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African Religious Movements—Types and Dynamics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
For those who follow African events closely it is the phenomenon of nationalism which attracts greatest attention. It was a rising sense of national identity which threw off the colonial yoke, and this ongoing creation and exaltation of culture and society at the national level can either foster or frustrate the creation of viable political units. We are therefore obliged to keep abreast of African nationalism if we are to understand the course of events and forecast the shape of things to come in this developing continent.
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References
Page 531 note 1 George, Foster, Nationalism in Africa: an attempt at prediction (Kroeber Anthropological Society, Berkeley, 1960), p. 1.Google Scholar
Page 531 note 2 It can be equally manifested by a dominant society which feels itself threatened by the expanding claims and powers of those societies subordinate to it.
Page 532 note 1 We have the same difficulty in respect of the distinction between culture and politics. Africans are sometimes vexed to have Europeans tell them they ought to pay more attention to cultural matters as opposed to their preoccupation with politics. In an address entitled ‘Political and Cultural Solidartiy in Africa’ given in the sixth plenary session of the U.S. National Commission for Unesco Conference on Africa and the United States (Boston, October 1961), Alioune Diop is at pains to advise Europeans that culture and politics are two dimensions of the same thing as far as Africans are concerned.
Page 532 note 2 The types we propose are simple not complex ideal types. They are not mutually exclusive. The features defining the type are fewer than those possessed by any member within the type. The discussion is from the observer's rather than the participant's point of view.
Page 533 note 1 See the following: Jamil, Abu-Nasr, ‘The Salifiiya Movement in Morocco—The Religious Bases of the Moroccan Nationalist Movement’, in Middle Eastern Affairs No. 3, St Antony's Papers No. 6 (London, 1963), pp. 90–105;Google Scholar and Fisher, Humphrey J., Ahmadyyah—A Study in Contemporary Islam on the West African Coast (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar It is clear that Islam in the Maghreb and West Africa can almost be regarded as one long succession of religious movements.
Page 533 note 2 What is remarkable in the evangelisation of Africa is the general tolerance with which it was at first received. This testifies to African religious eclecticism and to the identification of Christianity with the material benefits of European civilisation. The failure of evangelical Christianity to produce these goods was one of the frustrations which gave rise to religious movements which have sought these by other means. Most clearly evident in the Cargo Cults of Melanesia, this is present as well in Africa. George Shepperson notes the similarity between the Cargo Cults and Nyasaland religious movements, and refers to Livingstone's view that ‘Africans identified the coming of the missionary with the arrival of a cornucopia of material goods’. Shepperson, George, ‘Nyasaland and the Millennium’, in Thrupp, Sylvia L. (ed.), Millennial Dreams in Action (The Hague, 1962), pp. 246 and 19.Google Scholar
Page 533 note 3 We ignore here the impact of traders, which in most cases was transitory, and their contacts limited to the trading situation.
Page 534 note 1 Herskovits, M. J., The Human Factor in Changing Africa (New York, 1962), p. 458.Google Scholar
Page 534 note 2 Kopytoff, Igor, ‘African Religious Movements: Indigenous Versus Acculturative Factors’ (manuscript, 1963),Google Scholar identifies the Holy Water movement in the south-western Congo as just one in a long series of re-examinations of religious and magical technology with the object of replacing the outmoded and fatigued with more vigorous forms. Because of a very few items like the Holy Water itself we tend, he points out, to see this as a specific response to the colonial situation. But the colonial situation was not the first disaster and frustration faced by the Suku.
Page 534 note 3 Sundkler, Bengt, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (Oxford, 1961), pp. 38–43.Google Scholar
Page 534 note 4 Parrinder, Geoffrey, Religion in an African City (London, 1953), p. 108.Google Scholar
Page 535 note 1 Linton, Ralph, ‘Nativistic Movements’, in The American Anthropologist (Washington), LXV, 1943, pp. 230–40.Google Scholar
Page 535 note 2 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound (London, 1957), pp. 267–76.Google Scholar
Page 535 note 3 Linton, op. cit. p. 231.
