Returning to My Roots:  African

Returning to My Roots: African "Religions" and the State

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Description

Published as Chapter 7 in Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, ed.

Four decades after physical decolonization, the African state is today mired in crises of identity. Multidimensional and complexly dynamic, these crises primarily feed from the traditional troughs of culture and religion, ethnicity and race, history and mythology, and politics and economics. The realm of religion, together with its essential linkage to philosophy and culture, has been one of the pivotal variables in the construction of the identity of the modern African state. Religion has been one of the critical seams of social and political rupture in several African states. Due to the centrality of religion in the construction of social reality, this critical examination of the treatment of African religions within the African state will necessarily probe the intersection of Islam, African religion, and Christianity - the three dominant religious traditions in Africa. This chapter primarily argues that the modern African state, right from its inception, has relentlessly engaged in a campaign of the marginalization, at best, or eradication, at worst, of African religion. Further, it argues that the destruction and delegitimation of African religion have been actively effected at the urging, or with the collusion and for the benefit of, either or both Islam and Christianity, the two dominant messianic traditions.

Publication Date

1999

Publisher

Orbis Books

City

Maryknoll

ISBN

9781570752612

First Page

169

Last Page

190

Keywords

Africa, Religions, Decolonization, Culture, Islam, Christianity, Messianic Faiths, Marginalization, Eradication, Identity

Disciplines

Human Rights Law | Law

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Returning to My Roots:  African

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