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1
Ochiai, Takehiko. "Ryo Ogawa Stategraphy: People and Religion in a Modern African State." Journal of African Studies 1998, no. 53 (1998): 41–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.11619/africa1964.1998.53_41.
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Byerman. "Talking Back: Phillis Wheatley, Race and Religion." Religions 10, no. 6 (June 25, 2019): 401. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10060401.
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This essay examines the means by which African American poet Phillis Wheatley uses her evangelical Christianity to engage issues of race in revolutionary America. In her poetry and other writings, she addresses and even instructs white men of privilege on the spiritual equality of people of African descent.
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Barasa Simiyu, Japheth, Ruth Imbuye, Susan Wandukusi, Patrick Barasa, David Loeseps Risper Konzolo, John Masinde, Stephen Mukubuyi, Patrick Olutwati, and Florance Chemayiek. "THE EFFECTS OF WESTERN CHRISTIANITY AND AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION ON CULTURAL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN TRANS NZOIA COUNTY, KENYA." International Journal of Advanced Research 8, no. 11 (November 30, 2020): 1169–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/ijar01/12114.
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The purpose of this study was to establish effects of Western Christianity and African Traditional Religion on moral and cultural development of the people of Trans Nzoia County. Morals and core values play a very important role in the upbringing of the youth in any given community in any given Geographical part on this planet. The study will be guided by the following objectives: Establish effects of Christianity on moral development, Determine effects of African Traditional Religion on moral development, Compare and contrast effects of moral development of Western Christianity and African Traditional Religion and to determine the role played by morals and core values in both Christianity and African Traditional Religion. Mixed Research method combined both qualitative and quantitative was employed in the study to unearth the hidden truth underlying in the study. The target population was 500 people which gave a sample size of 50Bishops and Pastors of 50 Churches. The researcher employed purposive and simple random sampling techniques. The researcher used two guiding theories in the study: the theory of Atonement on the Christian part and the theory of dual allegiance on the part of African Traditional Religion. Data was collected by use of Questionnaires and Interview schedules. The raw data was analyzed and descriptively availed for facilitation of research objectives and research questions. Computer program SPSS was employed to give the final accurate and precise results of Research findings. The findings indicate that the intrusion of foreign cultures in Trans Nzoia County has helped water down the quality of African morals on one part and the other part there is improvement on cultural and core values of the people of Trans Nzoia County. The conclusion on the same is that since communication and mobility has been so much developed in these resent times, it is easy for people from different parts of the world to meet and interact at any time at any given Geographical zone on the planet. The study recommends that the citizens of Trans Nzoia should be careful enough in considering the kind of morals to be applied in this county since the county is an Agricultural hub where people from different parts of the Earth converge either for commercial purposes or for learning Agri-business techniques.
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Beyers, Jaco, and Lize Kriel. "John Muafangejo’s How God Loves His People All Over the World as Material Religion." Religion and the Arts 24, no. 4 (October 26, 2020): 379–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02404002.
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Abstract The artworks produced at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift, KwaZulu-Natal, have been highly appraised and appreciated in South African art-historical circles, not in the least so as African expressions of postcolonial and anti-apartheid resistance. The work of Namibian artist John Muafangejo (1943–1987) is prominent amongst these. In this article, while borrowing generously from the methods of art historical research, our interest is primarily in works of art as objects of material religion. Erwin Panofsky introduced iconology as a way of determining the meaning of art. Iconology wants to enable the seeing of the unseen; seeing the transcendence—making it most applicable to the study of religion as a cultural practice. This article investigates in a critical way how iconology can assist in the study of material religion, especially as applied to the study of religious art. Because meaning is contextual, the conditions under which religious objects are made and interpreted are as important as the work itself. A discussion of a specific work by John Muafangejo originating from the Rorke’s Drift Centre will be conducted by testing the potential of iconology as an analytical tool in this African Christian environment.
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Prickett, Pamela. "Complexity Beyond Intersections: Race, Class, and Neighborhood Disadvantage among African American Muslims." Social Inclusion 6, no. 2 (June 22, 2018): 98–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/si.v6i2.1416.
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This study uses the case of African American Muslims to examine the intersection of religious inequality with other forms of disadvantage. It draws on more than six years of ethnographic and historical research in an African American Muslim community in a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, comparing the experiences of community members with existing research on first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants. It addresses the three most prominent axes of difference between African American and immigrant Muslims—race/ethnicity, class, and neighborhood disadvantage—to explicate the ways in which religion may compound existing inequalities, or in some cases create new forms of difference. It also shows how identifying as native-born Americans allows African American Muslims to claim religion as a cultural advantage in certain situations. Religion is complex not only when different forms of inequality intersect but when these intersections create a different way of understanding what religion means for people of faith.
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Smith, Katherine. "African Religions and Art in the Americas." Nova Religio 16, no. 1 (August 1, 2012): 5–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2012.16.1.5.
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This print symposium of Nova Religio is devoted to African religions and arts in the Americas, focusing specifically on devotional arts inspired by the Yoruba people of West Africa. The authors presented here privilege an emic approach to the study of art and religion, basing their work on extensive interviews with artists, religious practitioners, and consumers. These articles contribute an understanding of devotional arts that shows Africa, or the idea of Africa, remains a powerful political and aesthetic force in the religious imagination of the Americas.
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Akitoye, Hakeem A. "Islam and Traditional Titles in Contemporary Lagos Society: A Historical Analysis." International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences 25 (March 2014): 42–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.25.42.
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Lagos, an area basically inhabited by the Yoruba speaking people of South Western Nigeria and by extension some other parts of West Africa where Islam, Christianity and the African Traditional Religion are still being practised side by side till date with the Africans still being converted to the new faiths without dropping their traditional religion or cultural affiliations. This ideology is very common to the average African who still believes in his culture which has always tainted his way of life or as far as his religion is concerned should not interfere with his culture as the religion as not tacitly condemned some of these practices. This paper intends to examine the extent to which the Yoruba Muslims have been involved in syncretism especially as regards the introduction of the conferment of titles into the Muslim community.
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Jeffries, Bayyinah S. "Black Religion and Black Power: The Nation of Islam’s Internationalism." Genealogy 3, no. 3 (June 29, 2019): 34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3030034.
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The Nation of Islam’s influence has extended beyond the United States. This Black American Muslim movement has used the intersection of race and religion to construct a blueprint of liberation that has bonded people of African descent throughout the Diaspora. Their transnational dimensions and ideas of freedom, justice and equality have worked to challenge global white imperialism and white supremacy throughout the 20th century and beyond.
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Otiso, Richard Ondicho. "RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF EAST AFRICAN PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN IMMIGRANTS IN FINLAND." European Journal of Sociology 3, no. 1 (November 16, 2020): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.47672/ejs.493.