Page 536 note 1 The expressive-instrumental continuum is basic in the work of Talcott Parsons. He says of the expressive orientation: ‘The essential point is the primacy of “acting out” the need disposition itself rather than subordinating gratification to a goal outside the immediate situation.’ The Social System (Glencoe, 1951), p. 348.Google Scholar
Page 536 note 2 It should be repeated that this is an analytic distinction; no religious movement is exclusively instrumental or expressive, nor could it be. We are concerned with the relative primacy of one mode or another of action. Ibid. p. 47. Knowledge of the relative primacy is of value in assessing the order of priorities in a movement's economy and is useful in predicting its capacity to survive.
Page 536 note 3 Fernandez, J. W., ‘The Idea and Symbol of the Saviour in a Gabon Syncretist Cult’, in The International Review of Missions (London), LIII, 211, 07 1964, pp. 281–9.Google Scholar
Page 537 note 1 Spiro, Herbert J. makes highly illuminating use of such a scheme in his article, ‘Comparative Politics—A Comprehensive Approach’, in American Political Science Review (Washington), LVI, 3, 1962, pp. 577–95.Google ScholarZessner, Walter, in ‘Cooperation and Competition in Geometric Vectorial Symbolism’ in Mead, Margaret (ed.), Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples (Boston, 1961),Google Scholar makes a similar presentation, called by him geometric vectorial symbolism. Such diagrams have, he maintains, inherent advantages over descriptive language. Both schemes are more comprehensive than the one presented here. They attempt to assess the cycle of activities within a system, they embody more dimensions, and they imply what is equilibrium and disequilibrium, symmetry and asymmetry, in a given system. I am elsewhere elaborating the scheme presented here.
Page 538 note 1 Such separatist movements as the Apostolowa Fe Dedefla Habobo (the Apostolic Revelation Society) in Ghana, as described by Baëta, C. G., Prophetism in Ghana (London, 1962), pp. 77–93,Google Scholar have many of the instrumental characteristics of improvement associations. On the other hand South African separatist churches, though sensitive to their relationship to the larger society, strongly support apartheid and the social status quo. Sundkler, op. cit. pp. 350–11. Sundkler, however, makes clear that this support is strongest from those movements of a Zionist, that is, messianic, disposition.
Page 538 note 2 Ibid. pp. 80–7.
Page 539 note 1 Turner, H. W., ‘The Church of the Lord’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), III, I, 1962, pp. 91–110.Google Scholar
Page 539 note 2 Recent research by Mitchell, R. L., ‘The Aladura Movement Among the Yoruba in Nigeria’ (manuscript, 1963),Google Scholar shows a preoccupation with alleviating the physical and spiritual sufferings of members by expressive techniques. His insistence that the Aladura movement must be studied from ‘the perspective of the Protestant religious system’ confirms in our view, however, its separatist character.
Page 539 note 3 See Taylor, John V. and Lehmann, Dorothea, Christians of the Copperbelt (London, 1961), ch. 9 and pp. 227–38;Google ScholarCunnison, Ian, ‘A Watchtower Assembly in Central Africa’, in The International Review of Missions, XL, 1951;Google Scholar and Shepperson, George and Price, Thomas, Independent African. John Chilembwe and the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915 (Edinburgh, 1958).Google Scholar
Page 539 note 4 Welbourn, F. B., East African Rebels—a study some Independent Churches (London, 1961), ch. v, especially pp. 80–1.Google Scholar
Page 540 note 1 Sundkler op. cit. pp. 93–9.
Page 540 note 2 Richards, A. I., ‘A Modem Movement of Witch-finders’, in Africa (London), VIII, 1935, pp. 448–61;Google ScholarMarwick, Max, ‘Another Modem Anti-Witchcraft Movement in East Central Africa’, in Africa, XX, 2, 1950, pp. 100–12;CrossRefGoogle ScholarField, M. J., Search for Security (London, 1960);Google Scholar Kopytoff, op. cit.
