posted 18 September 2004 21:29         

ß Religion begins with the consciousness that there is something higher than man. But even Herodotus called the Negroes sorcerers: now in sorcery we have not the idea of God, of a moral faith ... We have here nothing to do with a spiritual adoration of God, nor with an empire of right. God thunders, but is not on that account recognized as God. For the soul of man, God must be more than thunderer, whereas among the Negroes this is not the case... What they conceive of as the power is nothing really objective, having a substantial being and different from themselves, but the first thing that comes their way. This, taken quite indiscriminately, they exalt to the dignity of a “genius”; it may be an animal, a tree, a stone, or a wooden figure. This is their fetish, a word derived from feitizo, magic.

• G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History. in Mortimer, J. Adler, ed., Great Books of the Western World (Chicago, London: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., volume 43, 1994); p.207.

The Spiritual value and Religious character of Traditional religions is denied by a panoply of theories and concepts invented by scholars. Once these intellectual categories are applied to traditional religions, religion is ipso facto transformed into some thing artificial or even evil. In so doing, traditional religions are presented as something childish, false, and harmful.

You shall find here a summary of the basic concepts used by the Hegelian Paradigm, and an analysis of two terrible myths (the category of universality, and Deus Otiosus)

First we begin with the notion of ideology, and how the ideological concepts of fetishism and magic are powerfully used to deny the religious and spiritual values of Traditional Religions.
Section 2 will focus on two major myths, that of the lack of universal categories in Traditional religions, and that of Deus Otiosus.

Finally, in the third section we will briefly explore the content of African Spirituality through some sacred texts, prayers, and some key proverbs regarding the notion of personhood.

SECTION 1. HOW THE HEGELIAN IDEOLOGY DENIES THE SPIRITUAL CHARACTER OF TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS

Ideology, Theology, and the Definition of Minority Religions

Education as a System of “Miseducation”

In other to better understand the concept of ideology, let us first look at the education system, especially the way “world history” and “World Religions” are taught in America and other countries around the globe.

In a society based on domination and discrimination, the education system is often shaped by the interests of the dominant group. Subsequently, “minority groups’ are constantly taught that their cultures are worthless, and that their religions are false, barbaric, fetishism, animism, magic or superstition. This kind of learning destroys the self-esteem of the people and generates a sense of emptiness we refer to as “pauperisme anthropologique.

“When persons are deprived not only of goods and possessions of a material, spiritual, moral, intellectual, cultural, or sociological order, but of everything that makes up the foundations of their being-in-the-world and the specificity of their ‘ipseity’ as individual, society, and history - when persons are bereft of their thought, their history, their language, their faith universe, and their basic creativity... when they are robbed of their own ways of living and existing- they sink into a kind of poverty which no longer concerns only exterior or interior goods but strikes at the very being, essence, and dignity of the human person.”

The ecumenical association of Third World theologians observed the following:

When we consider the human condition in Africa, we discover that under the slavery and oppression of colonial regimes, the oppressors did not intend to physically destroy the black Africans, as they did with the American natives; but rather, they tended toward the political, economic, and cultural destruction of the black man and woman, while preserving their physical labor power, which was considered a precious raw material for the enrichment of whites. The black man and woman deprived of any identity, any personality, were reduced to the state of brutes, to becoming simple machines for production. African independence has brought no liberation to the black man and woman. New structures of oppression - under the mask of assistance - make them politically, economically, and culturally poorer and poorer and more and more dependent. We call this whole system: an anthropological pauperization system. If pauperization consists in making persons poorer and poorer by depriving them of what they have, what they are, and what they do, pauperization becomes anthropological when persons are deprived of their identity, dignity, essential rights, culture, history...

The notion of anthropological pauperization finds its first and most fundamental expression in cultural pauperization by which a people looses its sense of orientation in the world:

Cultural pauperization structures are both multifarious and subtle. They deprive the whole people of their history, languages, arts, techniques. They totally wash their brain of any creativity, any ambition, any attempt to search, imagine, or achieve any solution adapted to their needs. Moreover, they cause such an economic, social, and cultural bareness that the most dynamic ideas are condemned to die fruitfulessly. Then they arrange an appropriate space for the implantation of a cultural misery-making industry maintained by so-called “technical assistance,” “technologies transfer systems,” and other multinational enterprises for anthropological pauperization.

Here again the method of African theology understands the nature of African culture in its historical context, mainly the ambiguity of modern education system inherited from the colonial period:

It is in the cultural area that the anthropological pauperization of Africans attacked the deepest roots of their awakened and fierce instinct of self-defense... In the colonial system, the most effective means for destroying Africans was to destroy their culture. Several methods were used to accomplish this aim: assimilation here, segregation there, vandalism everywhere, and especially the practice of “tabula rasa” and systematic negation. School has thus been a huge industry of cultural demolition, depersonalization, and anthropological pauperization. Stripped of their identity, their history, their language, their social, economic, and political institutions, their dignity, their creativeness, the Negro-Africans have been reduced to complete “destitution as human being,” to a real state of near annihilation. The greatest tragedy of Africa resides in the permanence of this state of annihilation following independence. More than twenty-five years after colonial times, most African countries have recovered neither their languages, their history, their art, nor the huge wealth of their spiritual heritage. Nowadays, in some African families, children come into the world with neither a language nor a village. They do not even know their forefathers. Many of those children are but ghosts of Africans, speaking only foreign languages and begging from imported cultures for their food, their clothing, their mental structures, their thought categories, and the caricatures of their life schemes and their social structures. They continue to be emptied of their life by their schooling. Schools continually turn out uprooted, unemployed workers, who are even foreigners in their own country. In many countries, they are taught in school neither African languages, nor African history, nor African art. … What may be understood is that nowadays African society is disabled. Churches and established governments are also disabled. Society, which is losing everything, struggles for survival... The social underdevelopment of Africa represents a fundamental aspect of the anthropological pauperization of the African person. If we define pauperization as the fact of becoming or making poor, namely being deprived of all that we have acquired, all that we are and all that we can do, we shall recognize that Africa is subjugated to structures which result in complete pauperization: political, economic, and social. When it is not a matter of being deprived of all that we own, but rather of all that we are - our human identity, our social roots, our history, our culture, our dignity, our rights, our hopes, and our plans - then pauperization becomes anthropological. It then affects religious and cultural life at its very roots.

It is this phenomenon that, already in 1933, the African American scholar Carter G. Woodson referred to as “the Mis-Education of the Negro.”

The “educated Negro” is a hopeless liability of the race.

In light of the results obtained from the so-called education of the Negro, it may be of no importance to the race to be able to boast today of many times as many “educated” members as it had in 1865. If they are of the wrong kind the increase in numbers will be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. The only question which concerns us here is whether these “educated” persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor…
When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary. The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples. The Negro thus educated is a hopeless liability of the race… When a Negro has finished his education in our schools, then, he has been equipped to begin the life of an Americanized or Europeanized white man… While being a good American, he must above all things be a “good Negro”; and to perform this definite function he must learn to stay in a “Negro’s place.” For the arduous task of serving a race thus handicapped, however, the Negro graduate has had little or no training at all. The people whom he has been ordered to serve have been belittled by his teachers to the extent that he can hardly find delight in undertaking what his education has led him to think is impossible. Considering his race as blank in achievement, then, he sets out to stimulate their imitation of others…The “educated Negroes” have the attitude of contempt toward their own people because in their own as well as in their mixed schools Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton and to despise the African…The thought of the inferiority of the negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. If he happens to leave school after he masters the fundamentals, before he finishes high school or reaches college, he will naturally escape some of this bias and may recover in time to be of service to his people.
Practically all of the successful Negroes in this country (USA) are of the uneducated type or of that of Negroes who have had no formal education at all. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people… The so-called modern education, with all its defects does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed. Negroes daily educated in the tenets of such a religion of the strong have accepted the status of the weak as divinely ordained, and during the last three generations of their nominal freedom they have done practically nothing to change it. Their pouting and resolutions indulged in by a few of the race have been of little avail. No systematic effort toward change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro’s mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor… In schools of theology Negroes are taught the interpretation of the Bible worked out by those who have justified segregation and winked at the economic debasement of the Negro sometimes almost to the point of starvation. Deriving their sense of right from this teaching, graduates of such schools can have no message to grip the people whom they have been ill trained to serve. Most of such mis-educated ministers, therefore, preach to benches while illiterate Negro preachers do the best they can in supplying the spiritual needs of the masses…
The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and for himself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution… The educational system as it has developed both in Europe and America is an antiquated process which does not hit the mark even in the case of the needs of the white man himself. If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own.
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro. (Chicago: African American Images, 2000). First published in 1933 by Associated Publishers, Washington).

Likewise Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cheikh Anta Diop defined this type of “hegemonic education” as a form of “intellectual terrorism” or “intellectual racism.”

