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The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions brings together a team of international scholars to create a single-volume resource on the religious beliefs and practices of the peoples in Africa. * Offers broad coverage of issues relating to African religions, considering experiences in indigenous, Christian, and Islamic traditions across the continent * Contributors are from a variety of fields, ensuring the volume offers multidisciplinary perspectives * Explores methodological approaches to religion from anthropological, philosophical, and historical perspectives * Provides insights into the historical developments in African religions, as well as contemporary issues such as the development of African-initiated churches, neo traditional religions, and Pentecostalism * Discusses important topics at the intersection of culture and religion in Africa, including the arts, health, politics, globalization, gender relations, and the economy
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
Table of Contents
Cover
The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: Methodological Perspectives on African Religions
CHAPTER 1: Methodological Views on African Religions
The Phenomenology of Religion
Criticisms of the Phenomenological Method and a Rebuttal
Implications of Phenomenology for the Study of African Religions
Conclusions
CHAPTER 2: Philosophy of Religion on African Ways of Believing
Introduction
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
CHAPTER 3: Neo-Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism
Prolegomenon
The First is from Post-apartheid South Africa
The Second comes from Post-Soviet Russia
The Third is from a Post-Christendom America
Capitalism at the Millennium, Millennial Capitalism
Occult Economies and New Religious Movements
Toward a Privatized Millennium
Toward a Beginning
CHAPTER 4: Divination in Africa
Comparative and Historical Overview of Divination Forms
Recent Cognitive and Phenomenological Approaches
The Nature and Role of the Yaka Mediumnic Diviner
The Bodiliness of Perception, Inter-subjectivity, and Transworld Resonance
CHAPTER 5: Orality, Literature, and African Religions
Introduction
Religion, Orality, and “Primal Religion”
Orality, Textuality, and Religion during the Colonial Era
Orality and Material Representation
Drumming, Singing, Movement, and Dance in Oral Performance
Praise Poetry: Orality, Religion, and the Ancestors
Oral Hymns and Songs
Proverbs
Orality and the Occult
Conclusion
CHAPTER 6: African Rituals
The Place of Ritual in African Religions
Embodiment, Rhetoric, Performance, and Dynamics
Gender and Power
Innovation and Adaptation: Ritual and History
CHAPTER 7: Postcolonial Feminist Perspectives on African Religions
Introduction
Problematizing of Frameworks of AIR(s)
Community, Postcolonialism, and Feminism
The Future of Feminist African Religion
CHAPTER 8: Religion and the Environment
Kairos
Trees, Sacred Groves, and Related Practices
The Refusal of the Sacred
Conclusion
CHAPTER 9: Christianity in Africa
Introduction
Reconfigurations: From African Independent to Pentecostal Charismatic Churches
Christianity and “Traditional Religion”
Africa and “The Wider World”
Religion and the Public Sphere
Concluding Remarks
Afterword
PART II: Interpreting Religious Pluralism
CHAPTER 10: Neo-traditional Religions
The Term Neo-traditional Religion
The Afrikania Mission in Ghana
State and Politics
Christianity
Media
Shrines
Discussion
CHAPTER 11: Spirit Possession in Africa
Introduction
Goals of this Essay
Spirit Possession in Anthropological Perspective
Spirit Possession in Africa
Beyond Hegemony and Resistance: Spirits among the Tuareg
Concluding Analysis and Implications
CHAPTER 12: Christian Missions in Africa
CHAPTER 13: Christianity in Africa
Early African Christianity and the Quest for Wholeness
Constantinian Christianity in Africa
Colonial and Postcolonial African Christianity and the Quest for Wholeness
Looking Forward: Instead of a Conclusion
CHAPTER 14: Coptic Christianity
The Early Christian Period
Copts under Islamic Governance
The Modern Period
CHAPTER 15: The Ethiopian Orthodox Church
Short History
Theology/Christology
Modern Organization of the Church
Spiritual Life
The Ethiopian Christian Diaspora and Ethiopian Orthodox Missionary Activities
CHAPTER 16: African Theology
Debate on Methodology
Theological Thinking Today
The Bible and Theology in Africa
Types of Theology
Faith, Wealth, and Prosperity
Two Examples of Doctrinal Development in African Theology
Challenges for the Future
CHAPTER 17: The Church and Women in Africa
Introduction
The Mission Churches’ Position on African Women
“Real Missionaries are Ordained Men”: Female Missionaries and African Women
The Agency of African Women as the Church
Why do Women Remain in the Church?