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Religion has been highlighted majorly in many scholarly works of sociologists as a key component of social integration. As people migrate from their countries of origin to different countries, they are often faced with difficulties of adapting into the new host society. As much as a lot of emphasis has been put on religion to be a positive influence in the process of social integration, it is not always the case. This article sought to point out the role of religion in social integration of protestant Christian immigrants in Finland as both a facilitator for social integration and a hindrance to social integration with focus on the experiences of East African Protestant Christian immigrants. Religious beliefs of the immigrants from respective countries of origin and the religiosity of the Finnish society serve as a foundation for the immigrant’s settlement and integration into the host society. This study described the process of social integration in a two dimensional approach whereby the first approach focused on the positive role of religion in immigrants integration and secondly the hindrance of religion in social integration. The study found out that religion is a major link in social integration and that it can facilitate social integration and as well hinder social integration, depending on the position it occupies within a host society. Such findings go a way to provide explanations as to why societies are different and why it is easy for religious immigrants to settle in certain societies than others.
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Segell, Glen. "Neo-colonialism in Africa and the Cases of Turkey and Iran." Insight on Africa 11, no. 2 (July 2019): 184–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0975087819845197.
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Africa is suffering from neo-colonialism for the same reasons that it suffered from colonialism. Neo-colonialism is the regressive impact of unregulated forms of aid, trade and foreign direct investment; and the collaboration of African leaders with foreign leaders to ensure that the interests of both are met with little concern for the development, sustainability and poverty reduction and wellbeing in African countries. The relationship is asymmetrical or at the cost of African states and their people, who are dependent rather that inter-dependent and do not profit through development or sustainability. They face destruction of their culture, religion and education through continued advancement of foreign culture, religion and language to supplant the African and growing radicalisation of the population. This is elaborated thematically under four headings: Africa the colonial dream, the emergence of neo-colonialism, the proponents of neo-colonialism and the element of religion. Evidence of Middle East states are shown as neo-colonialists in Africa discussed under the cases of Turkey and Iran. The motivation of the former is for the purposes of economics and the latter is for the purposes of religion. Both benefit also through status by projecting their influence as growing global actors. The breakdown of African nations rather than their positive construction and development is increasingly visible. The conclusions are that neo-colonialism is active.
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Johnson-Odim, Cheryl. "Mirror Images and Shared Standpoints: Black Women in Africa and in the African Diaspora." Issue: A Journal of Opinion 24, no. 2 (1996): 18–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047160700502297.
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Let me begin by defining two terms that I use in the title. By “mirror images” I mean people who look alike based on certain physical characteristics they have in common. These characteristics may not be exactly the same, but they are close enough that people are both self-identified and other-identified as looking the “same.”By “shared standpoints” I mean that people who have these are commonly enough situated in a set of circumstances or conditions due to shared factors such as ‘race,’ class, ethnicity, religion, sex etc. that they have a common perspective vis-á-vis a number of issues. People can have a shared standpoint on the basis of any one of these factors in common, or, a combination of them.
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Ottenberg, Simon. "Religion and ethnicity in the arts of a Limba Chiefdom." Africa 58, no. 4 (October 1988): 437–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1160351.
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Opening ParagraphThis article examines the major visual and performing arts of one society and explores what changes have occurred to them over roughly one hundred years as a consequence of external religious and ethnic forces. This is a holistic, processual view of a people's arts in a particular region, providing a model to balance the excellently detailed studies of specific art forms which now exist for Africa. Using a holistic view we will raise certain issues concerning changes in African art. One of the most significant is the interrelationship of ethnicity and religion. Scholars (Bravmann, 1974, 1983; Prussin, 1986) have written extensively on the influence of Islam on African art, but have not seriously raised the question of the ethnic factor associated with Islam, which is equally important. In the case of Islam and its carriers there is a delicate intermixing of religion and ethnicity which is at issue and needs exploration. Further, the holistic approach employed here brings to the fore the reasons behind the wide range of responses to change of the various art forms of a people. Why do some syncretise, some disappear and others remain unchanged? Again, the holistic view allows us to ask to what extent the arts of a people merely reflect forces of change, or do they play roles in leading and directing it? The approach requires considerable background history, which is presented below.
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Zoeteman, Corbin. "Religion in The Central African Republic Is Not the Problem, But Could be the Solution." Political Science Undergraduate Review 1, no. 2 (February 15, 2016): 98–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.29173/psur25.
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This paper examines the current conflict in the Central African Republic. I first outline the history of the region, beginning with its colonialization, showing that generations of its citizens have never experienced a stable and just government. I suggest this has lead its people to identify more with their religion instead of their collective nationality. Next I examine the religious undertones of the current conflict, emphasizing that religion is not the source of the problem, but rather a tool used by political factions to justify their destructive actions. I then examine religious peacebuilding exercises used in other conflicts and how they could be applied in the Central African Republic. Finally, I examine how religious leaders are already attempting to unite the country through religion. Overall I believe reconciliation between the factions is possible, and that peacebuilding exercises will lead to a stable and unified democratic government.
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Smith, Mitzi J. "Howard Thurman and the Religion of Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 17, no. 3 (October 25, 2019): 271–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/17455197-01703003.
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This essay examines Howard Thurman’s interpretation of the historical Jesus and the religion of Jesus in his 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited (jatd). Thurman interprets Jesus within his first century CE socio-historical context and from the perspective of disinherited African Americans. He articulates the significance of the religion of Jesus, versus religion about Jesus, for the disinherited and how it can ensure their survival. Since jatd addresses race/racism and class/classism but not the intersection of race, gender, and class, I place jatd in conversation with black feminist Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, womanist theologian Delores Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness, and Angela Sim’s Lynched, who focus on the survival of black women (Lorde and Williams) and the resilience of black people living in a culture of fear.
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Parsitau, Damaris Seleina. "LAW, RELIGION, AND THE POLITICIZATION OF SEXUAL CITIZENSHIP IN KENYA." Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 1 (April 2021): 105–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2021.12.
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AbstractIn Kenya, debates about sexual orientation have assumed center stage at several points in recent years, but particularly before and after the promulgation of the Constitution of Kenya in 2010. These debates have been fueled by religious clergy and by politicians who want to align themselves with religious organizations for respectability and legitimation, particularly by seeking to influence the nation's legal norms around sexuality. I argue that through their responses and attempts to influence legal norms, the religious and political leaders are not only responsible for the nonacceptance of same-sex relationships in Africa, but have also ensured that sexuality and embodiment have become a cultural and religious battleground. These same clergy and politicians seek to frame homosexuality as un-African, unacceptable, a threat to African moral and cultural sensibilities and sensitivities, and an affront to African moral and family values. Consequently, the perception is that homosexuals do not belong in Africa—that they cannot be entertained, accommodated, tolerated, or even understood. Ultimately, I argue that the politicization and religionization of same-sex relationships in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, has masked human rights debates and stifled serious academic and pragmatic engagements with important issues around sexual difference and sexual orientation while fueling negative attitudes toward people with different sexual orientations.
