JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA最新文献

Toward an Understanding of a Misconceived Igbo Deity 了解被误解的伊格博神灵

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-09 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340310

Tobias Chibuike Onah, Kingsley Ikechukwu Uwaegbute, Virginus Uchenna Eze

{"title":"Toward an Understanding of a Misconceived Igbo Deity","authors":"Tobias Chibuike Onah, Kingsley Ikechukwu Uwaegbute, Virginus Uchenna Eze","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340310","url":null,"abstract":"This ethnographic study investigates the misconception among Christians and adherents of African Traditional Religion in their view and understanding of the deity ‘ekwensu’, commonly called Satan in Christian theology. The study area is Nsukka, a culture area in Nigeria. The adherents of the two religions use the words ‘Satan’ and ‘devil’ for ekwensu interchangeably. Many Christians claim that Satan is the sole equivalent of the traditional deity ekwensu in the Igbo cosmology. The aim of the work is to compare the Christian views of ekwensu as Satan, bringing out the origin, attributes, and activities of the two concepts ekwensu and Satan. The findings show significant differences between Satan and ekwensu, that Satan and ekwensu vary in their origin and attributes, and that they have different geographical locations. It is shown that some shrines and forests were dedicated to the ekwensu deity in Nsukka, and that masquerades also honour the festival of ekwensu (afor ekwensu). It is also evident that Christianity had a significant impact on the culture of the Nsukka people, which engendered the misconception of the ekwensu deity. This was partly based on Igbo Christian theolinguistics occasioned by Christian missionary activities in the area.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141948719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Native African Bishops: Emerging Voices on the Eve of Vatican II (1959–1960) 非洲土著主教：梵二前夕的新声音（1959-1960 年）

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-08 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340313

Chidiebere Obiora Nnabugwu

引用次数: 0

Researching Religion and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa 研究非洲的宗教和 COVID-19 大流行病

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-08 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340312

Alexander Paul Isiko

引用次数: 0

Delivering Democracy? Comparing Catholic Bishops’ Advocacy for Democracy in Malawi and Zambia, 1987–2022 实现民主？比较 1987-2022 年马拉维和赞比亚天主教主教对民主的倡导

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-08 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340309

Elizabeth Sperber, Paige Wietzel

{"title":"Delivering Democracy? Comparing Catholic Bishops’ Advocacy for Democracy in Malawi and Zambia, 1987–2022","authors":"Elizabeth Sperber, Paige Wietzel","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340309","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000As national leaders of the Catholic Church, bishops were widely recognized as ‘midwives’ of democratic transitions in many African states in the 1990s. This paper expands understanding of bishops’ subsequent political engagement by systematically analyzing their attempts to ‘deliver’ democracy during the difficult decades following transition. Focusing on Malawi and Zambia between 1987 and 2022, we situate and analyse bishops’ most influential public communications: pastoral letters. The article first illuminates the bishops’ public conceptualisations of political participation as a Christian duty, and the roles they prescribed for politicians, citizens, and Christian leaders at the outset of democratisation. We then document the bishops’ consistent commitment to civic education and voter mobilisation across countries, alongside context-specific efforts to defend or advance democracy, which led to some variation in priorities and rhetorical appeals across countries. These findings challenge influential models of religion-state relations, raise new interdisciplinary research questions, and offer insights for democratic advocates.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141929293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Secularity and Muslim-Christian Relations in Uganda 乌干达的政教分离与穆斯林-基督教关系

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340319

Dorothea Schulz

{"title":"Secularity and Muslim-Christian Relations in Uganda","authors":"Dorothea Schulz","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340319","url":null,"abstract":"The article reconstructs aspects of the secularizing project of the British colonial administration in Uganda by exploring how state regulatory practices in the field of Western school education set the conditions for two forms of religious difference: first, relations between Muslims as members of a religious minority and the Christian majority, and second, dynamics among Muslims that transpired not only in leadership competition but also in controversies over education and proper religious practice. Focusing on the intersections between a state regulatory regime and the activities of Muslims who claimed religious and political leadership on behalf of other Muslims in the areas of Buganda and Bugisu, the article argues that these Muslim intellectuals mediated and contributed to the colonial administration’s production of Muslims as a religious minority. As articulators of Islam, they (re)formulated and debated the forms and purpose of Muslim education and partly novel understandings of proper religious practice, and what it means to be a modern, pious Muslim in the new colonial order. Their political aspirations were hampered, not only as a direct consequence of the colonial administration’s production of systematic inequalities between Christians and Muslims, but also as a result of the dynamics of intra-Muslim plurality.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141948879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Multiple Secularities in Africa – An Introduction 非洲的多重世俗性--导言