Towards a Liberative African Indigenous Church
CHAPTER 18: Feminist Theologies in Africa
Introduction
The History and Development of Feminist Theologies in Africa
Methods and Features of Feminist Theologies in Africa
Problems With, and Possibilities For, the Future of Feminist Theologies in Africa
Conclusion
CHAPTER 19: Church and Reconciliation
Introduction
Extraordinary Magnanimity
Deafening Theological Silence
International Interest
Massive Skepticism, Disdainful Apathy, and Denial
Theological Comment on the TRC So Far: Exploring the Silence and Absence
Exploring the Church and Theological Silence
Theological Advocacy
Evaluating Critical Theological Comment So Far
Vigilant Theological Reflection
The New Theology of Reconciliation
Liberated by Stories?
Plausible Theology
Commissioners, Perpetrators, and Victims on Stage
Under the Spell of Mandela and Tutu
Keeping Commitment and Solidarity Focused on the Struggle of the Poor
Current Reparation Proposals
Concluding Thoughts
CHAPTER 20: Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Modern Africa
Introduction
Pentecostal Historiography
Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in the History of African Christianity
Social Imperatives of the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements
Regional Differences in the French-Speaking and English-Speaking West African Countries
Typology of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Nigeria
Doctrinal Emphases and Practices
Conclusion
CHAPTER 21: African Initiated Churches in the Diaspora
Introduction
The Redeemed Christian Church of God: A Brief History
The Transnationalization of New African Churches: The RCCG
Changing Austerity to Prosperity: RCCG Prosperity Discourse
Tithes and Offerings: The Malachi Rhetoric and RCCG Economic Base
CHAPTER 22: Islam in Africa
Introduction
Factors Leading to the Spread of Islam in Africa
Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha
Influence of African Religions on Islam
Islam’s Influence upon Africans
Islam and Education in Africa
Islam and Women in Africa
Female Circumcision (Female Genital Mutilation)
Islam and Terrorism in Africa
The Future of Islam in Africa
CHAPTER 23: Women in Islam
The Perception of Women in Senegalese Islamic Practice
Women’s Sufi Experience: The Phenomenon of Ndiaye Mody Guirandu
Islam and Civil Liberties: Towards a Rearticulation of Ijtihad
Conclusion
CHAPTER 24: Islam and Modernity
CHAPTER 25: Jihad
Introduction
Academic Approaches to the Study of Islam and Muslim Societies
Jihad in Islam’s Early Texts
Jihad as a Muslim Concept over the Centuries
Jihad and Africa
West African Examples
Conclusion
CHAPTER 26: Shari’a in Muslim Africa
African Islam and the Shari’a
Contemporary Applications of the Shari’a in the Sudan
The Shari’a Debate in Nigeria
African Muslim Reactions to Applications of the Shari’a
External Factors in the Shari’a Debate and Application
Conclusions
CHAPTER 27: Hinduism in South Africa
Neo-Hindu Movements
Concluding Comments
PART III: Religion, Culture, and Society
CHAPTER 28: Religion and Art in Ile-Ife
Ghostly Apparitions: When Sculptures Laugh and Wink Back
Sequential Engagement: The Ore Grove Example
Temples and Interactive Engagement
CHAPTER 29: Sufi Arts
Works of Contemporary Art in Senegal
Hidden Sides of Contemporary Art
Spirituality of the Global and the Local
Conclusions
CHAPTER 30: Religion, Health, and the Economy
The Economy of the African Body
Home Bodies: Patterns of Production and Reproduction
Moving Bodies: Transnational Religion and Migration
Desiring Bodies: Consumption and Commodification
Healthy Bodies: Capabilities and the Social Determinants of Health
CHAPTER 31: Religion, Illness, and Healing
Introduction
Examples
Towards a Wider Perspective
Some Interpretative Perspectives
Concluding Remarks
CHAPTER 32: Religion and Politics in Africa
What is Religion?
Historical Concepts of Power
Religion, Politics, and National States
Contemporary Writing on Religion and Politics
The Way Forward
CHAPTER 33: Religion and Development
Introduction
We the Peoples: Kofi Annan’s Millennium Report
Engagement with Civil Society
The Millennium Summit
The Millennium Declaration
Reflection on Some Key Themes and Issues
CHAPTER 34: Religion, Media, and Conflict in Africa
CHAPTER 35: Gospel Music in Africa
Introduction
The Genesis of Gospel Music in Kenya
From Gospel Music to Contemporary Christian Music
Between the Sacred and Secular: Contemporary Christian Music at the Crossroads
Gospel Music on the Loose: In the Streets and the Public Domain
Music, Money, and Fame: Religious Music and the Corporate World
CHAPTER 36: Religion and Globalization
Introduction
Definitions of Globalization
Origins of Globalization
Globalization and Africa
Globalizing African Religions and Africanizing Globalization
Conclusion
CHAPTER 37: Religion and Same Sex Relations in Africa
Bibliography
Index
The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion
The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion series presents a collection of the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions. Each volume draws together newly-commissioned essays by distinguished authors in the field, and is presented in a style which is accessible to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader. These volumes approach the subject in a creative and forward-thinking style, providing a forum in which leading scholars in the field can make their views and research available to a wider audience.