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Almeida, Nadi Maria de. "TOWARDS A CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO AFRICA TRADITIONAL RELIGION." INTERAÇÕES 16, no. 1 (March 28, 2021): 118–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.5752/p.1983-2478.2021v16n1p118-131.
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Inter-Religious dialogue is a demand for the mission. Based on the theological investigation of scholars who explore and write on the subject, the article analyses the theological challenge of Inter-Religious dialogue especially in approaching African Traditional Religions. The discussion concerns the Christian theology of religious pluralism with the local religion in Africa looking at the theological progress, not just from the abstract world of books, but also, from connecting with the life of the people, appreciating and connecting points of convergences with the local culture and religions. Still, a long way to go on the reflection and there needs to open wider our vision concerning the action of the Spirit that has been always present in Africa.
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Bompani, Barbara. "Religion and Development from Below: Independent Christianity in South Africa." Journal of Religion in Africa 40, no. 3 (2010): 307–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006610x525435.
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AbstractMost of the literature on African independent churches (AICs) in South Africa has not paid much attention to their economic and developmental role. In contrast, this article will show how AICs are involved in important economic activities such as voluntary mutual benefit societies, savings clubs, lending societies, stokvels (informal savings funds), and burial societies that control millions of South African rand. In light of firsthand empirical research, this article investigates these kinds of activities, and analyses independent churches’ developmental role. This will allow us to better understand how these communities play a strong and supportive function among Africans in a deprived economic situation. In a period of socio-political transformation in South Africa, AICs are able to answer the needs of the people and their hunger to rebuild an identity. My major critique of classical research on AICs is the failure of the literature to address ‘social change’ in a theoretically adequate way, as something more than just descriptions of ‘traditional’ social structures away from interpretations of modernity.
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Nweke, Kizito Chinedu. "The Renaissance of African Spiritualities vis-à-vis Christianity: Adopting the Model of Mutual Enrichment." Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 48, no. 2 (June 2019): 237–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0008429819830360.
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Christianity has been dominant in many parts of Africa especially since its colonial contact. Recently, however, there is a surge of interest in reviving indigenous spiritualities among Africans, both in Africa and in the diaspora. In Lagos, Nigeria, for example, shrines compete with churches and mosques for adherents and positions. Among the Igbos, a form of convenient interreligiousness has been developed in the society. When issues of practical expediency arise, the Christian would have the option of referring back to his/her traditional religion. Beyond Africa, the rise of African spiritualities has become conspicuous. For various reasons, ranging from Afrocentrism to anti-religious tendencies to the popular religions, from racial animosity to politico-economic ideologies, a lot of people, Africans and non-Africans, are embracing the neo-African spiritualities. This article is a study addressing this revival, by critically analyzing the reasons for its re-emergence, the challenges that have accompanied the revival and the implications of it in the Christian–African spirituality relationship. Can this renaissance in African spirituality bring forth or support a renaissance in Africa? Africa has about 450 million Christians, about 40% of the continent’s population. People of African origin equally make up a good number of Christians outside Africa. In other words, Christianity is decisive, ideologically and structurally, not just as a religion but also in the socio-political life of Africans. Finding a way to harmonize Christianity and African spiritualities, especially in the face of this renaissance, for the growth of Africa, is the aim of this article. Hence, it suggests the model of “Mutual Enrichment.”
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Wells-Oghoghomeh, Alexis. "Race and Religion in the Afterlife of Protestant Supremacy." Church History 88, no. 3 (September 2019): 767–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640719001902.
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In her book Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, Katharine Gerbner offers a rich history of Protestant planters’ efforts to tether Christian identity to free status and European descent in the American colonies, and missionaries’ answering attempts to reconcile African and indigenous conversion with enslavement. Gerbner's concept of Protestant Supremacy names the sociopolitical function and economic utility of “religious belonging,” specifically how Christian institutional, discursive, and ritual spaces demarcated boundaries between the enslaved and their enslavers, prefiguring race in the process. In this history of Atlantic slavery, religion is not subsidiary to the punitive, legal, sexual, and economic systems that enabled the enslavement of African and indigenous peoples in the Americas. Rather, Gerbner argues that Protestant Christianity provided a metastructure for the race-based caste systems that emerged in Barbados and other British colonies in the Americas. Through an intense and extensive interrogation of correspondence, missionary accounts, and institutional records from across the Atlantic, she traces how Protestant emissaries established “Christian” as a “protoracial” term and hastened the legal and discursive codification of lineage-based American caste systems in the process. The linkage of Christian identity and nascent whiteness not only exposes the Protestant architecture of American racial logics, but also sparks nuanced questions about how African, indigenous, and creole people oriented themselves toward Protestantism in early America. In this way, Gerbner definitively situates religion at the center of ongoing conversations about racial formation in the Americas, while opening up avenues for fresh speculation and imaginative intellectual trajectories in studies of American religion and Atlantic slavery.
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S, Mrs Jeni, and Dr J. G. Duresh. "The Problematical Portrayal of Racial Discrimination in Jacqueline Woodson’s novel “The Brown Girl Dreaming”." Think India 22, no. 3 (September 27, 2019): 865–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.26643/think-india.v22i3.8406.
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African American Literature can be defined as writings by people of African decent living in the United States. The genre began during the 18th and 19th centuries with writers such as poet phillis Wheatley and Orator Frederick Douglass reached as an early highpoint with the Harlem Renaissance and continues with the authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley, James Baldwin etc. The themes and issues explored in African American literature are tradition, culture, racism, religion, slavery, segregation, migration, and feminism and more. This paper deals with the perspectives of clashes between black and white communities through the novel The Brown Dreaming girl by Jacqueline Woodson. It clearly explains about the Whites ill-treatment and how the blacks suffer under the hands of white people. The essential part of human kind is Identification and Freedom which has been completely wiped off from the hearts and minds of the black people.
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Garofalo, Leo J. "Conjuring with Coca and the INCA: The Andeanization of Lima’s Afro-Peruvian Ritual Specialists, 1580-1690." Americas 63, no. 1 (July 2006): 53–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003161500062520.
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African diasporic communities throughout the Americas played important roles in creating colonial societies, providing both a population base and ways to organize everyday life as evidenced in subsistence activities, housing, language, religion, and artistic expression. In the Andes, Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists provide an example of black participation in forging a place in colonial society during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They earned both respect and fear, status and stigma, for their ability to solve a variety of problems and illnesses believed to be caused by the malice of other people or by supernatural forces. These ritualists also show how people of African descent helped invent widely-employed strategies to bridge cultures and link heterogeneous colonial populations in Andean cities.
