AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, E. Bolaji Idowu, Orbis, Maryknoll, New
York, 1975 (1973)

The author was a professor of religious studies in Ibadan, Nigeria.
The most interesting thing that greeted this reviewer on opening
Prof. Idowu's book was the attention devoted to defending religion
and then traditional African religion. This reviewer reading this
book in the 21st Century was seeking something other than numerous
quotes from academics and other intellectual figures from the West.
The space taken up with conveying how very wrong others are when it
comes to an awareness of African traditional religion could have
been put to better use presenting accurate information on the topic.

One of the author's interesting statement's is the one that the
Third World was distinct from Europe, the First World, and America,
the Second World (p. 76). Normally, it's thought distinct from West
and East in the Cold War.

He mentions the geographic extent of Africa, the vast diversity of
her peoples, the tremendous impact on them in recent centuries by
outsiders, the importance of oral tradition, and one hundred pages
later than anticipated asks, "What is meant by 'African traditional
religion'?" (p. 103) He refers in the several pages immediately
following to awareness of Deity.

Having spent half the book inundating the reader by his familiarity
with Western writers and his encounters with Westerners incompletely
aware of Africa, Prof. Idowu offers Chapter Four, "The Nature of
African Traditional Religion" (pp. 108-136). Alas, this is comprised
mostly of a defence of African religion as not being: primitive,
savage, native, tribal, pagan, heathen, idolatry, fetishism, animist
in the pejorative meanings of these words. In concluding with an
answer as to what it is, he offers the reader a German word, which
may be rendered into English as God worship, or God service.

Chapter Five, "The Structure of African Traditional Religion"
(pp. 137-202), is the meat of the text. This begins with a reference
to God, nature spirits, ancestor spirits and amulets. Then he
devotes considerable space to exposing the views of Westerners on
the nature of God, and, in some cases, on their inadequate awareness
of African conception of God. He advances to the names and
attributes of God (real, unique, transcendent, ruler, single, just),
again drawing on the views of Westerners. He turns to the
divinities, whose existence within Deity do not alter, in his view,
African monotheism. He quotes Western support for this opinion:

   According to Paul Tillich, whom we quote with approval,

   Polytheism is a qualitative and not a quantitative concept. It is
   not a belief in a plurality of gods but rather the lack of a
   unifying and transcendent ultimate which determines its character
   (pp. 165-166)

One can only wish the following had not required the justification
of being stated on page 168 of a book so titled as this one and
containing only forty more pages of text:

   We shall now proceed to look specifically at the African scene.
   p. 168

And so, the gods, in Prof. Idowu's view, are derivatives or
attributes of God with, perhaps, some great ancestors added; they
are components of theocratic governance, with specific names varying
in the different languages, and to one who has outgrown them, they
lack the reality they possess for the believer.

He proceeds to spirits, defining the word to mean nature spirits. He
mentions their ubiquity. Then, he refers to the spirits of humans
who die without proper burial rites, or who have inappropriate
deaths. He mentions born to die spirits, pranksters who enter wombs
to die at birth, or soon after. He turns to witchcraft.

His reference to the ancestors begins with Herbert Spencer and the
ancient Greek Euhemerus. He proceeds to Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL,
to Western Spiritualism, to the definition of 'worship',to the
disagreeable identity of African religion as no more than ancestor
worship, to the connection of ancestors to their living descendants,
to the reality of their afterlife existence, and to the issue of
reincarnation, including the view of the Nupe that there are two
souls. One goes to an afterlife. One reincarnates.

His reference to magic and medicine begins with the concept of
tapping extraordinary power, continues into the views of various
Westerners, modern and ancient, on the distinction between magic and
religion, and then looks at medicine. He mentions the role and the
invocation of ancestors in medicine and he refers to the employment
of ritual.

The last chapter, some six pages long, is called, "The Prospect of
African Traditional Religion." This mentions the old fashioned
nature of identification with traditional religion, and, hence,
projections for its extinction. He goes on to underline the strength
of African religion, even within the churches and among the African
diaspora.

I'd like to show respect to Prof. Idowu, and so I rein in the steed
of my satire which had plenty of room to race in a review of this
book. I will content myself with the following question to the
respected professor, if he is still alive, or to his spirit, if he
has joined the ancestors: were there to be a book titled "Canadian
Geography" written by a Canadian and this book consisted of the
opinions of many Africans on the topic of geography, sometimes on
Canadian geography, and even, once in a while, a comment on Canadian
geography approved by the author, what would be Prof. Idowu's
assessment of the value of this book for one wishing to learn about
Canadian geography?

This is not to say Prof. Idowu's AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION has no
value at all. In places it is quite entertaining, and not merely for
such assertions as polytheism being determined qualitatively and not
quantitatively. My favourite passage in the book is the one where he
recounts meeting a Westerner who told him a certain people
worshipped stones, and when asked what made him think this,
explained how he'd been chased away when he sat on a stone in front
of a house there.

Anyway, as the above ought clearly to indicate, a seeker after the
knowledge and understanding of African traditional religion would do
much better to open something such as John S. Mbiti's INTRODUCTION
TO AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION, or Judith Gleason's OYA IN PRAISE
OF AN AFRICAN GODDESS.

Michael McKenny, August 23, 2002 C.E.


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