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The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions
Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba
This edition first published 2012
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Wiley-Blackwell companion to African religions / Edited by Elias Kifon Bongmba; Foreword Jacob K. Olupona.
pages cm. – (Wiley-Blackwell companions to religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9690-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-1182-5553-7 (epdf)
ISBN 978-1-1182-5554-4 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-1182-5552-0 (mobi)
1. Africa–Religion. I. Bongmba, Elias Kifon
BL2400.W49 2012
299.6–dc23
2011047462
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Dedicated to
Mr. Johannes Bongmba
A loving and supportive Father
Mr. Isaac Ngala Sayani
Who departed on the eve of the publication of this book
And to
Professor Elisha Stephen Atieno Odhiambo
Friend, Colleague, and Exemplary African Scholar
May the Ancestors reward all of you for your many acts of compassion.
Notes on Contributors
Afe Adogame, PhD, University of Bayreuth, Germany, is author of Celestial Church of Christ: The Politics of Cultural Identity in a West African Prophetic-Charismatic Movement. He has co-edited several and published numerous research articles in peer reviewed journals. Adogame is the Secretary General of the African Association for the Study of Religion.
Edward P. Antonio, PhD, Cambridge University, is the Harvey H. Potthoff Associate Professor of Christian Theology and Social Theory and Associate Dean of Diversities at the Illif School of Theology. In 2010, the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty (CIFA) named Antonio to lead a process in Nigeria for theological reflection and evaluation of the experience of Muslim and Christian faith leaders mutually engaged in interfaith action on malaria prevention throughout the country. He is editor of Inculturation and Postcolonial Discourse in African Theology and author of many articles in peer reviewed journals.
Suzanne Preston Blier, PhD, Columbia, is the Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University. A historian of African art and architecture in both History of Art and Architecture, Blier is author of numerous books, including The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression, which won the Arnold Rubin Prize; and African Vidin: Art, Psychology, and Power, which received the Charles Rufus Morey Prize. Forthcoming books include Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity c. 1300, African’s Worlds: A History (with Joseph C. Miller), and Past Presence: Ancient Ife and the Early Yoruba City State: Imaging African Amazons: The Art of Dahomey Women Warriors. She is a member of the Collège de France International Scientific and Strategic Committee (COSS).
Elias Kifon Bongmba is the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Houston, Texas. His book The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa won the 2007 Frantz Fanon Prize for Outstanding Work in Caribbean Thought. Bongmba is President of the African Association for the Study of Religion.
Christine Chaillot is a specialist of Orthodox Churches whose publications on the Coptic Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and Ethiopian Churches have been translated into English, Arabic, and Amharic. She is author of The Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches (1998). Her forthcoming book discusses the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century.
James R. Cochrane, BSc, MDiv, PhD, DDiv h.c., is Professor in Religious Studies, Director of the Research Institute on Christianity and Society in Africa, Co-Director of the International Religious Health Assets Programme, and Senior Research Associate, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, all at the University of Cape Town. Many of his roughly 150 publications have focused on religion in society.
Jean Comaroff is the Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, Founding Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. John L. Comaroff is the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, a Founding Fellow of Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Their current research in post-apartheid South Africa is on crime, policing, and the workings of the state, on democracy and difference, and on the nature of postcolonial politics. Their recent co-authored and co-edited books include Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (2006), Ethnicity, Inc. (2009), Zombies et frontières à l′ère néolibérale. Le cas de l′Afrique du Sud postcoloniale (2010) and, currently in press, Theory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa.
David Cook is Associate Professor at Rice University where he teaches Islam, Muslim apocalyptic literature and movements for radical social change and West African Islam. His publications include Understanding Jihad and Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature, Understanding Jihad, and Understanding and Addressing Suicide Attacks (with Olivia Allison). He is currently doing research on West African Islam, focusing on the vast Arabic literature of sub-Saharan Africa (especially in Nigeria).
