African Religions
A Kwa Ba of
the Ashanti
Religion has always played a major
part in the different cultures of Africa.
Each group of people in separate regions of the continent
have creation stories that tie them directly to the
God or Gods they worship.
Usually the God would create the Earth and animals
and last would create the humans to take dominion
over the region in which the people happen to inhabit.
The four primary sources for the study of African
religion are the:
1. Oral traditions that are
told from parents to children and priests to the
people for centuries.
2. Archeological and linguistic evidence tells of
the remaining of the ancient people1s beliefs by
physical evidence of their religion and way of life
and the speech patterns
that have evolved over the years.
3. The religions that are still practiced give a
definitive view of the way religions were practiced
in the old days.
4. The arts and sacred spaces have to do with what
is considered Holy by the different practicing groups.
Many beliefs common among different
African religions appear in their creation stories
such as:
1. The spiritual cosmos populated
by divine beings, sometimes in a hierarchial order.
2. The belief of Earth and material life as created.
3.A multitude of Gods and other spirits.
4.The role of ancestors.
5.A belief in sacred places and spaces such as a mountain
that God inhabits.
6.Males and females as parts of the cosmic scheme.
7. Idea of society being organized around values and
traditions drawn from common beginnings in history.
The religious leaders in many of
Africa's religions have tried, sometimes in vain,
to preserve the society from foreigners encroaching
upon their lands and customs.
Their role has always been to preserve the histories
and traditions of the people. They teach the ways
of survival to the people, be it wedding procedures
or planting times
the village priest is there to and
serve through the God. The rituals practiced in many
traditional African societies are all connected by
the belief of being stepping stones to the ultimate
goal of death and the afterlife. There are rituals
that enhance all of the transitional stages of life
such as birth, puberty, initiation into adulthood,
marriage, having children, old age, death and life
after death. The rituals allow the people celebrating
to know what is expected of them in the next stage
of their life and what is socially acceptable.
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