Cheikh Anta Diop:
“Imperialism, like the prehistoric hunter, first killed the being spiritually and culturally, before trying to eliminate it physically. The negation of the history and intellectual accomplishments of Black Africans was cultural, mental murder, which preceded and paved the way for their genocide here and there in the world"
Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, 1981, pp.1-2)

Martin Luther King:

- "Racism is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future."
- "Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission."
- "Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to hereditary inferiority and another group is destined to hereditary superiority."
- "Racism is the dogma that the hope of civilization depends upon eliminating some races and keeping others pure."
- " Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual or physical homicide upon the out-group."

Martin Luther King,Jr., Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community ?
Boston: Beacon Press; 1968; p.69-70

Thus ethnocentrism and racism lead people to call the religion of Native Americans, Africans, and some other non-European people magic or fetishism. But these concepts are not innocent.

On Fetishism and Magic

The Hegelian paradigm is magical, comical, fetishistic, irrational, dogmatic, essentialistic, narcissistic, nationalistic (ethnocentric, tribalistic, patriotic, chauvinistic), xenophobic, terroristic, imperialistic, colonialistic, materialistic, communistic.

While fetish convey the sense of something which is false, manufactured, artificial and superficial, Magic denotes the sense of a mysterious and harmful power. If fetishism is irrational belief by irrational people, magic is evil power by evil people.

Among Western terminologies used in the construction of otherness, Magic, Fetishism, and Customs occupy a central role, for they raise the critical problem of the definition of truth and untruth or falsehood, and in so doing determine which societies live a life based on truth and which one live a life of illusion, totally immersed in lies and falsehood, which societies are real and which ones are superficial, which societies worship a true God and practice a religion revealed by God himself and which ones worship manufactured idols, and practice an artificial, man-made religion. In what I term the Hegelian Paradigm, we find a superb articulation and summary of the “fetishistic pearls” of Western philosophy. This philosophy hold a fetishistic idea of Africa, that is an idea which is irrational, manufactured, and artificial. Subsequently, Hegel’s imaginary description of Africa is at once magical and comical. The Qestion then is whether Africans as a whole are comical and irrational creatures or whether it is Hegel’s way of philosophizing Africa which is comical, artificial and irrational. Hegel’s idea of Africa is articulated around the following 10 “philosophical plagues.”
1. a dogmatic belief in the negative nature of African environment.
2. a dogmatic belief that African people are heavily influenced by their negative environment, whereas the negative aspects of Western climate and land only stimulate the progress of the mind and the regeneration of moral character.

By continuing to frame the Other as strange in this way, ideas of African differentness are continually reinforced.

By fetish, I refer to those ideas that one chooses to believe despite the irrationality (groundlessness, artificiality, and superficiality) of their foundation;

by magic, I mean the common practice of privileging the strange as other and the other as strange;

and by custom, I refer to the retention of ideas whether “invented” or “found” on which one hangs one’s hat because they are said to have always been and to always be.

In the course of objectifying the field through a discussion of these terms, I hope to point out the tenuousness of some of our core assumptions of difference. At the same time I examine related concepts and rhetoric used by scholars historically to highlight the otherness of African art, I argue that comparable otherness concerns and issues are critical to the intellectual viability of then discipline at large. While this essay owes much to contemporary deconstructionist discourse with referencee to the conceptualization of the Other – most importantly the world of Edward Said, Hayden White, Johannes Fabian (1983), Mikhail Bakhtin (1987), Roland Bartes, Julia Kristeva (1986), Fredric Jameson (1988) – in the end I suggest that post-structuralist methodologies themselves may be inadequate for the examination of the unique issues raised by African art. (p.140)…

I would suggest in turn that the most important knowledge that we as teachers can convey to our students (and we as Africanists can impart to “others”) is the primacy of the question – the delimiting as asking of what previously had remained unasked, the discerning of the unfamiliar in what has long been familiar, the learning how to productively address new theoretical models, but more importantly, the moving beyond, through, behind, and under both customary and new theoretical frames into unchartered seas.

I. On Fetish and Fetishism

As MacGaffey pointed out the concept of “fetishism” has a negative connotation. It implied that African peoples were too immature to perceive the world correctly; and intellectual error led them to the moral error, in Christian opinion of Idolatry”(Ekholm Friedman; p.139). Such is the logic behind the whole civilizing mission theory which equated Christianization with civilization, meaning “Europeanization.”

Fetish is a provocative term with a long and diffuse history in the West. While clearly distinct from magic and custom, fetishes are things that are valued (or just as frequently devalued) because of their identity with and or disassociation from “one’s own.” Like magic, fetishes share important features of otherness as focuses of arcane or foreign belief. In the Dictionary of Psychology edited by Arthur S. Reber, it is suggested accordingly that, “fetishes usually are articles used by others, often but not always of the opposite sex (shoes, gloves, handkerchiefs), or parts of the body (hair, feet).” Deviance also is important to fetish identity. Thus Sigmund Freud discusses the fetish vis-à-vis “sexual function” and the “… becoming dependent on special conditions of a perverse or fetishist nature.” Not surprisingly, the term fetish also has vital socio-political traces. Today it is linked not only to sexual aberrance but also to class difference. While historically linked to beliefs of the unschooled or ignorant masses, Karl Marx’s famous dictum (1937) and the subsequent writings of Theodor W. Adorno (1961), Walter Benjamin (1973) and others, have identified fetishization with the upper classes, “fetish” connoting here the attachment with which the elite hold commodities.
From the Latin fasticious, “artificial” or “manufactured,” the term “fetish” in modern French, Portuguese, and English is identified with a range of other derogatory values. Webster’s New World Dictionary (1966) accordingly defines “fetish” as “any object believed by Primitive people to have magic power; 2) hence anything held in unreasoning devotion: as she makes a fetish of dress.” The Oxford English Dictionary definition (1971 edition) focuses more on Portuguese root associations of the word with “charms” or “sorcery,” and identifies “fetish” (feitico) as “originally any of the objects used by the negroes of the Guinea Coast and the neighboring regions as amulets or means of enchantment or regarded by them with superstitious dread.”
In both its historical and current use, the term “fetish” conveys in this way notions of superstition, unreality, falsehood, foreigners, and derogation. William Pietz notes in this light that as early as 1764, Kant “… tried to formulate and aesthetic explanation for African fetish worship… (and) decided that such practices were founded on the principle of the ‘trifling’ (lappisch), the ultimate degeneration of the beautiful because it lacked all sense of sublime.”
This identity of the fetish with things lacking beauty and sublimity is of considerable interest for the present discussion since, until recently, it was especially the emotionally powerful and less-refined African works such as Kongo nkisi figures, Danhome bocio works, and Bamana boili that were standardly identified as “fetishes.” G. Hegel’s view of fetishism is also interesting in its disparaging association. He writes that Africans take up as Fetish “the first thing that comes their way… Such a Fetish has no independence as an object of religious worship; still less has it aesthetic independence as a work of art; it is merely a creation that expresses the arbitrary choice of its maker, and which always remains in his hands.”
In these statements by some of the most influential thinkers in the modern European period, we can see how both Africa and its objects of worship are denegraded as at once “trifling,” “arbitrary,” and “irrational.” Like the term fetish itself, however, such assertions are based on presumption which are pejorative and without grounding, hence dependent on values which are at once “artificial” and “manufactured”
A masterful essay on the fetish by the historian Hayden White offers further insight into the use of this word in the West. He defines fetishism as “at once and the same time, a kind of belief, a kind of devotion, and a kind of psychological set or posture… From these three usages of fetish we derive the three senses of the term… : belief in magical fetishes, extravagant or irrational devotion, and pathological displacement of libidinal interest and satisfaction to a fetish… Fetishism here is understood as a fixation on the form of a thing as against its content or on the part of a thing as against the whole.”
The fetish, in other words, has a role not unlike that of synecdoche or metonymy, with the part assuming essential values of the whole. In this, the term’s social and historical importance is widely felt. As Hayden White observes:
“From the Renaissance to the end of the eighteenth century, Europeans tended to fetishize the native peoples with whom they came into contact by viewing them simultaneously as monstrous forms of humanity, and as quintessential objects of desire. Whence the alternative impulses to exterminate and to redeem the native peoples… When a given part of humanity compulsively defines itself as the pure type of mankind in general and defines all other part of the human species as inferior, flawed, degenerate or “savage” I call this an instance of fetishism.”
Fetishism, in other words, is contextualized wherever beliefs predicated on untenable values or irrational tenets are firmly held. As noted above, fetishes are as much a part of Western scholarly discourse as they are of the “deviant” other.
Several “fetishes” to which art scholars historically have held seemingly “artificial” devotion in non-Africanist art history can be pointed up as well. These include most importantly: (1) the primacy placed on models of development, (2) the privileging of things past, and (3) the identity of the artist as the principal source of artistic meaning

P.145.

Suzanne Preston Blier, “Truth and Seeing” in V.Y. Mudimbe, Africa and the Disciplines
p.140.