James L. Cox is Professor of Religious Studies in the University of Edinburgh. From 1993 to 1998, he directed the University of Edinburgh’s African Christianity Project, which included eight African universities in southern and western Africa. He has held prior academic posts at the University of Zimbabwe, Westminster College, Oxford, and Alaska Pacific University. His most recent publications include: An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (2010), From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions (2007), and A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion (2006).
Steve de Gruchy was Professor of Theology at the University of KwaZulu Natal where he served as Head of Department. He was researcher and a key member of the African Religious Health Assets project. He served as one of the editors of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa. He published numerous articles in peer reviewed journals. Among his many publications are: Aliens in the Household of God: Homosexuality and Christian Faith in South Africa; The Church Struggle In South Africa, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition.
Marleen de Witte, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher in anthropology at the VU University, Amsterdam. Her research interests include religion (Pentecostalism, African Traditional Religion), and media, cultural heritage, funerals, popular culture, and Ghana/Africa. She has published Long Live the Dead! Changing Funeral Celebrations in Asante, Ghana (2001) and many articles and chapters in international journals and volumes.
René Devisch trained in philosophy, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, and is Professor Special Emeritus of Africanist Anthropology at the KU Leuven, Belgium.
Jonathan A. Draper is Professor of New Testament at the School of Religion and Theology of the University of KwaZulu Natal. He is co-author with Richard A. Horsley of Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q (1999), and editor of The Didache in Modern Research (1996), The Eye of the Storm: Bishop John William Colenso and the Crisis of Biblical Inspiration (2003), Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Southern Africa (2004), and Orality, Literacy, and Colonialism in Antiquity (2004).
Musa W. Dube is an Associate Professor at the University of Botswana, where she has taught Biblical Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Dr. Dube served for several years as the theological consultant on HIV/AIDS for the World Council of Churches. She is author or Postcolonial Feminist Biblical Interpretation, and co-editor with Gerald West of The Bible in Africa. She has published widely on HIV/AIDS and gender issues.
Stephen Ellis is Desmond Tutu Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden. A historian, his main interests are in political history and contemporary history. He has worked especially in West Africa, Madagascar, and South Africa. His most recent book is Season of Rains: Africa in the World (2011).
Marc Epprecht is a Professor in the Department of Global Development Studies and History at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. He has published extensively on the history of gender and sexuality in Africa including Hungochani: The History of Dissident Sexuality in South Africa (winner of the 2006 Joel Gregory Prize from the Canadian Association of African Studies) and Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS (Finalist for the 2009 Mel Herskovits prize from the African Studies Association).
Norman Etherington is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Western Australia at Perth and is a research associate at the University of South Africa. He previously taught at the University of Adelaide. He received his PhD from Yale University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a past president of both the Australian Historical Association and the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific. His recent books include The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (2002), Missions and Empire (2005), and Mapping Colonial Conquest: Australia and Southern Africa (2007).
Laura S. Grillo holds a PhD in history of religions from the University of Chicago, and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. She has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Religions, and the West Africa Research Association.
Rosalind I.J. Hackett is Professor and Head of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2010, she was re-elected President of the International Association for the History of Religions (until 2015). She has published widely on religion in Africa, notably on new religious movements, and religion and conflict in Nigeria. Her most recent books are Proselytization Revisited: Right Talk, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (edited, 2008) and Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in a Neoliberal Africa (co-edited with James H. Smith, 2011).
John H. Hanson, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington, currently is an editor of History in Africa. His publications include Migration, Jihad and Muslim Authority in West Africa (1996), “Jihad and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Movement,” Nova Religio Vol. 11 (2007), and the chapter on twentieth-century sub-Saharan Africa in the New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 5 (2010).
Susan Mbula Kilonzo is a lecturer of Sociology of Religion at Maseno University-Kenya. She is author of Christian Diversity and Community Development: Role of Christian Denominations in Human Physical, Social, Cultural, and Spiritual Development in Vihiga District, Kenya. Kilonzo’s research on Religion and African Culture, Religion and Development, Religion and Youth, Religion and Peacebuilding, and HIV and AIDS in Africa appears in various internationally peer reviewed journals.
P. Pratap Kumar, PhD University of California, Santa Barbara, is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal. A specialist in Hindu studies, he teaches both South Asian religions and comparative religions. Among his many works, he has authored Hindus in South Africa: Their Traditions and Beliefs (2000). He has edited several books on Religious Pluralism (2006). He has also published over 60 peer reviewed papers and essays in international journals and books. His current research focuses on migration and sociological changes in the Hindu Diaspora.