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Kalkan, Kerem Ozan, Geoffrey C. Layman, and John C. Green. "Will Americans Vote for Muslims? Cultural Outgroup Antipathy, Candidate Religion, and U.S. Voting Behavior." Politics and Religion 11, no. 4 (June 6, 2018): 798–829. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1755048318000342.
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AbstractWe assess how likely Americans are to support political candidates who are Muslim, and the extent to which support for Muslim candidates is structured by “cultural outgroup antipathy”—generalized antipathy targeting cultural outgroups. We employ two survey experiments included in the 2007 and 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies that juxtapose a hypothetical state legislative candidate's Muslim faith with Arab ethnicity, African American race, and both Democratic and Republican party affiliation. Identifying a candidate as Muslim significantly reduces voter support and that reduction is largest among people with higher levels of cultural outgroup antipathy. The effect is consistent regardless of whether the candidate is also identified as being Arab or African American or is just presented as a Muslim. We also find that cultural outgroup antipathy diminished electoral support for same-party Muslim candidates among Democrats but not among Republicans.
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Djité, Paulin G. "From liturgy to technology." Language Problems and Language Planning 32, no. 2 (June 6, 2008): 133–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lplp.32.2.03dji.
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Language is generally not perceived as playing a significant role in the causes of underdevelopment in Africa, and therefore not thought of or mentioned in trying to work out solutions to this situation. The absence of linguistic input in development planning in Africa is one of the key reasons why the majority of the African people are left “on the edge of road.” This paper argues for a language sensitive and linguistically informed approach to technology transfer and development problems. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can serve to promote African languages much better than religion ever did, and language policies and language-in-education policies in Africa need to be cognisant and take advantage of the opportunities the digital era offers the Continent. Whilst, according to Ferguson, “religion has been one of the most powerful forces leading to language change and language spread,” African languages have yet to overcome the linguistic barrier to participation in knowledge societies, and most of them have no interface with science and information technology (e.g. the Internet). Why can’t African languages be languages of technology? How can this be achieved?
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Majeed Kadhem, Suhaib. "Conflict between Tradition and Change in Chinua Achebe's postcolonial novel Things Fall Apart." Al-Adab Journal 1, no. 124 (September 15, 2018): 81–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.31973/aj.v1i124.115.
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In studying the history of Asian and African countries, the colonial period plays an important role in understanding their history, religion, tradition and culture. Things Fall Apart is an English novel by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, published in 1957, which shows the African culture, their religious and traditions through the Igbo society. This novel captures the colonial period and its effect on Igbo society. It is a response and a record of control of western colonialism on the traditional values of the African people. This paper treats the novel as a postcolonial text, by focusing on the clash between occupied and colonizers, the clash between tradition and change, and the clash between different cultures, The Europe Empire and the African natives
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Muhoza, Dieudonné Ndaruhuye, Annelet Broekhuis, and Pieter Hooimeijer. "Variations in Desired Family Size and Excess Fertility in East Africa." International Journal of Population Research 2014 (May 27, 2014): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/486079.
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This contribution studies the variation in desired family size and excess fertility in four East African countries by analyzing the combined impact of wealth, education, religious affiliation, and place of residence. The findings show an enormous heterogeneity in Kenya. Wealthy and higher educated people have fertility desires close to replacement level, regardless of religion, while poor, uneducated people, particularly those in Muslim communities, have virtually uncontrolled fertility. Rwanda is at the other extreme: poor, uneducated people have the same desired fertility as their wealthy, educated compatriots, regardless of their religion—a case of “poverty Malthusianism.”. The potential for family planning is high in both countries as more than 50% of the women having 5 children or more would have preferred to stop at 4 or less. Tanzania and Uganda have an intermediate position in desired family size and a lower potential for family planning. Generally, the main factor that sustains higher fertility is poverty exacerbated by religious norms among the poor only.
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Kravchenko, Elena V. "The Matter of Race: Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black and the Retelling of African American History through Orthodox Christian Forms." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 298–333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab025.
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Abstract This article looks at how contemporary African American converts to Orthodox Christianity, specifically the members of the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black,1 use religion to understand and remember the struggle of Black people against racial discrimination in the United States. As I examine how practitioners interpreted and preserved African American history—the attempts to abolish slavery, the fight to end lynching, and the Civil Rights movement—through Orthodox forms of materiality, I demonstrate that African Americans drew on an established tradition to authorize new ways of practicing Orthodoxy and being Orthodox. I argue that by using icons of the Theotokos to tell stories about her intervention during a lynching, memorializing lives of Black American martyrs in cemetery stones, and engaging with relics of African American saints, these practitioners followed in the footsteps of other Orthodox people—who creatively adopted the ritual life of the Church to their own needs while making an effort to adhere to its traditional dogmatism—and therefore should be considered as a paradigmatic and not an exceptional example of Orthodox Christians.
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Pijl, Yvon van der. "Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity: African-Surinamese Perceptions and Experiences." Exchange 39, no. 2 (2010): 179–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/016627410x12608581119830.
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AbstractPentecostal-Charismatic Christianity (P/C) is one of the fastest-growing religions worldwide. Some scholars connect P/C’s success with broad processes of globalization. Others try to unravel more personal dynamics of conversion. This article seeks to understand both global forces and local cultural reasons to believe. It focuses first on the remarkable paradox that explains the movement’s popularity among African-Surinamese (Caribbean) believers: what appears as P/C’s rejection of their traditional religious system turns out to be a reinterpretation of beliefs and practices. From this line of argument I argue that P/C actually enables people, by ways of demonization, to express their spirituality and translate magico-religious conceptions into an acceptable framework. In conclusion, I put this Pentecostal paradox into larger perspective, stressing similarities with other religious movements and exposing an eclectic attitude towards religion that does not only meet personal belief experiences, but also challenges the hegemonic position of established Christian churches in Suriname.
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Harries, Jim. "Theology that Emerges from Cognitive Science: Applied to African Development." Open Theology 4, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 15–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2018-0002.
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Abstract Recent developments in cognitive science are here interpreted as an apologetic for Christian theology. Naturalistic faiths are suggested to be dependent on the invention of ‘religion’, and domestication of the foreign through translation. A refusal to accept that a relationship with God is something that develops in the course of reflection, has added to his apparent invisibility. Advocates of embodied thinking who effectively undermine Descartes’ philosophy, open the door to theological reflection. A gender-based exploration reveals that means of predicting the embodied nature of thinking also point to the significance of God. Because human thinking is embodied, God also is perceived by people through his embodied impact - much as is the wind. That correct understanding of God brings human wellbeing, is here suggested to be as true for Africa as for Europe.
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Kuester, Volker. "Who, with whom, about what? Exploring the Landscape of Inter-Religious Dialogue." Exchange 33, no. 1 (2004): 73–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1572543041172666.