II. On Magic
“Magic,” like “fetish,” is a term with rich semantic interest and vital connections to ideas of otherness. Used generally to designate a form of mysterious power or irrational belief, as with “fetish,” the term “magic” is nuanced in important ways by socio-political concerns. Stated simply, magic also is the religion of the other. . It is defined generally as a form of “irrational” belief held by those who remain at base “irrational.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1971 edition) magic is “The pretended art of influencing the course of events, and of producing marvelous physical phenomena, by processes supposed to owe their efficacy to their power of compelling the intervention of spiritual beings, or of bringing into operation some occult controlling principle of nature.” Ironically, the term “magic” is used less in reference to African worship and religious practice as such which is not all that different from ancient Greek or Roman traditions among others. Instead, magic is used to signal those practices within the African religious realm which are perceived to be at variance with other religious forms. Moreover, in the above dictionary definition of “magic,” if one removes the underlined pejoratives, the meaning of “magic” is strikingly similar to “orthodox” ritual and prayer in the West. In Catholicism, to give but one example, the mass, the Eucharist, and absolution are all understood by believers to be articles of faith and even mystery, but the individuals would never refer to them as religious “magic.” In Protestantism, similarly, baptism is accorded a value of individual empowerment and action equivalent in key respects to that associated with magic. Religious dogma among followers of other world religions – whether Judaism or Islam, Hindu or Buddhism – is similar. Yet in all these faiths, the term “magic” characteristically is used in reference only to the religious practices of others, to the beliefs and rituals of those individuals who are foreign, unschooled, and considered to be social outsiders. The Oxford English Dictionary and other lexicons, accordingly, generally equate magic with “sorcery” and “witchcraft.” R. Collingwood’s discussion of “magic” is of special interest in this regard:
“The word “magic” as a rule carries no definite significance at all. It is used to denote certain practices current in “savage” societies and recognizable here and there in less “civilized” and less “educated” strata of our society, but it is used without any definite conception of what it connotes; and therefore, if someone asserts that, for example, the ceremonies of our own church are magical, neither he nor anyone else can say what the assertion means, except that it is evidently intended to be abusive; it cannot be described as true or false”
Outside the West, the term “magic” has been applied to variant objects and acts, African and otherwise. The recent French exhibit Magiciens sur la terre (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou 1989), while seeking to elevate the status (élan and mystery) of third-world artists ironically labeled them as “producers of magic,” thereby reinforcing their very otherness. P.148.
… The concept of otherness in magic is reinforced in the long and interesting etymological history of the term in the West. The word derives from the Greek magikos (meaning “sorcery” or “wizardry”) which in turn has its source in the old Persian magush or Iranian magos. This designated a member of a hereditary priestly class among the ancient Medes and Persians whose doctrines included belief in astrology. The above meaning has had continued relevance in Christianity, for, as is known to every young Christmas caroler, the Magi is a reference to the three (foreign) wise men from the East who were present at the birth of Jesus. To the ancient Greeks, similarly, the word magikos was employed to designate the religious practices of foreigners (called generally “barbarians” – Greek barbaros – “foreign,” “strange,” “ignorant”), whether they were country folk, folk from other countries, or city folk identified as others (generally, slaves). Then, as in the present, just as everyone had an Other, everyone’s Other was associated with belief in magic. As White has observed:
“In such a situation the tendency is to endow those parts of humanity which are, in effect, being denied any claim to the title of human with magical , even supernatural powers, as happened in the mythos of the Wild Man of the Middle Ages. If these magical or supernatural powers are fixed upon as desiderata for all men, including Europeans, then there will be a tendency to fetishize the imagined possessors of such powers, for example, the Noble Savage.”
This framing of magic has been an important basis for the longstanding separation of Africa and its arts from Europe and the movement of Africa into taxonomic proximity with the Pacific Islands and Native America. In much of art historical writing, African art (along with Oceanic and Native American traditions) is likened to the Greek “barbarian” as something “foreign,” “strange,” and “ignorant” of the values accorded “high” art. Interestingly, African art also is widely seen to stand in relationship to Western art as woman to man in phallocentric psychoanalytic texts. Stated simply, African art is held to signify a lack, and accordingly is widely believed to lack: artists (at least those who are truly capable of making innovative changes and having intellectual insights); an interest in foreign cultures and universality; a concept of art apart from social setting; a perception of art outside of nature and the material world; and a valuation of history (and a “real” understanding of historical primacy).
One could continue, but what is important to emphasize is that coupled with this sense of deprivation or lack is an assumption of surplus as Africa and African art are generally seen to display at the same time qualities of heightened sensitivity (emotional power) and danger. Here too, psychoanalytic parallels with women are apt. As Kaja Silverman notes for the presentation of the woman in film: “As usual her body provides the means for representing this deprivation. She simultaneously attracts the gaze – appeals to the senses and represents castration.” In both gender discourse and views of Africa, a considerable amount of illogic (and indeed magic) goes to support these premises of simultaneous lack and longing, repulsion and attraction.
Moreover, in truth, it has been far easier politically and intellectually for art historians and others to follow the lead of both Africa-centrists and Europe-centrists in seeing Africa as Other. Technologically and economically, however, at the time of Africa’s first encounter with Europe (during the late fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) sub-Saharan Africa was thought to be strikingly similar to its preindustrial neighbors north of the Mediterranean, a fact underscored by the degree of (favorable) surprise and lavish praise accorded sub-Saharan African cities and states by the early European visitors. The city of Benin, in one of the more frequently cited examples, was compared positively by the seventeenth-century Dutchman Olfert Dapper (1686) to the Dutch city of Harlem. In turn, with respect to art and cultural traditions generally, Africa shares far more in common with preindustrial Europe than it does (or ever did) with either Native America or Oceania (those areas with which African art is generally cojoined), a finding that should not surprise anyone with a cursory knowledge of world history and a map.
What has held these three areas together in art historical discourse is at once a form of retentive cultural Darwinism (promoted still today in H.W. Janson’s widely used introductory survey, History of Art (1986) and paradoxically a grossly simplistic sociological model of art history which sees these three areas as in some way sharing similar social, political, economic, technical, and even religious features in a strange (magical and fallacious), cross-cultural, trans-historical union of widely disparate political forms and geographic entities. To be fair, Janson’s ideas are grounded in late nineteenth-century theories of social and artistic evolutionary development which subsequent editors of the popular (and remunerative) text have never felt compelled to revise. In turn, most sociologically oriented art historians today would be quick to eschew such a mixed bag of art historical otherness with its veneer of materiality and pretexts of artistic and socio-technological similitude. The fact remains, however, that Africanists and Europeanists alike have found this fiction (untruth) useful and for this reason continue to promote it even while disavowing the more denigrating “primitive” nomenclature as they cojoin these disparate areas in introductory texts, surveys, and museum halls. By continuing to frame the Other as strange in this way, ideas of African differentness are continually reinforced.
Yet, were we able by magic to dislodge and disempower the longstanding traditions of “us” and “them,” scholars of European art might be less hesitant to draw from African models in exploring in different ways their own works.
Suzanne Preston Blier, “Truth and seeing” in Robert H. Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O’Barr, eds., Africa and the Disciplines. (Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 1993); p.150

Ideology as “the worship of an idea”
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Articulating in “The Heart of Darkness” a philosophical reflection on the meaning of the colonial enterprise, Conrad offered a sophisticated analysis of the concept of ideology as the worship of an idea.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea-something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, in Adler, Mortimer J., ed., Imaginative Literature.
Great Books of the Western World (Chicago, London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1994); p.137

The Power of an Idea and “Manifest Destiny” Theology
“It is dangerous to underestimate the power of an idea. Especially one which captures the imagination of a people. Manifest Destiny was such an idea. To extend American democracy to the rest of the continent was to place a mantle of legitimacy on what was essentially an insatiable ambition for land.”
Miguel Ángel González Quiroga)

“Colonization may indeed be a very complex affair, but one thing is certain: You do not walk in, seize the land, the person, the history of another, and then sit back and compose hymns of praise in his honor. To do that would amount to calling yourself a bandit. So what do you do ? You construct very elaborate excuses for your action. You say, for instance, that the man in question is worthless and quite unfit to manage himself and his affairs. If there are valuable things like gold or diamonds which you are carting away from his territory, you proceed to prove that he doesn’t own them in the real sense of the word, that he and they just happened to be lying around the same place when you arrived. Finally, if worse comes to the worst, you will be prepared to question whether such as he can be, like you, fully human.”
(Chinua Achebe).