Page 540 note 3 The term reformative is taken from Voget, Fred W., ‘The American Indian in Transition: Reformation and Accommodation’, in The American Anthropologist, LVIII, p. 250,Google Scholar who defines it as a ‘conscious creative attempt on the part of a subordinate group to obtain a personal and social reintegration through a selective rejection modification and synthesis of both traditional and alien cultural components’. He suggests that these movements are the most stable and enduring—most successfully providing for dignified accommodation with universalistic panethnic implications. In fact Pan-Africanism may well rest most solidly on an instrumental approach consciously combining old and new. This kind of posture is, of course, difficult to maintain.
Page 541 note 1 Balandier, Georges, Sociologie actuelle d'Afrique noire (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar and Afrique Ambiguë (Paris, 1957); also Fernandez, op. cit.
Page 541 note 2 Paulme, Denise, ‘Une religion syncrétiquc en Côte d'Ivoire’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), III, 9, 1962, pp. 5–90.Google Scholar
Page 541 note 3 Parrinder, op. cit. p. 175–81.
Page 542 note 1 Andersson, Efraim, Messianic Popular Movements in the Lower Congo (Uppsala, 1958), p. 49.Google Scholar
Page 542 note 2 Welboum, op. cit. pp. 31–53.
Page 542 note 3 Taylor and Lehmann, op. cit. pp. 238–47; Shepperson, op. cit. pp. 149–52.
Page 542 note 4 Taylor and Lehmann, op. cit. pp. 248–68; Rotberg, Robert, ‘The Lenshina Movement of Northern Rhodesia’, in The Rhodes—Livingstone Institute Journal (Lusaka), xxix, 06 1961, pp. 63–78.Google Scholar
Page 542 note 5 Baëta, op. cit. pp. 28–67.
Page 543 note 1 Balandier, op. cit. p. 431.
Page 543 note 2 Balandier points to reformative tendencies, ibid. pp. 434–5.
Page 543 note 3 Andersson, op. cit. pp. 139–40.
Page 543 note 4 Ibid. pp. 124–5.
Page 544 note 1 Balandier, op. cit. p. 398.
Page 544 note 2 Andersson, op. cit. p. 140.
Page 546 note 1 Schlosser, Katesa, Propheten in Afrika (Braunschweig, 1949), p. 402.Google Scholar
Page 546 note 2 Ba¨ta, op. cit. p. 5.
Page 546 note 3 Banton, Michael, ‘African Prophets’, in Race (London), v, 2, 1963.Google Scholar
Page 547 note 1 Welbourn, op. cit. p. 161.
Page 547 note 2 Cf. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. and Fortes, Myer, African Political Systems (Oxford, 1940), pp. 16–23.Google Scholar
Page 548 note 1 This not to deny the importance of the attitude taken by the main forces in the superordinate, that is, outside situation. An expressive, tradition-oriented movement can survive for a very long time if the administration takes a permissive view, and if the world-view implied by the cult's symbolism does not too strongly imply their elimination. However, the administration, whether colonial or independent, is invariably goal-minded and instrumental, and therefore in fundamental tension with the more expressive and traditional movements. Thus with Bwiti in Gabon, despite its modest instrumentalism, it is nevertheless the constant complaint of the present administration that ‘dancing all night and eating eboka does not much contribute to the building of modern Gabon’. ‘Think how much energy is going into that which could be going into road building’, said one administrator.
Page 548 note 2 Voget, op. cit. p. 259.
Page 548 note 3 Worsley in his New Guinea study is led to distinguish between activist and passivist movements. All the former movements ultimately result in the emergence of secular political organisation, or failing this, are eventually themselves led, much in the manner of the South African separatists, to a state of passive resignation. Op. Cit. p. 236.
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