Tinyiko Maluleke, a professor at the University of South Africa, is a leading theologian, a respected African intellectual, and the Executive Director of Research at UNISA. He has published more than 70 peer reviewed articles and chapters in scholarly journals on the socio-political significance and role of religion in Africa. Professor Maluleke is also a highly regarded political analyst and commentator on contemporary issues.
Penda Mbow received her doctorate from the University of Aix-Marseille. She is Professor of History at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. She served as Minister of Culture in Senegal. She has published widely on Islamic intellectual history. She has held several distinguished fellowships, including the Fulbright, the Rockefeller, and, most recently, a National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC. Professor Mbow has served as Director of the Gender Institute for The Social Research Council of Africa, CODESRIA. She is the Founding Director of Mouvement Citoyen, centered on promoting intellectual and political leadership among the youth. Decorated in Senegal and abroad, she received the Docteur Honoris Causa from the University of Uppsala and was the first woman to receive the John Paul II Prize for Peace.
Carmen McCain is a PhD candidate in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Coordinator of the Hausa Home Video Resource Center in the Department of Mass Communication at Bayero University, Kano and a columnist with Nigeria’s Weekly Trust. Her research focuses on Hausa language films and popular culture in Nigeria.
Birgit Meyer is professor of Religious Studies at the Department of Religious Studies and Theology at Utrecht University. She has conducted research on missions and local appropriations of Christianity, Pentecostalism, popular culture, and video-films in Ghana. Her publications include Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (1999), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (edited with Peter Geschiere, Blackwell, 1999), Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (edited with Peter Pels, 2003), Religion, Media and the Public Sphere (edited with Annelies Moors), and Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses (2009). Meyer is vice-chair of the International African Institute (London), a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences, and one of the editors of Material Religion.
Kenneth Mtata is a post-doctoral researcher of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He has lectured also in the Intercultural Theology Programme of Göttingen University through Hermannsburgseminar. He is currently the Study Secretary for Lutheran Theology and Practice at the Department of Theology and Studies of the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva.
V.Y. Mudimbe received his Doctorat en Philosophie et Lettres from the University of Louvain in 1970. He has taught at the Universities of Louvain, Paris-Nanterre, Zaire, Stanford, and Haverford College, and now at Duke University. He has published over a hundred articles, three collections of poetry, four novels, and several books in applied linguistics, philosophy, and social science, including The Invention of Africa (1988), Parables and Fables (1991), and The Idea of Africa (1994). He is a contributor and co-editor of The Normal and its Orders (2007) with Gode Iwélé and Laura Kerr.
Sarojini Nadar is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the School of Religion and Theology at the University of KwaZulu Natal. She is Director of the Gender and Religion Programme at the School of Religion and Theology. She has published widely on biblical studies and feminist theology.
David T. Ngong (PhD, Systematic Theology, Baylor University) is Assistant Professor of Religion and Theology at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is author of The Holy Spirit and Salvation in African Christian Theology: Imagining a More Hopeful Future for Africa (2010). His research interest is in the area of theology and identity. He investigates the cultural, political, and economic identities that various theologies construct.
Matthews A. Ojo is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Nigeria. He is author of The End Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria and numerous essays on African Initiated Churches. He has served as visiting Professor at Harvard Divinity School and a fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and at the University of Edinburgh.
Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of Religion at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at Harvard Divinity School. His research interests include African religions, Indigenous religions, and African religions in the Diaspora. He has authored or edited eight books, including, Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture, co-edited with Terry Rey. His most recent book, Ile-Ife: The City of 201 Gods, is an interdisciplinary examination of religious beliefs and practices in daily life. Olupona has received prestigious grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Ford Foundation, the Davis Humanities Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Getty Foundation. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is a past president of the African Association for the Study of Religion. In 2000, Olupona received an honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and in 2007, he received the Nigerian National Order of Merit, Nigeria’s prestigious award for intellectual accomplishment.
Damaris Seleina Parsitau is a lecturer of African Christianities at Egerton University in Kenya. Her research interests include African Pentecostalism, religion and popular culture, religion and gender, religion and politics, and religion and health. Her current research focuses on Christian–Muslim relations, faith based humanitarianism, FBOs, and women in Kenya. Parsitau has published essays in peer reviewed books and journals. She was Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK and Edinburgh University in Scotland. She is the East African Representative for the African Association for the Study of Religion (AASR).