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AbstractIn this article the author presents a new way of approaching people adhering to other religions. After a discussion of the meetings and relationships between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and those between Christianity and Hinduism, Buddhism or African religion he tries to create a new space between inclusivism and exclusivism. He calls this space the 'third space'. It is an 'in-between', a meeting place for the dialogue of life, a place of wisdom for the dialogue of the mind, and a place of spiritual experiences for the dialogue of the heart. Theologically speaking it is a space of transcendence that for each religion is filled in a distinct way.
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Swindell, Kenneth. "Faith, Work, Farming and Business: The Role of the Spiritual in West African Livelihoods." Journal of Asian and African Studies 54, no. 6 (April 25, 2019): 819–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021909619840754.
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Local religions, Islam and Christianity influence and shape West African livelihoods where for many spirituality is an integral part of work, time and making a living. For farmers the spiritual imbues their understanding of the natural world, as well as affecting the control and allocation of resources and their timely use. For the Sufist Mouride brotherhood of Senegal their work ethic nurtures agriculture and supports a diaspora of petty traders and businesses. Meanwhile, the Christian Pentecostal Church encourages myriad small businesses, and its promotion of a work ethic that has occasioned the contention of a Weberian-style transformation. The creation of sustainable networks of socio-economic change through religious adherence is not in doubt, but whether this will promote a general developmental shift is more contentious. Pentecostals emphasize education and literacy, a priority for most governments, but without job opportunities there is widespread discontent among the young, even the educated. Furthermore, the young are disenchanted by patrimonial-clientelist societies, and it is through religion that violent dissent is articulated. Assertions that religion per se is inimical to social and economic change in West Africa are difficult to substantiate. What is a problem for farmers and small businesses is the uncertainty not just of their immediate environments, but of the volatility and dysfunctional nature of the state, and a lack of enabling conditions. Thus, religion and spirituality provide help in difficult times for people, but also opportunities for improvement in their livelihoods and lifestyles.
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Grenham, Thomas G. "Reconstructing Christian Culture toward the Globalization of Gospel Vision: Identity, Empowerment, and Transformation in an African Context." Missiology: An International Review 31, no. 2 (April 2003): 223–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182960303100206.
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This essay explores the cultural phenomenon of globalization ushered in through worldwide economic market expansions, international travel, technological advances, and rapid Internet communications. These transformations are influencing and changing not only cultures and individual nation-states; they are also impacting religious meaning and faith everywhere. By examining the case study of the Sakalava people of Madagascar, who practice an indigenous religion known as tromba spirit possession, we can learn how this specific cultural and religious context copes with external economic, political, cultural, and religious forces. The research also explains how Christianity needs to interact with the Sakalava religion in reconstructing the Sakalava culture and discovering gospel values already present and active. This has worldwide implications for a Christian mission of evangelization. The article concludes by outlining some consequences for Christian evangelization that attend to the local and the universal impact of the gospel vision.
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Reuber, Alexandra. "Voodoo Dolls, Charms, And Spells In The Classroom: Teaching, Screening, And Deconstructing The Misrepresentation Of The African Religion." Contemporary Issues in Education Research (CIER) 4, no. 8 (August 15, 2011): 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.19030/cier.v4i8.5611.
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New Orleans voodoo, also called crole voodoo, is an amalgamation of an honoring of the spirits of the dead, a respect for the elderly and the spiritual life, African knowledge of herbs and charms, and European elements of Catholicism. It is a religion of ancestor worship that is unknown to us, and that we are not necessarily exposed to or included in. As such, it is something foreign to our own belief system. Being ignorant about what the religion entails, people in general stigmatize it as something not worthy to discuss, nor to practice. Unfortunately, popular novels like Voodoo Season (2006) and Voodoo Dreams (1995) by Jowell Parker Rhodes, and especially Hollywoods production of horror movies such as White Zombie (1932), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1987), Voodoo Dawn (1998) or Hoodoo for Voodoo (2006), do not provide the public with a truthful background of the African, Haitian, or New Orleanean voodoo tradition. All too often these fictional sources fuel the already existing misrepresentations of the religion and represent it as something shadowy, highly secretive, and fearful. This differentiated introduction to New Orleans voodoo via Iain Softleys film The Skeleton Key (2004) exposes students to the major characteristics of the religion, makes them aware of popular cultures falsified voodoo construct, and teaches them how to deconstruct it. This interactive approach is student centered, appeals to their individual intelligences and learning styles, promotes critical thinking, and trains analytical skills.
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Pacho, Titus Ogalo. "Impact of Globalisation on African and Its Implications to Education." Social Science, Humanities and Sustainability Research 1, no. 1 (May 13, 2020): p81. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/sshsr.v1n1p81.
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Globalisation is one of the most powerful worldwide forces transforming society. It dominates today’s world as a major driver of change. Globalisation has brought about an agglomeration of cultures, where diverse cultures not only interact but also sometimes clash. It permeates through all spheres of life including the environment, politics, economy, prosperity, culture, religion, education, and human well-being in societies across the globe. The present “villagization” of the world has greatly affected many African countries in almost all aspects of life. It has done so in both positive and negative ways. With the emergence of a global society, social, cultural, economic, political, technological and environmental events in one part of the world quickly come to be significant for people in other parts of the world. This theoretical paper assesses the impact of globalisation for Africa and its implications to education.
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Johnson, Sylvester A. "The Rise of Black Ethnics: The Ethnic Turn in African American Religions, 1916–1945." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 20, no. 2 (2010): 125–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2010.20.2.125.
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AbstractDuring the world war years of the early twentieth century, new African American religious movements emerged that emphasized black heritage identities. Among these were Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew's Congregation of Commandment Keepers (Jewish) and “Noble” Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America (Islamic). Unlike African American religions of the previous century, these religious communities distinctly captured the ethos of ethnicity (cultural heritage) that pervaded American social consciousness at the time. Their central message of salvation asserted that blacks were an ethnic people distinguished not by superficial phenotype but by membership in a heritage that reached far beyond the bounds of American history and geography. The academic study of these religions has largely moved from dismissal and cynicism to serious engagement with African American Jews and Muslims as veritable forms of religion. Despite this progress among scholars, some recent studies continue todenythat Matthew’s and Ali's communities were authentically Jewish and Islamic (respectively). When scholars dispense with theological or racial biases that bifurcate religions into ‘true’ and ‘false’ forms, the study of these black ethnic religions might best yield important insights for understanding the linkage among ethnicity, the nation-state, and religion. The religious reasoning of Matthew and Ali produced resourceful, complicated challenges to dominant colonial and racist paradigms for understanding agency and history. Their theology is appropriately discerned not as illusion, hybridity, or confusion but as thoughtful anticolonial expressions of Judaism and Islam that sought inclusion and honor through black ethnicity. At a time when African Americans were viewed as cultureless and without any legacy of inheritance except the deformities of slavery, the rise of black ethnics introduced religious traditions that demonstrated blacks were indeed a people with heritage.