In order to better understand the distortion of our knowledge about the religion of Native Americans and Africans, we have to understand the concepts of ideology and mythology, and the role they play in the relationship between Religion and Civilization. The dominant mainstream knowledge produced by universities and high schools about Africans and Native Americans is at once ideological and mythological. Once knowledge is “demystified,” once we understand how knowledge is “constructed” by human beings who have a stake in their scholarship, then we will understand how science, philosophy, theology, and especially the discipline of anthropology and that of history, have “manufactured historical views of native barbarism and atheism.” Because it serves the interests of the dominant group, this knowledge is constantly repackaged and transmitted in schools without any serious critical thinking, and without integrating all the major paradigm shifts which occurred in the study of world history and world religions since World War II and the collapse of colonial empires. To better grasp the ideological and mythological nature of our knowledge about Native American and African religions, students must bear in mind the tremendous social role played by religion as defined by Max Weber, and Karl Marx. They also must have some knowledge of the encounter between Europe and Africa, and between Europe and Native Americans,.
It is also crucial to keep in mind that every knowledge, including religious knowledge, is a social construct. Here again, students are required to familiarize themselves with the work of Plato (“Allegory of the Cave” in the Republic), Michel Foucault (Civilization and Madness), Francis Bacon (idola doctrine), Pierre Bourdieu, Habermas, Nietzsche’s critique of Eurocentrism, Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and his concept of “the moral epistemology of imperialism,” Chinua Achebe’s view of Christianity, Eboussi Boulaga’s deconstruction of the discourse of “bourgeois and imperialist Christianity,” Mudimbe’s “invention of Africa,” and Johannes Fabian’s deconstruction of Anthropology.

In his study of the scholarship produced by the Apartheid regime, Leonard Thompson, a leading historian of South Africa, articulated the interesting concept of “political mythology.” He defined a political myth as “a tale told about the past to legitimize or discredit a regime,” and a political mythology as “a cluster of such myths that reinforce one another and jointly constitute the historical element in the ideology of the regime or its rival.” As he rightly observed, every ideology is based on a mythology. And this is precisely the case with knowledge produced about the history and religions of Native Americans and Africans. It is worth noting here that “Definitions” are the perfect example of ideology at work.
In her novel, Beloved, the Nobel prize laureat, Toni Morrison, gives the following perspective on issues of definition:
(He was) clever, but school teacher beat him anyway, to show that
definitions belonged to the definers not to the defined.
Morrison’s view of the power of definition sheds a light on the ideological character of the Hegelian paradigm and its impact on the colonization of consciousness, and especially the colonization of knowledge about the religion of minority groups. To better understand how the religion of Native Americans and other minorities groups has been distorted we need first to bear in mind the concept of the power of ideas. As Mircea Eliade pointed out knowledge has a major political dimension and intellectual elites (theologians and anthropologists included) exercise a major influence on the historical trajectory of the world:
Some kinds of cultural activity...themselves constitute political weapons... What we do in the realm of art, of science, of philosophy, (and religion), will have a political effect: alter man’s consciousness... Making culture is today the only efficacious form of politics... It is no longer the politicians who stand at the concrete center of history but the great minds, the intellectual elites.
Eliade, Mircea, Ordeal by Labyrinth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); pp.80-82.

This notion of the intellectuals occupying the center of history was even more clarified in a statement he published in 1934:

The true revolutionaries are not politicians, but intellectuals, visionaries, that is, the creators of actions, the creators of history, those who have acted concretely, by their actions, in history, with their thought, their words, their writing. The authentic intellectual understands the interplay of the subterranean forces that is preparing the history of the day after tomorrow and follows to intervene in it.

Cited by Adriana Berger, “Mircea Eliade: Romanian Fascism and the History of Religions in the United States” in Harrowitz, Nancy A., ed., Tainted Greatness: Anti-Semitism and Cultural Heroes. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); p.65.

To better grasp Eliade’s insight, let us first look at the history of Democracy. Reflecting on Greek political and intellectual rhetoric, Paul Veyne observed that Plato who is saluted as the founding father of democracy, was an Aristocratic intellectual who “did not for an instant doubt the superiority of the rich and their right to command.” Plato failed to see the contradiction between his enlightening theory of “philosopher-king” (Republic Book V,473), and his deeply anti-democratic caste system articulated in the infamous “Phoenician Tale” (Republic, Book III, 414-415). Having learned the notion of democracy from Plato and Pericles, modern nation-states have also carried the mistakes of the founding fathers. The discourse of the Berlin conference, and the subsequent behavior of colonial and neo-colonial empires are a good case in point. The current rhetoric of globalization betrays the stigma of the original sin. In a world where the democratic discourse has allies within the religious sphere, it is clear that the definition of minority religions by those in power is largely ideological.
Keeping in mind this relationship between “Savoir” and “Pouvoir,” I understand the concept of ideology, not as a simple body of ideas and ideals about human existence, but rather the kind of discourse generated by a dominant group to obfuscate and reinforce its privileges through various forms of illusions which obliterate the reality and the truth about human relations. As Paul Veyne of the College de France pointed out, “ideology is nothing other than the satisfaction which every power has in itself.” It thus appear that ideology is a discourse which justifies and defends a status quo, mainly the privileges of the dominant class.
By ideology I mean a conscious or unconscious “strategic rhetoric,” a discourse of power which generates hierarchies and exclusions and essentially justifies domination and exploitation in the name of God, reason, common good, human rights, democracy, and higher values. It is a discourse of hegemony as Gramsci would say. In so far as an ideology justifies the unjustifiable, it becomes in Marx’s word a “discourse of false consciousness,” or a “discourse of bad faith” to use the Sartrian expression. Thus an ideology is a philosophy of anxiety, a philosophy guided by the agony of a guilty conscience.
Moreover the main feature of an ideology is its unconscious nature as David Tracy observed:
Ideologies are unconscious but systematically functioning attitudes, values, and beliefs produced by and in the material conditions of all uses of language, all analyses of truth, and all claims to knowledge... Ideologies are carried in and by the very language we use to know any reality at all.
Mikhail Bakhtin who clearly grasped the connection between language performance and ideology, observed that “There are no ‘neutral’ words and forms - words and forms that belong to ‘no one’; language has been completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents... All words have the ‘taste’ of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life; all words and forms are populated by intentions.” David Tracy warns that beside the fact that it limits our grasp of reality and truth, language can also oppress the ability of others to assert and live their own perception of truth. In other words language is limiting, self-serving of one’s own interests and oppressive of others:
Every discourse bears within itself the anonymous and repressed actuality of highly particular arrangements of power and knowledge. Every discourse, by operating under certain assumptions necessarily excludes other assumptions. Above all, our discourses exclude those others who might disrupt the established hierarchies or challenge the prevailing hegemony of power.
This hegemonic dimension of ideology is more clearly expressed in the process of representation or definition; that is the power of naming and defining the other. Following Roland Barthes’analysis of language, Edward Saïd observed in his semiotic of Orientalist narratives that discourses are representations which are at once “formations” and “deformations.” A definition is a representation of the reality through the “formative power” of language. Definitions are not photocopies or passive descriptions of the reality. Every definition “recreates” the reality it defines and in so doing “deforms” such a reality. Deformation takes place because in the interplay between the object and the defining subject, knowledge and discourse embrace at once the historicity of the object and the fantasy or the scene of desire inherent in any subjectivity.

Note: In order to better understand the ideological function of the definition of “minority religions,” we should consider carefully the ideological function of civilization and the social function of religion. (Reread our document on the definitions of religion by Geertz, Max Weber, Karl Marx,…). The fundamental ideological character of religion can be found in the role it plays in the economic infrastructures of society as described by Max Weber:

SECTION 2. CHALLENGING TWO FUNDAMENTAL MYTHS

MYTH 1. ABOUT THE NOTION OF UNIVERSALITY IN RELIGION

MYTH 2. THE FALSE CONCEPT OF DEUS OTIOSUS

MYTH 1. THE CATEGORY OF UNIVERSALITY.

Scholars influenced by the Hegelian Paradigm call traditional religions “tribal” to suggest, as Hegel already pointed out, that tribal people lack the category of universality which makes Christianity great and better. According to this worldview, Christianity teaches a universal morality, the ethics of universal brotherhood and love for all human beings. At the same time as writings by Hegel, and Matthews, indicate, tribal people were taught to love only the members of their families and tribes, and to regard other tribes as enemies. Implication here being that for tribal people it is morally good to hate people who do not belong to their tribes. This is of course a colonial propaganda aimed at glorifying Christian Europe. It stems from the colonial vision of non-European people as children without conscience as Hegel made it clear. As the British historian Basil Davidson rightly pointed out most Western scholars and Christian missionaries studied traditional religions with the conviction that “the religion of the Africans is ever interesting to those of a maturer faith, as the study of childhood is pleasing to those of riper years.”
(Basil Davidson, The African Genius: An Introduction to African Cultural and Social History. (Boston, London: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), p.24.

Still today, as Laurenti Magesa pointed out, African traditional religions are robbed of their universal character by scholars: “Is African religion a World Religion? Even though the study of African Religion engages the interests of many scholars today, its status as a world religion has not yet been comfortably accepted in some quarters of the academic and Christian religious world. The tendency of some philosophers, theologians, and students of comparative religion is still to regard African Religion as a “primal” or “ethnic” Religion, thus robbing it of its universal character. (In some people’s minds, it is still identified pejoratively with “tribal’ practices of fetishism and magic.) This attitude also reduces the capacity of African Religion to interact with other religions and to influence and change the world and minimizes its role in conversation with other religions. It becomes a subordinate partner rather than an equal. The study of African Religion, from this perspective, then becomes merely a description of appearances instead of a portrayal of a phenomenon with moral power that shapes and directs the lives of millions of people in their relationship with other human beings, the created order, and the Divine.”
Laurenti Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life. (New York, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997); pp.18-19.

