The Cultural Foundations of African Religions

Abstract

Two great world religions now occupy the African stage: Christianity and Islam. However, they rest upon a foundation of African spirituality that assumes very diverse forms. Distinct indigenous religious traditions are associated with the four great ethno-linguistic phyla that have historically come to define the continent’s social and cultural life: the Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoisan. Each cultural-linguistic tradition gave rise to unique forms of spiritual belief and practice that continue to be observed in contemporary social life in Africa. Contemporary life has given rise not to a single, homogenized cultural world but to “alternative modernities,” which bear the imprint of both global forces and local and indigenous influences. Where universalizing religious traditions have established their foundational pillars in lands nourished by distinctive streams of spirituality and religious practice, have alternative forms of religious modernities emerged? What are these indigenous streams of African spirituality, and how have they influenced contemporary religious practice in a new age? This paper reviews the sources of the diverse bodies of belief and practice that define the four foundational African ethno-linguistic traditions and examines how the supernatural infuses everyday life through blessing, prophecy, magic, oracles, and witchcraft. These institutional practices reflect the sort of “power in the mundane” often evoked in the Bible but marginalized in our secular and rational age – although they have persisted in certain folk traditions. Nevertheless, they remain widely observed in much of African society, both alongside and in synthesis with Christianity and Islam.