The debate regarding the continuity between African traditional religion and Christianity has been raging since the early 19th century. According to theologian Tony Evans, W. E. B. Du Bois argued that the Black church was the only institution that started in Africa and survived slavery. Contrary to Du Bois, historian E. Franklin Frazier believed that there was no correlation between the Black church and ancient African religious practices. He believed that because of the lack of cultural transference, the African- American experience in America is a new institution with no historical reference.
In recent years, historian Henry H. Mitchell argues in his book Black Belief: Folk Beliefs of Blacks in America and West Africa that Du Bois was correct in his assertion. Black faith in America today, as he states, is a carryover from traditional African religions and thus to think of the Black church as a mere variant form of white missionary endeavors is historically inaccurate.
Mitchell argues that Southern plantations were hubs of cultural transference. Slaves brought their culture, influences, habits, religious inclinations and a myriad of other aspects from their past to the United States. Furthermore, because of the “re-Africanization” of plantations with new slaves constantly being bought from Africa, these Southern homesteads were bastions of African cultural heritage.
The sustaining and reinforcing of this heritage was aided by the development of the “invisible institution” where slaves developed a new community and the role of the black preacher, who in African traditional religion passed down oral traditions, was solidified as civic leader and primary religious communicator. Because of the African religious sensibilities that permeated everyday life, the religious predispositions of Africans assisted, not thwarted, their capacity to understand the Christian faith.
Mitchell argues, rather convincingly, that Europeans simply affixed Christian theology to preexisting theological and social structures. Like the altar in Athens to the “Unknown God,” (Acts 17:23) Christianity, inherently, would not have been alien to the West Africans arriving at American Southern plantations.
In spite of the varied forms and systems, religious consciousness permeates every portion of African life; secularity has no reality in the African existence. As Nigerian scholar J. Omosade Awolalu explains in his book Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites, contemporary African scholars believe that generally all people groups of Africa believe in a supreme, self-existent deity who is responsible for the genesis of man, maintains the heavens, and brought into existence the subordinate deities who are his functionaries and the intermediaries of his theocratic universe.
The Gospel Clarifies
African Faiths
The gospel, therefore, brings clarity to African traditional religion because it places the transcendent deity of the African cosmology in proper context. Through the Yoruba religion, theology was communicated through the Odu, a binary symbolic system that serves as a vehicle of oral tradition. As Evans argues, in the Odu, Oludumare is seen as magisterial and supreme beyond other deities. Within the African cosmology, this supreme deity, who is also known as Mungu, Mulungu, Katonda, Ngai, Asis, and other names among African tribes, presides over the pantheon of his subordinates.
To the surprise of some, contemporary scholars argue that a distinct sense of monotheism lies at the heart of African traditional religion because these lesser deities have no power on their own and acquiesced to Oludumare’s will, similar to Jewish and Christian understandings of Yahweh’s sovereignty. Oludumare is revered for his justice and goodness, and according to Yoruba tradition, this omnipotent deity is all wise, all knowing, all seeing, and he never errs.
Another distinct feature of African traditional religion is the integral role of sacrifices in the life of Yoruba. Sacrifices were the manner they sought favor from a god and drove away evil spirits. To find favor from Olodumare, the intermediary deities require appeasement because, according to the Yoruba, no human has access to him.
Arguably, because of the transcendence of the great supreme deity and the institution of appeasing sacrifices, it would have been rudimentary for the West African mind to comprehend the functional role of Christ and his atoning sacrifice once and for all because in many ways West African spirituality shares foundational beliefs with Christianity.
