1. African Religion: some basic concepts

2. All African religions are monotheistic
Single high God
Creator
Central source of order

3. Creator God
Not blamed for calamities and misfortune
Explains creation and existence

4. Many African religions are polytheistic
Pantheon of gods
Large number of spirits
Ancestors
Other divinities

5. The pantheon of divinities
Stands between people and God

6. Monotheism -Supreme God1
Polytheism -Major spirits
Animism -Countless spirits

7. Animism Belief in spiritual beings
Belief that things (objects) have spiritual powers

8. Unlike world religions
African religions--precise 1 to 1 association with a particular group

9. African religions Continuation of life after death
But not a heaven or hell
Ancestor devotion
“keeping in touch”

10. African religions
Not over concern with orthodoxy
Like “many strings on the bow”
Several ritual ways of doing things

11. Rituals achieve alignment
With the ancestors
With the living
people tend to neglect ritual until demanded by divinities

12. Ancestor devotion/worship
Keeping in touch
Remembering your relatives
(high mortality)

13. After death, a person is remembered
Eventually not well remembered
Recently departed is still of current interest
Living need their ancestors to sanction events

14. Ancestors remind the living
Send some misfortune to make you remember

15. No sacred scriptures
Oral tradition
Ritual experts
Everyone is a “carrier” of religion

16. Religious journey of the individual of the ritual expert of the group
based on the life cycle
birth to death

17. Ritual experts
Priests, priestesses
Diviners
Healers, curers
Rainmakers

18. Ritual experts The M.D.s and Ph.D.s of their society
Highly intelligent people
Devoted to their work

19. Divination
Links the physical and spiritual world
Keeps you aligned

20. Diviners
Excellent knowledge about people
Often intuitive
Can make the unknown explicit
Were sick and recovered

21. Diviners
Often men, but in some women
Dr. Spring apprenticed to two diviners for 1 and a half years each

22. Basket diviner (multiple objects)

23. Rod diviner (binary system)

27. World religions
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. see themselves are more highly evolved
African religions--operate on a variety of levels

28. Rites of Passage (Rites de passage)
Changes in status
Changes in state of being
Important markers in people’s lives

29. What types? Do we have them? Sociological Graduation, 21
Quince, 15, sweet 16
Drivers license
Engagement, marriage, divorce
Confirmation/ bar/bas mitzvah
Retirement
Biological/Physiological
Puberty
Birth, parturition
Menopause
Death

30. 3 phases
Separation
Liminality (in limbo)
Reintegration

31. Initiation Rituals Life crisis or changes rituals
Social and physical passages
Situation triggers ritual
Art, music, dance in relation to the sacred

32. Reinforces adult authority and governance
Social control
Instruction
Entertainment

33. Puberty rituals: Luvale of Zambia
For boys and girls, but differ
Boys -- include circumcision
Girls -- do not

34. Boys Ritual for group of boys Outside the village
Not based on physiological event
Not connected to marriage

35. Girls Individual Based on menarche (14 to 16 years old in past)
In village
Connected to marriage