The reality is that traditional religions have sophisticated creation myths which maintain that all human beings have the same creator, and therefore should be regarded as brothers and sisters. Most importantly, African Traditional religions taught that prayers are exhausted only when one prayers for all other people, and all other nations. Moreover, at a close scrutiny it appears that Christian morality of love is not as universal as many are lead to believe.
We shall begin by exploring this myth of Christian universal brotherhood, and then move to the discovery of African vision of universal brotherhood.

The notion of the Universality of Christian love is mythological. In reality, as Bénézet Bujo remarked, “the autonomy that Christian and Catholic moral theology preaches is a theonomous autonomy.” Such a basis raises the question of the value of “autonomy” outside God, and specifically the question of whether the autonomy of the so-called “pagans”, of those who are not members of the Christian Church, of atheists and agnostics is genuine and ought to be respected. Most importantly as the biblical scholar Lohfink pointed out the universality of Christian love is not self-evident, for in practice churches start with the notion of the superiority or greatness of “the people of God,” in such a way that human rights beyond the boundaries of religious confessions tend to loose its value:

If we keep before our eyes the fact that each society cannot be asked to formulate its norms in a universal fashion especially when cultures remain different, then from the point of view of content we may discover no essential difference between love of neighbour in the Old Testament or in the New. In any case, neither of them corresponds to the universal love as demanded by Stoic or humanist philosophy. Each of them is concerned about the greatness of the people of God and of the communities of believers, although a certain dynamism beyond is noticeable.

Although the missionary project of the New Testament brought to prominence a new dimension of the Old Testament “love of the neighbour,” in general, as Bujo observed, the reproach usually made to Old Testament Ethics could hold also for the New, for “nowhere does the latter teach expressly a universal and undifferentiated love towards all human beings, in the meaning propounded by ancient Stoic philosophy. On the contrary, by the word ‘love’ even the New Testament understands first one’s neighbour and the members of the same people in the primitive Christian community, and then all the brothers and sisters in the faith.” As Karl Rahner’s theory of anonymous Christians indicates, non-Christians and non-believers are valued in Christian theology only in so far as they stand as potential believers and future members of the Church destined to conversion, and not as “outsiders.” There is thus a major difference between the concept of universal love promoted by Christian theology and that promoted by Stoic philosophers and the tradition of human rights. The fact that historically Judaism, Christianity and Islam opposed for a long time the modern doctrine of Human Rights promoted by the American and French revolutions, and by the United Nations is a good illustration of the limitations of these religions in matters pertaining to universal brotherhood and universal love.

Now a word on this religious opposition to human rights and then we move to the vision of universal solidarity and brotherly love in ATR.

As Abba Hillel Silver pointed out, “Religion was not only tardy in championing human rights; at times it was actually retarding and reactionary.”

As Eric Weingartner observed, the “Christian church has not historically been in alliance with the pioneers of human rights, whatever their tradition.” Likewise Abba Hillel Silver pointed out that “Religion was not only tardy in championing human rights; at times it was actually retarding and reactionary.” This is even more explicit in the Catholic Tradition. While Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI became the champions of UN declaration of human rights, we should not overlook the fact that this is a very recent phenomenon and that in this context the Church had to catch up with a secular society which was already promoting human rights everywhere in the world. Previous Popes attacked the doctrine of human rights, called it “madness.”

Before Vatican II, Pius VI (1775-1799) regarded the French declaration of the rights of man and citizens of 1789 as madness and condemned it in 1791. He declared in his document Quod aliquantum that the principle of liberty as declared by the French charter of human rights was contrary to reason and to God’s Revelation . Continuing in the same spirit, in 1832, Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) condemned liberty of conscience as “the false, absurd, mad principle” (deliramentum), “the most contagious of errors.” He added: “to this error (liberty of conscience) is attached liberty of press, the most dangerous liberty, an execrable liberty, which can never inspire sufficient horror.” In his encyclical Mirari vos (in which he condemned the theology professed by Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854) and other French progressive theologians who asked the church to defend freedom and some principles of French declaration of human rights), he condemned this notion of liberty as
the “evil-smelling spring of indifferentism” from which flowed the erroneous and absurd opinion - or rather, derangement - that freedom of conscience must be asserted and vindicated for everybody. This most pestilential error opens the door to the complete and immoderate liberty of opinions, which works such widespread harm both in church and state. Some people outrageously maintain that some advantage derives from it for religion.

In 1864, Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) also condemned religious liberty in his Syllabus Errorum as one of the grave errors of modern liberalism.

The Concept of Universal Brotherhood and universal morality in
AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS

Solidarity and Hospitality to “foreigners” are among the virtues highly praised in African ethics. A Luba-Bantu proverb teaches that “Your alien guest is your God” (MWENYI OBE I LEZA OBE). This vision of morality stems from the African understanding of the nature of the universe as expressed by various creation myth. Shakapanga is not the creator of one single clan, race, or nation, but the Father of every creature that exists. From this notion of a common origin of humankind, Africa drew the ethical principle of universal brotherhood.
According to the Yoruba creation myth, the Yoruba God as father of the whole universe created black and white people, albinos and hunchbaks, the Yoruba people, and all other nations as well. Consequently the Yoruba regard all human beings as kin, so much so that most prayers and invocations offered in Ile-Ife are deemed incomplete until prayers are offered for the people of the entire universe (agbala aye gbogbo), who are regarded as having had their origin in Ile-Ife. The Yoruba religion is not an exception in this regard. When we move from West Africa to East Africa, thousands of miles away, we find the same theology in Kenya where a “Meru Prayer” explicitly links prayer for one’s family and country to prayer for “the trouble of other nations”:

Kirinyaga (God), owner of all things,
I pray to Thee, give me what I need,
Because I am suffering, and also my children,
And all the things that are in this country of mine.
I beg Thee, the good one, for life,
Healthy people with no disease.
May they bear healthy children.
And also to women who suffer
Because they are barren, open the way
By which they may see children.
Give goats, cattle, food, honey,
And also the trouble of the other lands
That I do not know, remove.

In Yoruba religion, the High God Orinsala, the molder of human bodies, is praised as “the husband of hunchback”(Oko abuké), “the husband of lame” (Oko aro), and “the husband of dwarf with a big fat head”( Oko arara bori pèté). The Dogon maintain that God created all human beings, and all the races, but used the light of the moon “to cook the bodies of white people” while he used the light of the sun for those of black peoples. Other myths maintain that God used clay of different colors. In sum, God is the universal creator, father and mother of all human beings, of the poor and the rich, the fortunate and the unfortunate. Moreover, in the creation process, God used the same material to mould all human beings. This means that despite the difference of character and personality among people, human nature has a common ground which founds the equality of all human beings, men and women, people of different ethnicities and races.
Moreover, the ethics of solidarity and hospitality is extended to the whole universe, for Africans feel kinship with the flora and fauna and the whole natural world. Indeed, African ontology believes in the intimate relationship between “Bantu” and “Bintu.” To grasp this notion, it is worth noting that the first principle of African philosophical anthropology is not the concept of Muntu, but rather that of Ntanda. God created first the world, the whole universe, and then humans. God did not create only one village, but ntanda yonso, the whole world, and all its content. All human beings have but one single source of existence, and not only human beings, but all other creatures. Indeed, as the Mashi expression clarifies, God is “Ishe Wabantu n’ebintu” (father of human beings and things). The natural world is the extension of human body as the scholars of Yoruba worldview have emphasized:

In the Yoruba orisa tradition, we see ourselves as part of the incredible complex organism we call the universe. We are literally part of a body that includes every life form and energy in our universe. While we are overwhelmingly human, within each of us reside small, fractionated particles of energy that represent the rest of our body Poets and philosophers have often written that within all of us is the sea, the sky, the trees, the lion, and so on. In the Yoruba tradition, that is literally true. That literal truth is expressed in our concept of the orisa. The orisa are the less-than-God, more-than-human physical representations of these various energy sources who, in Yoruba mythology, were originally sent to live on earth. For example, the energy of the ocean is represented by the orisa Yemonja/Olokun, whose orisa characteristics mirror the ocean’s nurturing and giving aspects. Obatala, orisa of whiteness, clarity, and calm, rules the head. There are hundreds of others orisas - over four hundred in all - who ultimately reflect all the energy sources and characteristics of our planet.

This interconnectedness with Nature marks the specificity of the African conception of God and its vision of the nature of human beings, and opens the door to an African vision of human rights which integrates the animals and other components of the natural world and the whole cosmos.