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Basson, Ray. "Designing the Islamic Component of a Proposed World Religion Curriculum for South African State Schools." American Journal of Islam and Society 12, no. 4 (January 1, 1995): 518–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v12i4.2369.
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An aspect of curriculum policy-making under the past Nationalistgovernment had to do with policy being used to develop and impose thestate’s nationalist and religious ideology-Christian National Educationonall schools in South Africa after its assumption of power in 1948. Oneconsequence of this policy was that the rich diversity of South Africans asa people holding to multiple, positive, and idiosyncratic beliefs linked tovarious communal identities was sacrificed to a state-imposed pseudocommonality.Part of the challenge of educational reconstruction under thedemocratic government elected in April 1994 is to develop curricula thatboth recognize the diversity of positive ideals, beliefs, and faith whileremaining impartial, if not agnostic,’ toward any one belief and to contributeto the development of a new and shared national identity.Following ministerial approval, an “Accommodation Model” forteaching religion has been announced recently. In it, schools are allowedto choose between teaching “one . . . faith” as an academic curriculum, a“world religion” curriculum, or a “combination” of the two, as religiouseducation in the core curriculum and/or as an academic subject leading tocertification. We suggest that the impetus for a world religion curriculumhas to do with a desire to develop in all students an understanding of thediversity of faiths in the country and to move away from the solely Biblecenteredprograms of the past. In this article, we consider the design of theIslamic component for inclusion as one component in the proposed worldreligion curriculum. Its purposes are considered against the backdrop of ...
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Kanu, Ikechukwu Anthony. "Igwebuike theology of Omenani and the missionary bifurcation of horizons." OGIRISI: a New Journal of African Studies 16 (October 2, 2020): 127–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/og.v16i1.8.
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African theology points to the fact that every particular situation or context calls for a particular theological reflection, that is, if the theological reflection is to make meaning within that unique circumstance. It is within this context that Igwebuike theology of Omenani emerges in relation to the understanding of culture as the Seed of the Word of God, which already pre-existed in Africa even before the emergence of the Western missionaries. The purpose of adopting this idea of culture as the Seed of the Word of God is to enhance the reconciliation between the African and Christian/Western ’worldhoods’. This piece presented the African culture as an important element in evangelization in Africa, as it is the spirit that animates the African people. It, therefore, located the Seed of the Word of God in the Omenani (the law of the land) of the African people through which they were able to achieve holiness even before the advent of the gospel. It observed that the failures of the missionary enterprise were majorly because of their lack of openness to the African religion and culture. The purpose of this study is to bridge the bifurcation created by the missionaries between the Christian and African ‘worldhoods’. The theoretical framework employed in this research is the Igwebuike sympathetic and non-derogatory framework, which emphasizes evangelization with a sense of understanding.
Keywords: Omenani, Logos Spermatikos, Culture, African, Igbo, Evangelization, Igwebuike
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Kallander, Samantha Watters, Rebecca Gordon, and Dina L. G. Borzekowski. "“People Will Continue to Suffer If the Virus Is Around”: A Qualitative Analysis of Sub-Saharan African Children’s Experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 11 (May 25, 2021): 5618. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18115618.
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Children are particularly impressionable and at risk during a global public health crisis, making it important to examine their unique perspectives. To hear and understand sub-Saharan African children’s experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted an exploratory qualitative analysis based on interviews with 51 children, ages 9 to 13, from Nigeria, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. Applying the organization of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, we reveal how COVID-19 affected children’s daily lives and domestic challenges, schooling and neighborhood issues, media use (and its relationship to knowledge and fear of the disease), perceptions of the country and government response, and thoughts of religion and hope. Children’s responses differed greatly, but patterns emerged across sex, age, household size, religion, and country. This study offers guidance and recommendations for meeting the needs of children, especially in times of crisis.
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Maslova, O. V., and I. A. Dzhidaryan. "NOTIONS ABOUT LOVE AND CULTURE: RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY." Bulletin of Kemerovo State University, no. 2 (July 8, 2016): 114–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.21603/2078-8975-2016-2-114-119.
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This research focuses on the value-meaning aspect of love in different cultures. In this study, we looked at people from Central African Republic (CAR) and Russia, and tested the hypothesis on how much influence a culture has on the way love is viewed. 50 people from Central African Republic and 50 people from Russia took part in this research. Groups had equal gender representation (25 females and 25 males in each group) and comparable age. As a methodology, we used our questionnaire “Notions about love” and classical associative experiment. Comparative analysis of the data showed that notions of love even in such distant cultures have many more similarities than differences. In both groups (Russia and CAR), the idealization of this feeling (love) prevails. Love is seen as a power that helps people create, grow and overcome obstacles. Another similarity is that both groups associate love with dedication and the meaning of life. Data from the associative experiment confirms this commonality, because in both groups, love is associated with passion, friendship and patience. At the same time, the results of this experiment show that concept of love is ambivalent among the Russians: they associate love not only with positive feelings, but with suffering and selfsacrifice. Russians are more likely to agree with relatively negative statements about love. Notions about love among people from Central African Republic is mostly associated with religion and action-related components.
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Naty, Alexander, Morie Kaneko (ed.), and Masayoshi Shigeta (ed.). "The ak’aat k’aal movement among the Aari people of south-west Ethiopia." Aethiopica 9 (September 24, 2012): 49–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.9.1.240.
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Students of African studies have reported a variety of religious movements under the rubric of independent churches. These include the Cherubim and Seraphim, the Church of the Lord, the Church of Simon Kimbangu, the Zionist and Ethiopianist’s independent churches in southern Africa. Most of these churches emerged in those countries that were under European colonial domination. Ethiopia did not experience European colonialism. Indeed, imperial Ethiopia conquered militarily less powerful kingdoms and chiefdoms that were located to the south and south-western of the then Abyssinia. The conquest of formerly independent populations in southern Ethiopia during the late nineteenth century introduced unequal power relations between the indigenous people and the new settlers. This paper examines the evolution of a religious movement referred to as ak’aat k’aal among the Aari people of south-west Ethiopia in the context of the indigenous forms of domination. Although the movement was short-lived, it was meant to enable the Aari to cope with the social psychological stress that the serfdom system generated. The Aari were not able to practice their traditional religion because of the serfdom. Therefore, they had to abandon their religion. However, doing this without finding a substitute was incompatible with Aari religious ideology. The ak’aat k’aal was a substitute just for a short period. ATTENTION: Due to copy-right no online publication is provided.
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Islam, Momtajul. "The Role of Native Weaknesses and Cultural Conflicts in Escalating Colonial Supremacy in the Igbo Society, as Perceived in Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe." International Linguistics Research 4, no. 2 (April 27, 2021): p19. http://dx.doi.org/10.30560/ilr.v4n2p19.
