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Syncretism and Religious Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

J. D. Y. Peel
J. D. Y. Peel
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

A superficial view of what happens when a large number of people forsake their former religion for a new one is that some of the old beliefs become mixed with the new. It is a commonplace to hear that folk Catholicism is mixed with pagan survivals, or that newly converted African Christians are “not real Christians” or “have a veneer of Christianity”, because they have not totally abandoned all that they once believed. Such a judgment, however ethnocentric, would be pardonable in a European missionary who held a particular view of Christianity, which itself furnished a clear criterion of “real Christianity”. But similar opinions are often expressed by sociologists and anthropologists who profess themselves neutral with respect to religious belief. They are usually interested in “acculturation” or “culture contact” and consider it of great moment to be able to say how far any particular belief or practice lies along a continuum whose poles are marked “traditional” and “acculturated”. Such assumptions underlay Malinowski's much criticized scheme for the analysis of culture-contact in Africa and the great bulk of the work, by Linton, Wallace, Lanternari and others, on independent religious movements. This tradition of interpretation is still very much alive.

Type
Christianity in Africa
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , January 1968 , pp. 121 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1968

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References

1 Malinowski, B., Dynamics of Culture Change (1943),Google Scholar Chap. Ill, criticized by Gluckman, M., “Malinowski's Functional Analysis of Social Change”, Africa, XVII (1947),Google Scholar and by Balandier, G., Sociologie Actuelle de l'A frique Noire (1955),Google Scholar Chap. I; on religious movements, Linton, R., “Nativistic Movements”, Amer. Anthr., XLV (1943),Google Scholar A. F. C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements”, ibid., LVIII (1956), and Lanternari, V., The Religions of the Oppressed (1963), are typical.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Parrinder, E. G. S., Religion in an African City (1951)Google Scholar or Little, K., West African Urbanization (1966).Google Scholar Even Bishop Sundkler, in his memorable book, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (rev. ed., 1961) tends to make this assumption – “new wine in old wineskins”.Google Scholar

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6 Such as those cited by Fortes, M., Oedipus and Job in West African Religion (1959), pp. 19–25.Google Scholar

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14 “There cannot be only one path to such a great secret”: cited by Nock, A. D., Conversion (1933), p. 260.Google Scholar

15 On Christian villages, cf. Ajayi, , op. cit., pp. 114–117; they appealed more to the Catholic than to the Protestant missions.Google Scholar

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19 Quoted in “Complaint against Cherubim and Seraphim Society by the Bales of Agodo, Alatare and other village people, 4th June 1931”, before the Alake of Abeokuta, typescript proceedings, Sosan Papers (University of Ibadan Library).

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23 Such as Adejumo, , described as “The Yoruba Philosopher of Ife”, in the West African Nationhood, 21 Aug. 1931;Google Scholar cf. Archdeacon T. A. J. Ogunbiyi's booklet Iwe ltan Ifa etc. (Story of Ifa) (Lagos, n.d.)Google Scholar or Rev. Epega's, D. O.The Mystery of Yoruba Gods (1932).Google Scholar

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26 Cf. Brokensha, D. W., Social Change at Larteh, Ghana (1966), chap. II.Google Scholar

27 Ogunbiyi, , op. cit., p. 40.Google Scholar

28 Cf. editorial of the Lagos newspaper Akede Eko for 30 May 1931 on the Aladura revival – “Adura l'ebo” (prayer is the sacrifice).

29 Thus Epega in an article “Ifa Amona Baba wa, Jesu Kristi Amona wa” (Ifa Guide of our Fathers, Jesus Christ our guide), in Akede Eko, 3 Dec. 1932.Google Scholar

30 This account is based very largely on Webster, J. B., The African Churches among the Yoruba, 1888–1922 (1964).Google Scholar

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54 Minutes of Western Conference of Cherubim and Seraphim, 10 Apr. 1940, when a leading Apostle successfully attacked Fawole on the grounds that Idapo Adulawo was for Africans only, whereas the Seraphim Society was for all men.

55 Cf. Pope Gregory's advice to Abbot Mellitus (601 A.D.), Bede, I. 30.

56 Cf. the valuable discussion by Goody, J. and Watt, I., “The Consequences of Literacy”, CSSH, V (1963–1964).Google Scholar

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58 As is explicitly done by Fernandez, J. W., “African Religious Movements: Types and Dynamics”, Journ. Mod. Afr. Stud., II (1964); the Aladuras can no more be assigned a definite place along this continuum than they can along his other one, expressive/instrumental.Google Scholar

59 This is well said by Brokensha, D. W., Social Change at Larteh, pp. 264–269; it is perhaps more true of West Africa than of other places in Africa.Google Scholar