MYTH 2.
“Adro-Adroa” and the Myth of the African Deus Otiosus
=========================================================

Over the past four centuries, scholars have been in disagreement regarding the role of the African God in human affairs. This notion that the “African God” is Deus otiosus (un dieu lointain et oisif, a remote and unnecessary God, a useless truth, a lazy and inactive God, indifferent to the plight of humankind, a God who is absolute Transcendence and therefore away from the world) is widespread in Western beliefs shared by both Christian theologians and secular scholars. Even some African scholars have subscribed to such a thesis.
1. Western Scholars
Thomas Blakely and Pamela Blakely
In their 1994 study published on the Bahemba, a group connected to the Baluba, Pamela A.R. Blakely and Thomas D. Blakely maintained that in the Bahemba religion, “the creator (Abezha Mbungu), remains quite distant and uninvolved, with little about the creator god thought to be relevant to contemporary human problems.”
In 1988, J. Masson maintained a similar idea with regard to African traditional religions in general.

2. African Scholars
Victor Chikezie Uchendu, (Nigeria, Igbo)
In his research in anthropology presented at NorthWestern University, this native Igbo scholar, wrote the following on Igbo religion:
The Igbo high god is a withdrawn god. He is god who has finished all active works of creation and keeps watch over his creatures from a distance. The Igbo high god is not worshiped directly. There is neither shrine nor priest dedicated to his service. He gets no direct sacrifice from the living ... He seldom interferes in the affairs of men, a characteristic which sets him apart from all other deities, spirits, and ancestors ... Is it any wonder that they (the Igbo people) sometimes fell that the distance between them and the high god is too great?

While the majority of scholars promote this doctrine of Deus Otiosus, their own writing often carry a profound contradiction. As John Mbiti rightly pointed out, assertions like those of Uchendo and the whole cohort of Western scholars are misleading, and the notion that Africans conceive God as deus otiosus is false. In the West, Ludwig acknowledges that although the supreme being is sometimes considered as far away, and has delegated many functions to spirits and the ancestors, “he is still approachable; people can call on him at any time without needing priests or shrines.” In Africa, Uchendu, himself, acknowledges that the Igbo who “sacrifice to any unknown and uninvited deities who might be present,” conceive the high god as “the ultimate receiver of all sacrifice made to the minor deities.” He also maintains that the Igbo appeal to the High God in their distress and stresses that
Although the Igbo feel psychologically separated from their high god, he is not too far away, he can be reached ...The Igbo recognize that the high god can do all things. Although the high god may be distant and withdrawn, he is not completely separated from the affairs of men. He is still the great father, the source of all good. He interacts with each Igbo during each reincarnation cycle. He sometimes intervenes in favor of the living...
Uchendu’s paradoxical views are symptomatic of the difficulty in translating the reality of God’s existence into human language; however, this is not a problem peculiar to African traditional religions. In African religions as in many other religious traditions, the difficult question of the relationship between the holiness or purity of God and his caring love for his imperfect creatures gives way to paradoxical statements about God. However, a careful examination of African religious beliefs indicates that Africans, like many other people, consider God to be at once “far” and “near.” In the poetic expression of the Lugbara people, it is fair to characterize the African God as Adro-Adroa; meaning, God is conceived as being near to people (Adro) and at the same time far away (Adroa). This same notion is found among the Baluba, who express the transcendence and immanence of God in a beautiful proverb, “Vidye kadi kula, umwite ukwitaba, umulonde bukwidila” (God is not far away, if you call him he will answer you, but if you try to walk you will never meet him).
We can thus conclude with John Mbiti that the doctrine of Deus Otiosus, which is a miscarriage of Colonial scholarship, stems from a superficial reading of African religion. This doctrine is false and must be abandoned once for all:
Many foreign writers constantly harp on the note that for African peoples God is ‘too remote’ and virtually excluded from human affairs. This assertion is false ... People consider God to be both ‘far’ and ‘near.’

As Mbiti rightly emphasized, African traditional religions, like other religions of the world, have faced the paradox of the transcendence and immanence of the Divine.

AFRICAN SPIRITUAL VALUES

Table of content:
- The Divine Nature of Human Beings
- Personhood and the Fadenya-Badenya doctrine
- Mucima Muyampe and the centrality of Good Character

- The notion of Universal Brotherhood as the foundation of Hospitality and Solidarity
- Prayers
- Religious Ethic and Government (Investiture prayers

Core tenets of African spirituality

- Centrality of BUMI, BUMUNTU, MUCIMA MUYAMPE
- Hospitality and Solidarity without border
- A holistic view of life and religion
- Acute sense of the divine
- A radical and fundamental “prolife” attitude
- Veneration for the ancestors and communion with the dead
- Deep respect for nature (trees, animals, the whole creation)
- A religion of joy and celebration of life
- Respect for the weak, the elderly, children and the handicapped.

“In Yoruba thought human beings are raised to a divine level through the Yoruba belief in Ori (inner or spiritual head) as a spiritual entity who dwells in every person. This divine nature of human beings includes free will which is a salient belief among the Yoruba. The Yoruba maintain that “good character” is the most important aspect of free will because it is the good character that allows a person to be at peace with all neighbors encompassing the supernatural, human, and nonhuman. The importance of good character is summed up in the following Yoruba saying: “Iwà lèsin”(good character is the essence of religion).
Wande Abimbola, “Ifa: A West African Cosmological System” in
Blakely, Thomas D. & Van Beek, E.A., Religion in Africa: Experience and Expression.
( Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1994 ); p.115.

“The African traditional approach with its holistic emphasis has much to give to the modern world with its closed, limited, merely rationalist disposition. The post-modern worldview, which will hopefully become more prevalent, will find ready rapport with the traditional African worldview. If technology and science could help Africa to develop without becoming an ideology on this continent, and if Africa retains its sensitivity to the depth of human existence, this continent could be at the forefront of the restoration of mankind’s true humanity.”
Gerhardus Cornelis Oosthuizen, “The Place of Traditional Religion in Contemporary South Africa” in Jacob K. Olupona, ed, African Tradition Religions in Contemporary Society. (New York: Paragon House, 1991); pp.48-49.

African Wisdom Proverbs
------------------------
1. “Woamma wo yonko antwa nkron a, wo nso wonntwa du “
(If you do not let your neighbor have nine, you will not have ten; Akan Proverb)
2. “Nkrabea nyinaa nse”
(Each destiny is unlike any other; Akan Proverb).
3. “Obi nnye yiye nnya bone”
(The pursuit of beneficence brings no evil on him who pursues it; Akan Proverb)
4. “Bwino bonso ke bwino, bwino I kwikala biya ne Bantu.”Luba Proverb.
(true knowledge is to know how to live in harmony with our fellow human beings).

Positive Values of African Cultures: Moral Values and Priceless Human Qualities
(According to Pope John-Paul II)

In 1994, during the first African Synod of Bishops held in Rome, Pope John-Paul II acknowledged that despite all the crises happening in Africa, Africa has produced a fundamental wisdom which can contribute not only to the articulation of an African solution to African problems but also could enrich humanity as a whole. In his document, “Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation” he articulated in paragraphs 42 and 43 some of these “positive values of African cultures:

Although Africa is very rich in natural resources, it remains economically poor. At the same time, it is endowed with a wealth of cultural values and priceless human qualities which it can offer to the Churches and to humanity as a whole... They are values which can contribute to an effective reversal of the Continent’s dramatic situation and facilitate that worldwide revival on which the desired development of individual nations depends.
Africans have a profound religious sense, a sense of the sacred, of the existence of God the Creator and of a spiritual world. The reality of sin in its individual and social forms is very much present in the consciousness of these peoples, as is also the need for rites of purification and expiation.
In African culture and tradition the role of the family is everywhere held to be fundamental. Open to this sense of the family, of love and respect for life, the African loves children, who are joyfully welcomed as gifts of God. “The sons and daughters of Africa love life. It is precisely this love for life that leads them to give such great importance to the veneration of their ancestors. They believe intuitively that the dead continue to live and remain in communion with them. Is this not in some way a preparation for belief in the Communion of Saints? The peoples of Africa respect the life which is conceived and born. They rejoice in this life. They reject the idea that it can be destroyed, even when the so-called ‘progressive civilizations’ would like to lead them in this direction. And practices hostile to life are imposed on them by means of economic systems which serve the selfishness of the rich. Africans show their respect for human life until its natural end, and keep elderly parents and relatives within the family.
African cultures have an acute sense of solidarity and community life. In Africa it is unthinkable to celebrate a feast without the participation of the whole village. Indeed, community life in African societies expresses the extended family. It is my ardent hope and prayer that Africa will always preserve this priceless cultural heritage and never succomb to the temptation to individualism, which is so alien to its best traditions.

Maura Browne, ed., The African Synod: Documents, Reflections, Perspectives. (New York, Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996); p. 245.

These moral values and priceless human qualities can be summarized in the following four categories

A. A vivid sense of the sacred
- a profound religious sense, a sense of the sacred, of the existence of God the Creator and of a spiritual world.
- accute consciousness of sin in its individual and social forms, and a need for rites of purification and expiation.
- Natural belief in immortality and communication between the dead and the living.
- Respect for the dead.