Isabel Apawo Phiri is professor in the School of Religion at the University of KwaZulu Natal. She is author of Women Presbyterianism and Patriarchy: Religious Experiences of Chewa Women in Central Malawi. Her book co-edited with Sarojini Nadar, African Women, Religion and Health: Essays in Honor of Mercy Amba Oduyoye, won the University of KwaZulu Natal book prize and an award from Orbis Books. Professor Phiri is a former Coordinator of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, editor of Constructive Theology, and a member of the editorial collective of the Journal of Southern Africa. She has lectured widely on African and Feminist Theology around the world.
Susan J. Rasmussen is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Houston. Her interests include religion, gender, the life course, medico-ritual healing and specialists, verbal art performance, cultural memory, and ethnographic analysis. Her four authored books and numerous articles and chapters on society, gender, spirit possession, divination, and diverse topics on the religious experience are based on approximately twenty-five years of fieldwork in Tuareg (Kel Tamajaq) communities of northern Niger and Mali, and briefer fieldwork among Tuareg and other Berber (Amazigh) immigrants, expatriates, and travelers in France and the US. Projects currently in progress focus on rural and urban artisans, modern Tamajaq theatrical plays, and youth cultures.
Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts are Professors of Culture and Performance in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. They conduct research, write books, mount major traveling exhibitions, and teach about African arts and humanities. Their exhibition “Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History" (1996) was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and accompanied by a book that won the Alfred H. Barr Award for Museum Scholarship from the College Art Association—the first Africanist volume to be so honored. Their more recent NEH-funded exhibition, “A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal,” traveled to six American museums (2003–2008); its book won the Herskovits Award as the best African Studies volume of 2003 and the Arnold Rubin Prize as the best African arts book of 2001–2003.
Yushau Sodiq is an Associate Professor of Islamic and Religious Studies at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas. He earned his MA degree in 1979 in Islamic law from the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, and MA and PhD degrees in Religious Studies from Temple University, Philadelphia. He taught at the University of Sokoto, Nigeria and at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Sodiq has authored An Insider’s Guide to Islam, and many articles in peer reviewed journals.
Gerrie ter Haar is Professor of Religion and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She has written extensively on religious traditions in Africa and on the theory of religion. She has written, with Stephen Ellis, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa (2004). She is also the author of How God Became African: African Spirituality and Western Secular Thought (2009).
Asonzeh Ukah is a sociologist/historian of religion and currently serves as Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of the History of Religions at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He is the author of A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: A Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. Dr. Ukah is a member of a research team based at the University of Bayreuth conducting research on “The Economy of Sacred Space in Durban, South Africa.”
David Westerlund, PhD, is Professor in the Study of Religions in the Department for the Study of Religions, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Westerlund has carried out research on various aspects of African Indigenous Religions, Christianity, and Islam, mainly in Africa and Europe.
Jason R. Zaborowski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. He is author of The Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijoit: Assimilation and Conversion to Islam in Thirteenth-Century Egypt (2005). His research areas include Arabic, Coptic, and Syriac literature of the Middle East.
Foreword
Jacob K. Olupona
The ever-changing landscape of African religious culture and society requires that scholars provide regular assessment of the field, and based on the particular research with which they are engaged, reflect on the state of the discipline and the religious traditions themselves. The last few decades have seen a strong interest among scholars in the humanities and social sciences in African religious phenomena. Once a preoccupation of the clergy of the Christian and Muslim communities, the study of religion in Africa now involves a multidisciplinary scholarly field. This field has produced significant thematic, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological innovations as well as a substantive focus on the socio-cultural dimensions and contexts of religion, while at the same time taking very seriously religion qua religion. It has attracted phenomenologists, theologians, comparativists, anthropologists, sociologists, literary critics, and those who practice and study the arts: music, literature, and the visual and material arts, among others. These new approaches have produced path-breaking monographs, books, and journal articles. Until now, however, no single book has reflected sufficiently on the wide range of topics, themes, and theoretical interventions possible in this field to provide a well-rounded picture of the state of African religious scholarship.
To answer the need for such a work, Elias Bongmba has assembled A Companion to African Religions, a book that attempts to demonstrate the breadth and depth of this scholarship and the tradition itself. This gigantic volume has pushed the boundaries of discourse forward and made this important material accessible to students, scholars, and the general readership. Elias K. Bongmba’s training and scholarship eminently qualify him to take the lead in producing this massive volume, whose essays reveal so compellingly the interdisciplinary nature of African religious scholarship, which has striven to integrate theology with the history of religions, anthropology with oral literature, and sociology with ethnographic research, to give just a few examples. Moreover, Bongmba’s linguistic and scholarly competence, especially in African Francophone and Anglophone scholarship and traditions, makes it possible for him to draw from both cultures and regions to compile this fascinating work. This work, then, provides continuity in African religious research, but it also exemplifies a healthy discontinuity in its innovative theoretical and methodological engagements with several salient but previously unexamined topics. Africa has a triple religious heritage. Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions constitute the core traditions that are examined by scholars; but they do not exist as separate entities in the lives of the people, and the essays in this volume reflect that pertinent fact.
