Concepts of African Traditional Religion (ATR)

Religion is a difficult word to define and it becomes even more difficult in the context of African Traditional Religion. I do not attempt to define it, except to say that for Africans it is an ontological phenomenon; it pertains to the question of existence or being. For Africans, the whole of existence is a religious phenomenon; man is a deeply religious being living in a religious universe.

Names of people have religious meaning in them; rocks and boulders are not just empty objects, but religious objects. The sound of the drum speaks a religious language; the eclipse of the sun or moon is not simply a silent phenomenon of nature but one which speaks to the community that observes it often warning of an impending catastrophe.

Africans are notoriously religious and each people have its own religious system with a set of beliefs and practices. This is because traditional religion permeates all the departments of life, there is no formal distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the religious and non-religious, between the spiritual and the material areas of life. Where the African is, there is his religion: he carries it to the fields where he is sowing seeds or harvesting a new crop, he takes it with him to the beer parlour or to attend a funeral ceremony.

Religion permeates into all the departments of life

so fully that it is not easy or possible to isolate it.(“Mbiti”, 1)

 

Traditional religion is not primary for the individual but for his community of which he is part. Chapters of African religion are written everywhere in the life of the community, and in traditional society there are no irreligious people. To be human is to belong to the whole community, and to involve in the beliefs, ceremonies, rituals and festivals of that community.

In Things Fall Apart, where we encounter such festivals and ceremonies as the “Feast of the New Yam”, festivals involve the entire Umuofia. 

A person cannot detach himself from the religion of his group for to do so is to be severed from his roots, his foundation, his context of security, his kingship and the entire group of those who make him aware of his own existence. To be without one of these corporate elements of life is to be out of the whole picture. Therefore, to be without religion amounts to self-excommunication from the entire life of society, and African people do not know how to exist without religion.

 

In African religion there is no version from one traditional religion to another; each society has its own religious system and the propagation of such a complete system would involve propagating the entire life of the people concerned. Therefore, as I have earlier said, a person has to be born in a particular society in order to assimilate the religious systems of the society to which he belongs. An outsider cannot enter or appreciate fully the religion of another society.

African religions deals almost exclusively with traditional concepts and practices in those societies which have not been either Christian or Muslim in any deep way before the colonial period in Africa. It would be wrong to imagine that everything traditional has been changed or forgotten, so much that no traces of it are to be found. If anything, the changes are generally on the surface, affecting the material side of life, and only beginning to reach the deeper levels of thinking pattern, language content, mental images, emotions, beliefs and response in situations of need.

 

Traditional concepts still form the essential background of many African peoples, though obviously this differs from individual to individual and from place to place. In most cases the educated Africans do not subscribe to all the religions and philosophical practices and ideas described here, the majority of our people with little or no formal education still hold on to their traditional corpus of belief and practices. Anyone familiar with village gossip cannot question this fact; and those who have eyes will also notice evidence of it in the towns and cities.

In academic circles it is recognized that, for the better understanding or appreciation of many subjects like African anthropology, customary law, linguistics, music, oral literature and history, sociology, traditional medicine and other African studies, the traditional religions world view has to be taken into serious consideration. It sheds light on many academic issues.

Research into African religion in particular has intensified, not only in Africa, but, also in other places like the United States of America, Brazil, the Caribbean, Britain and other European countries (both east and west). Consequently articles, books and academic dissertations on African religion in specific regions, on specific themes and in general- are now appearing in such great numbers that it is impossible to keep pace with information about them.

Women have a clear place in African religion, like other members of society in which that religion is lived, practised, discussed and celebrated. African religion is neither an exclusively patriarchal nor a predominantly matriarchal religion. It is for all- men, women, children and even the departed.

One of the difficulties in studying African religions is that there are not sacred scripture. Religion in African society is not written on paper, but on people’s hearts, minds, oral history, rituals and religions personages like the priests, rainmakers, officiating elders and even kings. Everybody is a religious carrier; therefore we have to study not only the beliefs concerning God and spirits, but also the religious journey of the individual from before birth to after physical and to study also the persons responsible for formal rituals and ceremonies.

 

Traditional religions are not universal: they are tribal or national. Each religion is bound and limited to the people among whom it has evolved. One traditional religion cannot be propagated in another tribal group. This does not rule out the fact that religions ideals may spread from one part to the other, through inter marriages, migration etcetera.

Traditional religious have no missionaries to propagate them; and one individual does not preach his religion to another. Similarly, there is no conversion from one traditional religion to another. Each religion is bound and limited to the people among it has evolved. One traditional religion cannot be propagated into another tribal group. This does not rule out the fact that religious ideas may spread spontaneously especially through migration, intermarriage, conquest or expert knowledge being sought by individual of one tribal group to another.

- Sola Opesan Brown 

Doctoral Investigation
Universidad de La Laguna, 2007

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