B. Love and respect for all life
- sense of the family,
- love and respect for life.
- respect for nature and animals

C. A tremendous sense of community and solidarity.
- individualism is so alien, so antithetical to African traditional wisdom.

D. A sense of familyhood and togetherness.
- the role of the family is everywhere held to be fundamental.
- an acute sense of solidarity and appreciation of the extended family.
- love of children, who are joyfully welcomed as gifts of God.
- the veneration of the ancestors.
- Love and respect for the elderly parents

African concept of Personhood: The “Fadenya-Badenya” paradigm

The Individual and the Community:
The Muntu as a “Fadenya-Badenya” being

The African concept of a genuine human being (Bumuntu) takes into account the fundamental structure of human nature which like the Chinese “Yin-Yang” is in constant struggle for balance between the Fadenya and the Badenya. The“Fadenya-Badenya” concept is drawn from the language and worldview of the the Mande poeple of Western Africa. But it expresses a fundamental vision of personhood found among the Baluba in Central Africa and many other African peoples. The “Fadenya-Badenya” concept points to the fact that in African philosophical anthropology every human being is at once a unique individuality and a collectivity.

With the “Fadenya-Badenya” paradigm we arrive at a conception of the individual which is far from an “absolutized individualism,” or a faceless number or token of the community. In the African worldview the Muntu is not a windowless monad. As the Mande well pointed out, each person has two forces within him, Fadenya and Badenya, which explain the tension between individuality and community.
Fadenya or “Father-childness” is the centrifugal force of individualism. It orients human’s actions toward individual reputation and renown. It should be noted that no one gains reputation in the clan by just repeating the deeds of his father. As Chinua Achebe pointed out, in Africa, “age was respected, but achievement was revered,” and young people had to strive for their own excellence and greatness since the ancestral wisdom teaches that “a man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness” in a society which ridicules lazy people and where “a man is judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.” What Chinua Achebe said about the Ibo people of Nigeria reflects well the worldview of the Mande, the Baluba and many other people throughout Africa. Fame comes from surpassing the deeds of one’s predecessors. The Luba practice of Kwisansula (praise names) is an expression of this force of individuality. It is as individuals that some people are venerated as wise judges, excellent orators (ntenda-mambo), heroic warriors, good hunters, good healers, etc. The Fadenya force produces the heroes needed by the community. People without shame or fear, who because of that can easily act against conventions and status quo. However, since the search for personal fame can easily lead to selfishness, self-aggrandizing passions, and anti-social behavior, Fadenya is feared as a force of social disequilibrium, a force of envy, jealousy, abuse of power, competition and self-promotion. The individual can find equilibrium only with the intervention of a counter-power, the centripetal force known as Badenya or “mother-childness.” This is a “conservative force,” a force of submission to authority, stability and cooperation, it brings the child to the mother’s womb. From Badenya arises social solidarity, benevolence, altruism.
Like the Chinese “Yin-Yang,” and the Greek “Prometheus-Saturn” bond, the “Fadenya-Badenya” cannot be reduced to masculine and feminine attributes, nor to father and son hierarchy. It is a principle of being within every being. Fadenya corresponds to the Promethean impulse within the being: restless, heroic, rebellious and revolutionary, individualistic and innovative, eternally seeking freedom, autonomy, change and novelty. Badenya, on the other hand represents the Saturnian impulse: conservative, stabilizing, controlling, that seeks to contain, sustain, order, and repress. From Badenya arises social solidarity, benevolence, altruism. In the same way that Prometheus and his father Saturn are implications of each other, Fadenya and Badenya stand as two sides of the same coin that is the Bumuntu. What the Fadenya-Badenya paradigm indicate is that there is already in each human being an individual dimension and a collective force constantly in tension. A healthy human being is the one who keeps balance between the two forces. This suggests that African societies do not despise the value of the individual nor do they blindly embrace individualism. Like many other human beings around the globe, Africans struggle painfully to keep a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community, which means the rights of other individuals. The silencing of the individual should then be interpreted as abuse and violations of human rights rather than an authentic expression of the tradition, for in African philosophy in general, and Bantu philosophy in particular, individuality is a fundamental basis of identity, personality and humanity.

Proverbs on Bumuntu (Personhood)
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I. On the value of the individual: No Community against the Individual
1. “Nnipa nyinaa ye Onyame mma, obi nnye asase ba”
(All men are children of God, no one is a child of the earth).
Akan Proverb, cited by Gyekye, p.19.
2. In Yoruba religion, the High God Orinsala, the molder of human bodies, is praised as “the husband of hunchback”(Oko abuké), “the husband of lame” (Oko aro), and “the husband of dwarf with a big fat head”( Oko arara bori pèté).
3. “One is not born with a bad head, One takes it on the earth”(ti bone wofa no fam, womfa nnwo). Akan proverb (against determinism, and fate)
4. “one can indeed bear a child greater than oneself.”
5. “Munda mwa mukwenu kemwelwa kuboko, nansha ulele nandi butanda bumo”
(None can put his arm into another person’s inside, not even when he shares his bed).
6. “Chaona munzako chapita mawa chili paiwe” (What your neighbour has experienced is gone, tomorrow it will be your turn) Chewa Proverb
7. Wanthu ndi mchenga saundika (Human beings are like sand out of which one cannot make a mountain) Chewa Proverb.
These two proverb in the Chichewa language of the Chewa people are from
Didier N. Kaphagawani, “African conceptions of Personhood and Intellectual identities” in P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux,eds., The African Philosophy Reader. (London, New York: Routledge, 1998);p.173.
8. “Iwa rere l’èso eniyan” (Good character, good existence, is the adornment of a human being). Yoruba proverb
9. The Ifa corpus is even more explicit: “Owo ara eni, Là afi I tunwa ara enii se”(Each individual must use his own hands to improve on his own character). This concept of free will and personal responsibility finds an interesting echoe in the Luba proverb, “Vidye wa kuha buya nobe wa mukwashako”
10. As Chinua Achebe pointed out, in Africa, “age was respected, but achievement was revered,” and young people had to strive for their own excellence and greatness since the ancestral wisdom teaches that “a man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness” in a society which ridicules lazy people and where “a man is judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.”

II. Solidarity and Community: No individual against the Community

On Personal Responsibility
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African solidarity, sense of community, familyhood, and hospitality do not condemn laziness. The individual does not have the right to exploit the generosity of others. This concept of free will and personal responsibility finds an interesting echoe in the Luba, Yoruba, Akan proverbs, and many others.

1. “Vidye wa kuha buya nobe wa mukwashako”
(God gave you beauty, but you must help him, by taking care of yourself)
Luba proverb (from my memory)

2. “Kalele Kadia Tulo.”
(Let the one who sleeps each his sleep)
Luba proverb, from my memory.
3. “Owo ara eni, Là afi I tunwa ara enii se”(Each individual must use his own hands to improve on his own character). Yoruba proverb, in Ifa corpus.

II. Solidarity and Community: No individual against the Community

Source:
- All references to Gyekye relate to the following book
Kwame Gyekye, African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme, Revised edition, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.
- Joseph Healey and Donald Sybertz, Towards an African Narrative Theology.
Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996
- Harold Courlander, A Treasury of African Folklore, New York: Marlowe and Company, 1996.

The Concept of Universal Brotherhood in ATR
(see the study mentioned above)

African Prayers and Spirituality

Text 1. “The Dead are not dead”
Birago Diop, a Senegambian poet writing in French, expressed the continued existence of the dead, in the following verses:

Hear more often things than beings,
the voice of the fire listening,
hear the voice of the water.
Hear in the wind
the bushes sobbing,
it is the sigh of our forebears.

Those who are dead are never gone:
they are there in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the tree that rustles,
they are in the wood that groans,
they are in the water that runs,
they are in the water that sleeps,
they are in the hut,
they are in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

Those who are dead are never gone,
they are in the breast of the woman,
they are in the child who is wailing
and in the firebrand that flames.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the fire that is dying,
they are in the grasses that weep,
they are in the whimpering rocks,
they are in the forest,
they are in the house,
the dead are not dead.

Text 2.
IWA LESIN, Good Heart is the essence of religion
Where did you see Iwa? Tell me!
Iwà, iwà is the one I am looking for.

“A man may be very, very handsome
Handsome as a fish within the water
But if he has no character
He is no more than a wooden doll.”
Iwà, iwà is the one I am looking for.

If you have money,
But if you do not have good character,
The money belongs to someone else.

Iwà, iwà is the one we are searching for.
If one has children,
But if one lacks good character,
The children belong to someone else.

Iwà, iwà is the one we are searching for.
If one has a house
But if one lacks good character,
The house belongs to someone else.

Iwà, iwà is what we are searching for.
If one has clothes,
But if one lacks good character,
The clothes belong to someone else.

