbouring countries. The EJCSK, like almost all of the numerous indigenous churches of the western Congo, claims spiritual descent from Simon Kimbangu, nominal leader of the great messianic movement of I921. 2) Since Kimbanguism in general, and EJCSK in particular, have been the subject of several studies and usually appear on short lists of African messianic movements, it is regrettable that no Kimbanguist theological texts of any length have been published or studied. It is sometimes suggested that Kimbanguists have no theology, and make do with a syncretic assortment of heterogeneous beliefs. Here is a representative comment:

Educational Policy and the Mission Schools : Case Studies from the British Empire

Abstract: Originally published 1967, this title reveals how the missionaries, so often misguided and short-sighted, were in fact pioneers of modernization, science and freedom. The structure of the book allows for comparative analysis and the volume illustrates how some of the social consequences of action through the schools could be foreseen. In addition light is thrown on the results of Imperial rule during the nineteenth century and on the nature of the impact of Western education in Asia and Africa.

The Place of Independent Religious Movements in the Modernization of Africa

Abstract: The eruption on to the world political scene of some thirty new independent nations in the continent of Africa within something like a decade is surely one of the most unexpected, exciting and significant political developments of our time. This essay is concerned with the religious background to this development in that part of the continent known as sub-saharan or Black Africa. Here the main religions involved have been the ethnic or traditional religions of the African tribal peoples in their interaction with the immigrant Christian religion associated with the invasion of Western culture, although in the northern and eastern reaches of this area Islam has long been a significant political influence. The contribution of the Christian religion commences with the churches brought by freed Negro slaves first to Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century and then to Liberia early in the nineteenth century, and continues through the great missionary expansion and the resultant range of autonomous churches that have produced a Christian population of some 43 million (excluding Ethiopia) south of the Sahara. It is not our present intention to examine the extent to which Christian missions and churches, through their own teachings, through their pioneering in education, and through their association with Western culture and its political forms and ideas have been a major factor in the growth of nationalist sentiment and the achievement of political independence. The outlines, at least, of this history are often recognized, and for recent evidence one need only enquire into the education received by most of the founders or first heads of the new nations.

The Idea of a Supreme Being Among the aηo pEople of Ghana

Abstract: Mawu is the ABlb name for the Supreme Being. This same word is used by other Eue neighbours to designate their Supreme Beings. In a wider sense Mawu is generic symbol for deity and is freely applied to the lesser gods which the AilJ1 people particularly refer to as Tr3. Whether Mawu originated from its use for the Supreme Being or from its generic usage for deity in general is not easy to say. However the A1l1 people believe that the lesser gods have taken on some divine attributes because the Supreme Being created them and delegated divine authority to them to represent him in the world of men. This belief and A1J31 attempts at etymological solution seem to support the view that Mawu originated with the Supreme Being and was later adopted as generic symbol for deity. Many attempts have been made to solve the etymological riddle of Mawu. The commonest among the AIl3 people themselves is Ema ye wu, "this is the One who surpasses all." Others think Mawu is rather a combination of two particles: a negative ma and a superlative wu. Wu for others is the Eve for the verb "kill." Thus Mawu in AI319 thought is, on the one hand, "the One who surpasses all," "the Omnipotent" and, on the other, "the One who does not kill," the bountiful, the merciful. Some other researches into the etymology of Mawu appear rather wild guesses which may safely be ignored here. 1) But one fact which emerges from all these attempts is that Mawu is a proper name and like some other proper names, its real etymology is long lost in the mists of time. Perhaps this is the outcome of the same unqualified reverence for the divine name that still makes a riddle of the Tetragrammaton of Judaism. However, all these suggested etymological solutions

A Tentative Philological Typology of Some African High Deities

Abstract: A definition of the terms High Deity and High God must first be given. They stand for a phenomenon which is widely met in many parts of Africa: besides the spirits and deities there is an isolated deity, quite independent from and not related to other deities, solitary and of unknown origin, without dependents, neither wife nor family. Certain general characteristics always recur. This High God is usually known as creator, but not necessarily in the sense of a creatio ex nihilo. He has set certain rules of human conduct. The phenomenon of death is often traced back to him, and it is he who calls away those whose time on earth is over. In the beginning he used to live near the places of men, but later-sometimes in consequence of some human awkwardness-he has withdrawn. He is very rarely the object of regular cult. At the most a brief ritual prayer is addressed to him at a fixed time of the day. His remoteness can be so great that he exists quite passively, having retired into himself. In this case we speak of a Deus otiosus, a God who exists in complete idleness. His ethical qualities vary. One cannot say that the High God is always malevolent; it would be more to the point to state that he has positive characteristics as well as negative ones. There are also thoroughly benevolent High Gods. When looking for a parallel in the history of religions, one might think of the deistic conception of God, a conception which-in the form of an undercurrent in official Christianity-is still widely spread in Europe. A High God of this kind is called 'Supreme Being' by some students of Comparative Religion. I for one do not use this term, as it is also used to define the highest deity of a Pantheon. 1) Nevertheless, occasional overlappings do occur: at times the High God is integrated into a Pantheon. In such a case, the High God apparently is only one member of the family of Gods.