As the editor notes, the volume reflects continuity both with past and present work. From its ethnographic essays to its theological interpretations, the volume reflects the status of African religious traditions both in their lived realities and in their invented and imagined contexts. It is clear to us that scholars can no longer treat African religious traditions as forms of static entities that have not changed over time and space. As we now recognize, religious traditions are dynamic and constantly in motion, impinging on modernity, responding to new technology, and being transformed by newly imagined immigrant and diasporic communities. Africa has witnessed both the good and the ugly in the range of possibilities of human existence. Certainly, Africa has seen in the last few decades more than her fair share of vicious civil wars, military misrule and civilian dictatorship, HIV/AIDS, corruption, gender disparity, and sexual violence. Paradoxically, Africa has also witnessed significant social transformation, from political emancipation to new democratic governance and emerging economies. All of these developments, both negative and positive, have affected the practice of religion. These essays reflect on this critical fact in the lives of Africans across the continent.
This volume also delves into African religions’ responses to modernity in its various guises. These responses reflect the increasing connections between African belief systems and cultural and social conditions, such as between witchcraft and sorcery on the one hand and political power, poverty, wealth, and sexuality on the other. Technology and the mass media have also affected the fortune of religion in the last few decades, as it aids its spread and contributes to its transformation in the new global age. The twenty-first century presents a special challenge, as Africa has been thrust into the center of a global conversation on religion, culture, and society, especially the sometimes conflict-ridden dialogue between Islam and Christianity. African intellectuals can participate in this conversation by providing new and constructive approaches to existing problems. Several of the essays included here have done so in a way that makes the volume required reading and an important reference tool for African religious scholars.
Ever since John Mbiti’s classic work African Religion and Philosophy broke down the boundaries constricting the study of African religion, this discipline has expanded in exciting new directions. We have moved from the traditional phenomenological approaches of the 1970s, when I was in graduate school, to focus on theological concerns that dominated African scholarship in the apartheid era, when the racial divide highlighted the theological confrontation between black theology of liberation and Afrikaner civil religion in southern Africa. The last few decades have seen the flowering of women’s and gender studies, especially in theological circles. In the current dispensation, the debate on sexuality that thrust African churches into the center of one of the largest crises in Christendom and that raises serious ethical and human rights concerns proves that African religious scholarship can no longer shy away from contentious topics. For contemporary African scholars not to address these issues would be considered a serious disservice to the study of religion in Africa. Religion certainly matters in Africa and scholars of religion have a significant role to play in discussing and framing issues on how African faith traditions perform in the public sphere. This collection of essays clearly shows how African scholarship has done so.
The volume breaks out of the disciplinary boundaries characteristic of the old scholarship to promote transdisciplinary engagement with the topics whereby individual scholars are able to use every available tool of interpretation and analysis. In addition, several of the essays explicate the connections between faith traditions and occultism, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS. The volume exemplifies what African religious studies should be, a joint enterprise that encourages participation on the part of white and black scholars, Africans and non-Africans, in the serious task of investigating, analyzing, and engaging in scholarship that transcends colonial and postcolonial boundaries.
Bongmba must be commended for privileging the continent and focusing entirely on African culture, religion, and society. He has decided not to be influenced by current academic fashion, which favors studies of diasporic and immigrant scholarship. Bongmba prefers to do an in-depth study of Africa. One cannot have a good grasp of the Black Atlantic without a thorough grasp of the “home” tradition. Nevertheless, the study of the African diasporic and immigrant study deserves future study. From this fascinating volume will emerge significant rhizomes, which will form topics of dissertations in the years to come. This volume also lays the foundation for an eventual encyclopedia of African religion, which Africanist scholars will most likely spearhead in the near future.
Bongmba’s volume contains excellent essays representing the full range of African religious traditions. It offers a refreshing approach to the study of African religion in which scholars think and write about religion not as fixed beliefs and practices, but as sacred orientations and activities that produce meaningful responses from others. Africans’ constant quest for the transcendent and the sacred are greatly appreciated as traditions in motion and in relationship with the peoples’ geographical environment, political realities, social context, and cultural practices. The beauty of this work is that it provides a useful archaeology of African religious studies scholarship that explores the intellectual history of the study of this tradition, and in doing so, it enables us to recognize and to acknowledge what the field was, what the current scholarship is, and the new directions we might like it to take in the twenty-first century.