Iwà, iwà is what we are looking for.
All the good things of life that a man has,
Money, house, children
If he lacks good character,
They belong to someone else.
Iwà, iwà is what we are searching for.
Each individual must use his own hands
To improve on his own character
Anger does not produce a good result for any man
Patience is the father of good character
If there is an old man who is endowed with patience
He will be endowed with all good things
It is honesty which I have in me,
I do not have any wickedness
Iwà lèsin, Good character is the essence of religion
(Yoruba Religion)

SOME PRAYERS

1. Obatala the King We Praise

Obatala,
The Oba (king) that we praise,
The truly king,
Who was born in the city of Igbo,
And went to become king in the city of Iranje.
The great Orisa,
The divinity of Igbo.
They showed him ingratitude,
They tricked him with palm wine,
They then deserted the divinity from heaven.
When they had all vanished,
Then they asked where else could the secret be found?
Whom shall we worship annually?
The Igbo divinity,
You shall we worship annually.
You, who proposes and disposes;
You shall we worship annually.
From Benjamin C. Ray, African Religions: Symbol, Ritual, and Community (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976); p.44

2.
In the Beginning was God,
Today is God,
Tomorrow will be God.
Who can make an image of God?
He has no body?
He is as a word which comes out of your mouth.
That word! It is no more,
It is past, and still it lives!
So is God.
Pygmy hymn

3.
Set me free, I entreat thee from my heart;
If I do not pray to thee with my heart,
Thou hearest me not.
If I pray to thee with my heart,
Thou knowest it and art graceous unto me.
Boran Prayer (Kenya)

4.
O God,
Thou hast given me a good day,
Give me a good night;
Thou hast given me a good night,
Give me a good day!
Galla Prayer

5.
Our Father,
It is thy universe, it is thy will
Let us be at peace,
Let the souls of the people be cool.
Thou art our Father;
Remove all evil from our path.
NUER Prayer, Sudan

6.
Father, O mighty Force,
That Force which is in everything,
Come down between us, fill us,
Until we become like thee,
Until we become like thee.
Susu Prayer (Guinea)

7.
God
He has no Father nor mother,
nor wife, nor children;
He is all alone.
He is neither a child nor an old man;
He is the same today as He was yesterday.
Theology of the Gikuyu people

ATR: No legitimate Government without Religious Ethic
Prayers for the Good King, the servant of the ancestors

“Chiefdom among the Ashanti is considered an office with heavy responsibilities to the people. The Chief, called Ohene or Omanhene, is regarded as a sacred personage descended from an ancient clan founder through the female line. In former times the Omanhene was credited with supernatural powers, for which reason he acted as intermediary between the people and the ancestral dead. His decisions and judgments were thought of as coming from the ancestors, and accordingly his words were sacred. Nevertheless, he had to rule in conformity with clearly defined principles, and his personal behavior and his attitude towards his subjects were subjected to minute scrutiny. On the occasion of his enstoolement, his senior councillors made known to him through his spokesman or ‘translator’ what was expected of him. (This was an admonishement to the new king to behave well and rule wisely)... Thus, as noted by Rattray: ‘To all outward appearance and to superficial observers, who included the populace, the Chief was an autocrat. In reality every move and command which appeared to emanate from his mouth had been discussed in private and been previously agreed upon by his councillors, to whom every one in the tribe had access and to whom popular opinion on any subject was thus made known.’(R.S. Rattray, Law and Constitution. London: Oxford University Press, 1956). Such was the ideal, at any rate, and serious infringement of the custom could lead to destoolment.”

Harold Courlander, A Treasury of African Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Myths, Legends, Epics, Tales, Recollections, Wisdom, Sayings, and Humor of Africa. (New York: Marlowe and Company, 1996); pp.11-112.

Investiture Prayer of the Baluba:

Oh, Mulopwe, King of Bana-Ba-Mbidi Kiluwe,
Listen to the voice of the ancestors,
Listen to Shakapanga,
Live and reign well as your illustrious ancestor Kalala Iunga Mwine Mwanza...
I remind you that your forefather Kalala Ilunga was a wise man...
Remember your people,
Do not be satisfied merely to take their tribute;
Give them of your wisdom and of your protection
and the success of your kingdom will be assured .

Oh, King of the Ashanti,
Listen to the voice of Okyeame,
Listen to the voice of the Ancestors
Listen to the Councillors
Listen to the voice of the people

We do not wish that
he should disclose the origin (ethnicity) of any person.
We do not wish that
he should curse us
We do not wish him to be greedy.
We do not wish that
he should refuse to listen to advice
We do not wish that
he should call people “fools.”
We do not wish that
he should act without advice.
We wish that he would always have time for his advisers.
We do not want personal violence .
(The Asante Investiture Speech)

Prayer of the Asanti people of Bekwai
A. – The voice of the People:

O King of Bekwai,
Listen to the ancestors,
Listen to the people
Because the Ko’ntire and he Akwamu say I must give you the Stool,
Because the Advance-guard say I must give you the Stool,
Because the Rear-guard say I must give you the Stool,
Because the mean and women of Bekwai say we must give you the Stool,
When a sickle breaks, we put a new shaft in it.
Today you uncle (previous king) lay down and did not rise up, so we have brought his gun to give you.
Today the Bekwai people consulted together, and they say that you are their choice, they declare that we must give you the Stool of Aguyeboafo.
Do not take it and go after women.
Do not take it and drink spirits.
Do not take it and make civil war.
When we give you advice, listen to it.
Do not take the Stool and abuse your elders.
Do not take it and gamble with the people.
We do not wish shame.
We bless the Stool, Kuse! Kuse! Kuse!
The elders say we are to take this Stool and give it to you.
(Another investiture prayer from the Ashanti State of Bekwai,)

B.- The response of the new king (pledge of good behavior):
“I beg pardon of Sunday, the forbidden name of which I speak;
I implore Small-pox, the forbidden name of which I speak;
I supplicate the great forbidden name, the name which I speak, saying that:
Today, you, the people of Bekwai, have taken my grandsire’s gun which you have given me;
I am the grandchild of Aguyeboafo, whose gun you have this day given me;
if it is not a good government with which I govern you,
or if I gamble with my grandsire’s town;
if I go after women;
if I do not listen to the advice of my councillors;
if I make war against them;
if I run away;
then I have violated the great forbidden names of Sunday and of Small-pox.”

Prayer of the Ashanti people of Juaben:

A.- The Voice of the People:
Oh King
Listen to the voice of the ancestors,
Listen to the voice of the people.
“Do not seduce the wives of your elders,
Do not seduce the wives of your young men,
Do not disclose the origin whence your people came.
Let your ears hear our advice,
Do not act foolishly towards your subjects, or your clan, or your children.
Be humble.
Do not spoil the Stool heirlooms.”

B.- King’s answer after each admonition “I agree to that,” or “I have heard.”

The Dagomba Investiture Prayer (Northern Ghana):
Oh, Na, King of the Dagomba,
Listen to the voice of the ancestors,
Listen to the voice of the people
If anyone is oppressed, and he comes to you save him.
Do not look behind you when you walk;
Do not be afraid.
Do not beat people.
Do not go after men’s wives.
If we advise you, hear our advice.
If you advise us, we will listen .

An Ashanti praise song for the king of justice and wisdom
---------------------------------------------------
Beside the investiture speech, the Ashanti have a wonderful tale on the sage king.
The story surrounds the investiture of Adoko, the king of the Agona people, who succeeded his cousin. When at the end of a long procession, the new king sat on the royal stool, many bards appeared singing the praise of the new ruler. However Adoko was impressed only by the song of the last bard, an old man who had seen during his life many kings “come and go.” He sang as follows:

Our new father is Adoko,
He is great indeed,
But our former chief had no greatness.

Our new father is Adoko,
He is wise,
But our last chief understood nothing.

Our new father is Adoko,
He is generous,
Even though our last chief was stingy.

Adoko is our father,
He cares for the welfare of all,
But our last chief did not care.

Nana Adoko is here,
He will judge our lawsuits with justice,
Our former chief cared little for such things.

Our former chief is gone
He only slept and grew fat
Until he was claimed by death.

But Nana Adoko sleeps little,
He is our good father
Who watches over our affairs.

When Adoko heard this song he thought that the people really recognized him as the wisest ruler they have ever known. He thought: “Indeed, I am the great Adoko. Who has ever said it so well? And my cousin, the chief who has gone, was he not truly the poorest of rulers? How sharp and understanding these people are! How wise is this old bard!”
Satisfied by the praise, Adoko ordered his servants to distribute gifts among all the people at the celebration and said to the old bard: “This song, it is good. I shall make you the first singer of Agona as long as I live.” Then the king asked the old bard: “Who is the maker of the song you sang? He must be a great singer indeed. Are you the maker of this song?” The old bard answered: “Oh, no. I am not the composer. This song was made in ancient time, and we sing it each time a new chief is appointed over us. We merely change the name of the chief.”
The story then concludes that when Adoko grew old and died, a bard sang to the new chief:
“Our new father is Mahama,
He is great indeed,
But our former chief had no greatness.”
Harold Courlander, A Treasury of African Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Myths, Legends, Epics, Tales, Recollections, Wisdom, Sayings, and Humour of Africa. (New York: Marlowe and Company, 1996); pp.114-115.