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The colonial invaders and their repressive means of governance in Africa were not the only reasons that could be solely held accountable for the fall of indigenous African society during the colonial invasion. Native weaknesses, socio-cultural conflicts and hegemony were equally responsible for the falling apart of native social setups when confronted with colonial alternatives. Native people had had their own covert religious and cultural limitations long before the colonizers entered their soil. The colonial powers cleverly used such inherent societal flaws of African people as excuses to impose European religion and traditions on them. Chinua Achebe does not blindly idealize native African traditions in his writings. He frequently narrates his doubts on flawed socio-cultural practices and moral dualities in the native society, too. This paper is an attempt to explore how innate weaknesses of native Igbo people, socio-cultural conflicts and domination in the native society have also made it easier for the colonial administration to prolong their supremacy in the Igbo land, as depicted in Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe. It also elaborates how Ezeulu, the chief priest of god Ulu, falls from dominance in his society because of his intent to execute personal desires which jeopardize his societal role in the Igbo land.
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Mulaudzi, P. A. "THE DOMBA LANGUAGE VARIETY AS A VEHICLE OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS." Southern African Journal for Folklore Studies 24, no. 2 (September 26, 2016): 186–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1016-8427/1616.
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Among Vhavenḓa, domba is an indigenous initiation institution that both men and women attend. This is a unique indigenous institution which prepares young men and young women together in order to understand the importance of marriage, child-birth and other aspects of life. And as a result, this paper outlines the use of the language variety associated with this institution as well as its educational significance among the Vhavenḓa. The use of this variety, when domba is in session, plays an important role in educating young men and women to be responsible for their families and properties. In addition, cultural values and norms which are no longer observed today in many African communities are also taught by this institution. Although this variety promotes safe sex and sex only after marriage, it has also served as a breeding ground for a gendered variety of the language because it advocates that men and women should not be treated equally. Despite some difficulties, an understanding of the role played by the domba language variety in education by the Venda people and of the education received by initiates in this institution will allow us to recapture the space we need to reinvent ourselves, and to fashion knowledge systems and strategies to ensure a responsible adult life. This will empower us to become independent people capable of producing a value system worthy of our dignity.
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Masoga, M. A., and A. Nicolaides. "Christianity and Indigenisation in Africa." European Journal of Theology and Philosophy 1, no. 4 (August 8, 2021): 18–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.24018/theology.2021.1.4.33.
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In a quest for greater coherence between parochial identities, culture and Christianity, there exists an African consciousness which seeks to indigenise and decolonise Christianity. Africans are profoundly religious people who view their faith as part of their way of life, as strengthening their cultures and providing a moral compass for daily living. In efforts to transform society, the Christian religion has played a significant role in the path to African development. Christianity in Africa dates to the very inception of the church. Africans consequently played a crucial role in establishing the doctrines and theology of the early church. While African Traditional religion (ATR) is paramount, it is the purpose of this article to suggest that the Christian faith has and continuous to play a significant role on the African continent in its development. While there are many indigenous African beliefs, these have been to a large extent supported by Christianity in a quest to systematize novel knowledge and promote peace and tolerance across the continent. Many Africans have sought facets of Christianity that are similar to their religious and personal practices and continue to do so. Thus, while there exist numerous similarities and also differences between Christianity and ATR, it is imperative to preserve old-style regional distinctiveness and Christianity as the unifying rudiments in nation building endeavours and in efforts to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Africans can and should come to comprehend the Triune Godhead as being consistent with their own spiritual consciousness and existential veracities. Indigenization of Christianity requires enculturation and essentially an understanding that it is indeed ecumenical and also embraces diversity and fundamentally requires viewing Holy Scriptures and the truths they propound as being applicable to any context and cultural milieu across the ages. Christians after all espouse a faith in the Ekklesia or body of Christ for all its people who are the Laos of God.
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Òkéwándé, Olúwọlé Tẹ́wọ́gboyè, and Adéfúnkẹ Kẹhìndé Adébáyọ. "Investigating African Belief in the Concept of Reincarnation: The case of Ifá and Ayò Ọlọ́pọ́n. Symbolism among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies 13, no. 2 (2021): 267–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2021.209.
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The concept of reincarnation, a situation where a dead person comes back to life, is as old as human beings. However, there is divergence in the belief among various religions. African religion such as Ifá uses symbols to validate the belief in reincarnation. Ifá is the foundation of the culture of the Yoruba people. The present study aims to define the concept of reincarnation in Ifá and in ayò ọlọ́pọ́n to substantiate African beliefs in the concept of reincarnation. No known work either relates Ifá with the concept of reincarnation or connects ayò ọlọ́pọ́n with Ifá to solve a cultural problem. The present study fills this gap. Symbolism, a mode in semiotics where an object signifies or represents something or somebody, is adopted for the analysis of the study since symbolism is fundamental to Ifá. The visitation of Odù in Ifá is related to the ayò game, linking the symbolism in both Ifá and ayò ọlọ́pọ́n to the realization or application of the concept of reincarnation in human life, especially among Africans and the Yoruba people. It is determined that there is synergy between Ifá and ayò ọlọ́pọ́n, and reincarnation. The study concludes that reincarnation is an encapsulated concept illustrated by Ifá and ayò ọlọ́pọ́n- the religious and social life of the Yoruba people. African cultural symbols are tangible means of cultural heritage that solve contemporary and controversial human issues such as the African belief in reincarnation.
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Booker, Vaughn. "“An Authentic Record of My Race”: Exploring the Popular Narratives of African American Religion in the Music of Duke Ellington." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 25, no. 1 (2015): 1–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rac.2015.25.1.1.
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AbstractEdward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899–1974) emerged within the jazz profession as a prominent exponent of Harlem Renaissance racial uplift ideals about incorporating African American culture into artistic production. Formed in the early twentieth century's middle-class black Protestant culture but not a churchgoer in adulthood, Ellington conveyed a nostalgic appreciation of African American Christianity whenever hewrote music to chronicle African American history. This prominent jazz musician's religious nostalgia resulted in compositions that conveyed to a broader American audience a portrait of African American religiosity that was constantly “classical” and static—not quite primitive, but never appreciated as a modern aspect of black culture.This article examines several Ellington compositions from the late 1920s through the 1960s that exemplify his deployment of popular representations of African American religious belief and practice. Through the short filmBlack and Tanin the 1920s, the satirical popular song “Is That Religion?” in the 1930s, the long-form symphonic movementBlack, Brown and Beigein the 1940s, the lyricism of “Come Sunday” in the 1950s, and the dramatic prose of “My People” in the 1960s, Ellington attempted to capture a portrait of black religious practice without recognition of contemporaneous developments in black Protestant Christianity in the twentieth century's middle decades. Although existing Ellington scholarship has covered his “Sacred Concerts” in the 1960s and 1970s, this article engages themes and representations in Ellington's work prefiguring the religious jazz that became popular with white liberal Protestants in America and Europe. This discussion of religious narratives in Ellington's compositions affords an opportunity to reflect upon the (un)intended consequences of progressive, sympathetic cultural production, particularly on the part of prominent African American historical figures in their time. Moreover, this article attempts to locate the jazz profession as a critical site for the examination of racial and religious representation in African American religious history.