A Companion to African Religions is a richly detailed volume of essays that amply demonstrates how far the academic study of religions in Africa has come. Unlike before, when African voices were hardly heard in works describing the religions of their own peoples, this volume clearly includes African agency in interpreting the religious events unfolding on the continent. It is worth noting that the African Association for the Study of Religion, which began in Zimbabwe in 1992 as a global forum for the study of religion in Africa and currently chaired by the editor of this volume, has contributed immensely to the present status of scholarship through an African-centered governing body supported by friends and colleagues in North America and Europe. The association has spurred many intellectual exchanges, and over the years, the many conversations that took place at conferences, seminars, and lectures sponsored by this body have led to a flowering of scholars, of African religion, many of whom are contributors to this outstandingly comprehensive body of work.
Acknowledgments
I express appreciation for the permission to include previously published research in this volume. Chapter 3 was published as “Second Comings: Neoprotestant Ethics and Millennial Capitalism in South Africa, and Elsewhere,” in P. Gifford (ed.), with D. Archard, T.A. Hart, and N. Rapport, 2000 Years: Faith, Culture, and Identity in the Common Era (London: Routledge, 2002). Chapter 9 was published as “Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches,” in Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004):447–47. The author has revised it for this book. Chapter 18 was published as “Her-Stories and Her-Theologies: Charting Feminist Theologies in Africa,” in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae XXXV (December 2009), Supplement, 135–150. It is included here by kind permission of the editor of Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae (SHE). Chapter 19 was published as “‘Dealing Lightly with the Wound of My People?’ The TRC Process in Theological Perspective,” in Missionalia 25:3(1997), 324–343. Chapter 33 was published in the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 110 (July 2001), 57–76. Chapter 35 was published as “Examining the Nexus of Religion, Media and Conflict in Africa,” in African Communication Research: Media and Religion in Africa 2:1(2009), 117–130. We thank the editors and authors for giving us the permission to revise or publish these essays.
I also want to express appreciation to Rachel Schneider Vlachos for reading most of the essays and giving me valuable feedback. Margarita Simons also worked to format part of the bibliography entries. I also thank Terri Laws, Enoch Gbadegesin, and Nathanael Homewood for working with me on the index. I thank Rebecca Harkin, the publisher at Wiley-Blackwell, for her support, suggestions, and willingness to get in touch with some of the contributors directly to give advice on the mechanics of the project. I also thank Sally Cooper for all the timely correspondence and helpful feedback. Isobel Bainton is an incredible editor and patient with an eye on specifics as well as the entire project. I also thank Andrew Humphries, the commissioning editor for religious studies, who worked with me when the project started. Rebecca Harkin and the team at Wiley-Blackwell have demonstrated exemplary professionalism and the result is A Companion to African Religions.
Finally, I want to thank Odelia Y. Bongmba for understanding and encouragement as well as Donald Bongmba, Dino Bongmba, Douglas Bongmba, Edison Bongmba, and Gilbert Bongmba for their support, patience, and understanding.
Elias K. Bongmba
Houston, TX, July 2011
Introduction
Elias K. Bongmba
This Companion to African Religions introduces the reader to research and an engaging dialogue on the religious imagination and experience in the African context.1 The scholars whose essays appear here were given a broad latitude and flexibility to explore their topics and the result far exceeds our intention because what we have here is a transdisciplinary exploration of religious experience in addition to analysis of some major religious traditions, ideas, and religious practice in Africa. Contributors were invited to address creatively a variety of issues from their research and scholarly engagement to provide a resource on significant information, on historical trajectories, current research, and future perspectives while engaging in lively conversation on methodological, theoretical, interpretive perspectives, and emerging ideas on religion in a post-neocolonial global climate.
The Companion is organized into three parts. In Part I the authors discuss religious experience from selected methodological perspectives. I must state here that even when the essay does not address all of the technical details of methodology as some of the essays in Part I do, they are included in the methodology section because they significantly reflect recent theoretical and methodological developments. Part II, the longest part of the book, is devoted to essays on different aspects of religious life, highlighting selected traditions, movements, contemporary issues, innovations, and contested issues from the Christian tradition and its African Initiated Churches, Islam, Neo-traditional religions, and Hinduism in South Africa. We recognize that in a volume like this, it is not possible to cover all traditions and it is the hope that other publications could take up the rich religious diversity that exists in Africa. In Part III, the scholars discuss broadly religious life in cultural and intellectual areas by looking at religion from selected disciplinary perspectives or topics.
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