An Encounter with the Spirit of God in African Religion
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Date
2002-02
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Tangaza University College
Abstract
On 1996, my superiors appointed me to Ghana for two years of
pastoral training. From 1996 to 1998 I was doing my pastoral formation
among the Sisaala people of the Upper West region of Ghana. The
Sisaala people are mainly traditionalists. By this I mean the majority of
them if not all are followers of African Traditional Religion. Any one
who approaches any village easily notices the predominance of the
African Religion among the Sisaala. As you enter in any village the first
thing to see is a shrine. Each extended family has a shrine. Among the
Sisaala each extended family forms a compound. Then a number of
compounds form a village. So the number of compounds in the village
determines the number of shrines in it. Coming from East Africa where
the phenomenon of shrines is not very dominant, I was very much
fascinated by it. I was curious to know what are those shrines for. I was
told that those are places of prayer and sacrifice. I witnessed that, if the
day of prayers in the shrine, happened to be on Sunday, very few people
would attend mass on that Sunday. This experience made me think that
prayers in the shrines seem to be more meaningful to the people than our
Christian prayers. I thought it was my task as a young missionary to make
our Christian prayers more meaningful and appealing to these people so as they could abandon their traditional beliefs and embrace Christian
faith. My plan as a future missionary was to convert these traditional
believers into Christianity. I never thought of a possibility of dialogue
with the African Traditional believers.
Another fascinating phenomenon was, the Sisaala firm belief in the
presence of the Spirits. For them everything has its spiritual dimension.
Every living and non-living creature has a spirit. My first attitude towards
the phenomenon of spirits was very negative. To me these traditional
believers were simply superstitious. But slowly I started changing my
attitude from negative one to a positive approach. I started asking myself
about the possibility of God communicating something to us Christians
through the traditional believers.
In 1998 I left Ghana with a positive view of the traditional
believers. It was in that same year I started my theological studies. From
the beginning of my theological formation, I thought it is necessary for
modern theologians to search for a theological foundation that can sustain
a positive approach towards African Traditional Religion. During the
course of my theological studies, I had an opportunity to take an elective
on Christian theology of other faiths. This course has helped me to re
examine my attitude towards African Traditional Religion. It has also
opened my theological mind to see the possibility of dialogue between
African Religion and Christianity. So it is out of my past experiences with the traditional African
believers in Ghana that I chose this topic for my long essay. I am aware
that my essay is limited in several ways; first, African religion has not yet
been recognized as one of the world religion. Nevertheless it is in the
process of being recognized and a world religion. Second there is only
now a fully recognized Christian theology of other faiths. Despite
positive attitude of the church fathers towards non- Christian religions', it
had taken some times to develop a Christian theology of other faiths.
Third limitation of my essay is that it is very hypothetical. When I
propose an encounter with the Spirit of God in African Religion what I
have in mind is the possibility of meeting or experiencing the presence of
God in the lives of the Traditional Africans. God is a mystery and so his
Spirit is also a mysterious phenomenon. Even after the revelation brought
by Christ God still remains a mystery. Having said that, an encounter
with the Spirit of God in African Religion is just a theological hypothesis.
This hypothesis is aimed at helping to change negative attitudes towards
African Religion.
I have divided this essay into four chapters. Chapter one is on the
understanding of African Religion. The aim of this chapter is to help us
conceive African Religion as one of the authentic religious traditions of humanity. In this chapter we will examine common fundamental beliefs
in African Traditional Religion. These fundamental beliefs will help us to
see African Religion as one religion expressed in different ways. My aim
is to alter any negative attitude towards African Religion. That is why
Chapter two will trace the origin of the negative attitude towards African
Religion. This attitude can be traced back to the early encounter between
Christianity and African Religion that will be examined in chapter two.
Chapter three is on the Spirit in the Bible. Our aim in this chapter is build
a biblical foundation for encountering the Spirit of God in African
Religion. Once we are able to affirm the possibility of the presence of the
Spirit of God in African Religion, then it would be easy for us to change
our negative attitude towards it. Therefore in chapter three we will
examine the understanding of the Spirit in the Old Testament and in the
New Testament. Chapter four is on the presence of the Holy Spirit in
African Religion. In this chapter we will attempt to show that all the
religious and social good values in African Religion could be attributed to
the work of the Spirit of God.
We will end with a general conclusion by proposing some required
attitudes for dialogue between Christianity and African Religion.
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Keywords
Spirit, Religion, God, African, Traditional