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Asamoah-Gyadu, J. Kwabena. "'"Christ is the Answer": What is the Question?' A Ghana Airways Prayer Vigil and its Implications for Religion, Evil and Public Space." Journal of Religion in Africa 35, no. 1 (2005): 93–117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1570066052995834.
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AbstractReligion and life, both private and public, remain strongly linked in Africa. This was recently expressed in a prayer vigil organized by Ghana Airways when the staff and management invited a London-based Ghanaian evangelist, Lawrence Tetteh, to lead a 'healing and deliverance' service aimed at exorcizing evil spirits from the affairs of the airline and releasing it from its predicaments. The organization of a healing and deliverance session by a public corporation, it is argued, is symptomatic of the quick African resort to the sphere of religion in the search for solutions to life's difficulties. Religious functionaries including Pentecostal/ Charismatic pastors are important in Africa as purveyors of powerful prayers, potent medicines, and amulets for protection against evil. The Pentecostal 'healing and deliverance' ministry has become popular in African contexts like that of Ghana because it takes African worldviews of mystical causality seriously. This Christianity promises Christian alternatives to the search for security that drives people into the courts of other religious functionaries.
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Adamczyk, Amy, and Gary LaFree. "Religion and Support for Political Violence among Christians and Muslims in Africa." Sociological Perspectives 62, no. 6 (August 16, 2019): 948–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0731121419866813.
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Researchers have found consistently that religion reduces criminal behavior. Yet rising levels of political violence are frequently attributed to a new wave of religious terrorism. Our study seeks to reconcile this apparent discrepancy by studying the attitudes of people living in 34 African nations. Using data from the Afrobarometer survey and mixed modeling, we examine the influence of individual and collective religiosity for shaping civic engagement and willingness to engage in political violence. While individual religiosity decreases support for violent political action, collective religiosity increases it. The effects of religiosity are the same for Muslims and Christians and the country religious context minimally affects residents’ civic engagement and interest in violent political behavior. Our study underscores the importance of the theoretical and empirical distinction between individual and collective religiosity and offers insight into how civic engagement can be a pathway through which religion shapes support for political violence.
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VENKATACHALAM, MEERA. "BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE CROSS: RELIGION, SLAVERY, AND THE MAKING OF THE ANLO-EWE." Journal of African History 53, no. 1 (March 2012): 45–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853712000059.
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ABSTRACTThe idea that mission Christianity played a pivotal role in the creation of modern African ethnic identities has become paradigmatic. Yet, the actual cultural and social processes that facilitated the widespread reception of specific ethnic identities have been under-researched. Suggesting that historians have overemphasised the role of Christian schooling and theology in ethnic identity formation, this article examines how the Anlo people of south-eastern Ghana came, over the twentieth century, to recognise themselves as part of the larger Ewe ethnic group. Although Christian missionaries were the first to conceive of ‘Ewe’ as a broad ethnic identity, a corpus of non-Christian ritual practices pioneered by inland Ewe slave women were crucial to many Anlos' embrace of Eweness.
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Bom, K. L. "Verder reiken naar genezing. Een theologisch gesprek tussen christenen uit Afrika, de Andes en Nederland." Theologia Reformata 63, no. 4 (December 1, 2020): 390–404. http://dx.doi.org/10.21827/tr.63.4.390-404.
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This article aims to establish an intercultural theological dialogue among African, South American Andes and Dutch perspectives about healing. Part one explores different cultural contexts. Traditional cultures in both African and the Andes contribute to the Christian and integral understandings of healing of the body and mind of the individual, the spiritual and social dimensions, and the material environment. In the Netherlands, however, illness and healing are mainly understood from a modern point of view, one which understands religion and spirituality as strictly private issues that should be separated from public health care. Part two examines three major themes of the intercultural encounter on healing among people from these three contexts: (1) the nature – supernature divide; (2) Divine providence; and, (3) the power of the Holy Spirit.
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Johnson, Jerah. "Jim Crow laws of the 1890s and the origins of New Orleans jazz: correction of an error." Popular Music 19, no. 2 (April 2000): 243–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000000143.
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A seriously misleading error has crept into almost all the literature on the origins of New Orleans jazz. The error mistakenly attributes to the Jim Crow laws of the 1890s a significant role in the formation of the city's jazz tradition.Jazz historians have done a reasonably good job of depicting the two black communities that existed in new Orleans from the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 until the twentieth century. One community comprised a French-speaking Catholic group who lived mostly in downtown New Orleans, i.e. the area of the city down-river from Canal Street. Before the Civil War this group, commonly called Creoles, or Black Creoles, but more accurately called Franco-Africans, comprised free people of colour as well as slaves, and after the war consisted of their descendants who perpetuated the group's language, religion and musical tradition, which combined French, African and Caribbean elements.Members of the other black community were English-speaking Protestants who lived mostly in uptown new Orleans. That group, before the Civil War, was made up largely of slaves brought to New Orleans by Americans who flooded into Louisiana after the 1803 Purchase, though it also included some free people of colour. After the war, the descendants of these immigrants continued their language, religion and musical tradition, which came mostly from the rural South. There Anglo-Africans were generally less prosperous and less educated than the downtown Franco-African or Creole community.
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Bourdillon, M. F. C. "Anthropological Approaches To the Study of African Religions." Numen 40, no. 3 (1993): 217–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852793x00167.
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AbstractThis paper arose from a presentation to an I.H.A.R. conference on the study of religions in Africa. The paper looks at lessons that might be learned from social anthropologists for the study of African religions. I start by looking at problems in collecting data: there are the limitations of the observer's point of view, the pervasiveness of relations of power between observer and observed, and limitations even of the views of members of the society we might wish to study. Post-modernist anthropologists emphasise the need for sensitivity to the perspectives of their subjects, which requires long immersion in the culture concerned together with an awareness of the limitations of the anthropologist's own perspective. This in turn requires a style of presentation which gives space to informants' perspectives, and which clearly displays the anthropologist's role in the collection and interpretation of data. The paper points out that although this style of presentation has advantages for the interpretation of other religions, it does not pay attention to causal connections between religion and other social phenomena, which can have important consequences for the people concerned. Finally, the paper delves into problems of relativism in the study of religions, and questions both the possibility and the desirability of value-free academic discourse. The problem of avoiding ethnocentricism in the study of religions cannot be avoided simply by abstaining from judgement.