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340314

Marian Burchardt, Magnus Echtler, Katharina Wilkens

{"title":"Multiple Secularities in Africa – An Introduction","authors":"Marian Burchardt, Magnus Echtler, Katharina Wilkens","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340314","url":null,"abstract":"Raising timely and urgent questions about the forms, scope and boundaries of religious authority and practice, this article offers novel ways for the study of secularities and secularisms in contemporary African societies. In recent scholarly debates on secularity, Africa has been marginal. Part of the reason, it was suggested was that African ways of being in, and knowing, the world lay outside the religious-secular divide. We contest such positions. Secularism was clearly part of modernists colonial ideologies that called for the eradication of African beliefs described as backward and irrational. We find that the colonial encounter had a powerful historical impact, essentializing and othering African societies as marked by holistic indigenous cultures rather than differentiated religions. We suggest that the complex interplay of different African and European cultures has simultaneously shaped the social construction and historical development of multiple secularities. We propose that the concept of multiple secularities provides creative avenues to rethink religion, political authority and belonging. We consider secularities as contested arrangements of religious and other spheres whose dynamics include processes of de-differentiation and de-secularization.","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141948875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

‘The True and Scientific Religion’ 真正的科学宗教

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340317

Judith Bachmann

引用次数: 0

On the Religious and the Secular in Nineteenth-Century Buganda 论十九世纪布干达的宗教与世俗

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340318

Tyler Zoanni

引用次数: 0

Secular Framings 世俗框架

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-08-07 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340292

Benedikt Pontzen

引用次数: 0

Èdè Àyàn: the Language of Drum in Yorùbá Religious and Cultural Practices, Particularly in Egúngún Performances in Òkè-Igbó Èdè Àyàn: Yorùbá 宗教和文化习俗中的鼓声语言，尤其是 Òkè-Igbó 的 Egúngún 表演中的鼓声语言

IF 0.4 4区哲学

JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA Pub Date : 2024-06-13 DOI: 10.1163/15700666-12340303

Oláwọlé Fámúlẹ̀

{"title":"Èdè Àyàn: the Language of Drum in Yorùbá Religious and Cultural Practices, Particularly in Egúngún Performances in Òkè-Igbó","authors":"Oláwọlé Fámúlẹ̀","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340303","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In Yorùbá traditional religious beliefs and practices, the role of Àyàn (Drummers) cannot be overstated. For that reason, as scholars of Yoruba art studies, to deny the relevance of Ìlù (Drums) as an indispensable component of Yoruba art and religion is to threaten its deeper understanding. Language is also a vital approach to a deeper understanding of African art. Yoruba art, for instance, is the primary medium through which the Yorùbá philosophy, cultural values, and history are stored and verbally expressed. Thus, a proficiency or nearly competency in the reading, writing, and speaking of the language of the African people whose art we study is vital to a deeper understanding of African art. Also fundamental to a deeper understanding of Yorùbá art is to recognize its unique context that usually embraces a variety of verbal and nonverbal components, which in themselves are works of art. The language of the drum in the Yorùbá Egúngún performative context is a good example. As a native speaker and culture bearer, who is fully aware of the fundamental importance of language in African art studies, the author examines the interconnection of Àyàn and Egúngún from the vantage point of Yorùbá language. The study delves into the root of Egúngún within the Yorùbá cultural context in which the people concretize and validate their thought system in visual and verbal forms. The study provides an overview of Yorùbá drums and their ritual contexts as well as the Yorùbá ontological concept of Egúngún, one of the most valued patrons of Àyàn as an important form of Yorùbá religious beliefs and practices. Using the Egúngún performance in Òkè-Igbó as a case study, the study argues that dance and drum performances can and should be analyzed as a “third dimension” of oríkì, in addition to verbal and the visual of Abiodun’s theoretical framework as demonstrated in his timeless book, Yoruba Art and Language – Seeking the African in African Art (Cambridge University Press, 2014).","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141347373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0