It is said that the Africa culture stands out more than any other culture In the World. With a rich and diverse culture African culture is known to change from county to county, many cultures along with traditions are found in Africa which makes Africa diverse, unique and mesmerizing in many ways to the world. Africa culture is all about the ethnic group’s family traditions, the literature, art and music shows the religion along with the social paths of their culture. (Nafisa Baxamusa, 2011)…
Contemporary Christian missionary work from America to Central India began in 1872 when Rev. Clark, along with some fellow Christians that had learned a village language, began to preach the gospel. Today that work shows for 2.3 percent of the population claiming Christianity as a religion. India, to its credit, in the early 1900’s, took the lead in promoting Christian Unity.…
E) Universal religions found no adherents in Africa ¹ a fact that helps to account for the failure of a universal political system to develop.…
Throughout global history many structures of religions formed the basis of social, political, and economic factors of a community. What the members of a religion discovered within themselves, and their faiths, controlled the development of the region in which they lived. Two examples of this were the belief systems of Confucianism and the Greek pantheon of gods, which created the cultures of China and Greece.…
The changes in Africa’s religion from 1450 CE to 1750 CE are not difficult to see. The first thing was that, new religions that didn’t exist earlier began to come into the Sub-Saharan region. European explorers like Vasco de Gama…
Since ancient times, there have been many ceremonies and customs practiced by African people. However, similar cultures usually shared similar beliefs about their religion. There was not one defined religion amongst all tribes, but there were many similarities in people's beliefs. The central idea behind African religion was that…
Religion was a foundation to the first civilizations as they interpreted the will of gods. They analyzed the stars and planets to determine their wills. They believed that the gods were in control of the universe and were responsible for the natural disasters. They shaped the economy society, and government through the will of their gods. They also built ziggurats…
Religion can only spread by contact with other people. There are two main religions in the Middle East and in Europe that have gained dominance and fight to maintain power. Religions such as Greek mythology were quickly pushed aside when a dominant power came in with a different religion. There are physical obstacles that kept people out of sub-Saharan Africa until the sixteenth century. This means that no major powers/religions were able to spread across the continent and unify the culture. This type of relative isolation is also true amongst African societies. Environmental factors have rendered it nearly impossible for an African society to put itself in a position of dominance over other societies. Because the individual societies were focused on self-preservation instead of trading and conquering they each created their own unique religion. Africans did not have a large society/kingdom to fall back on for protection and survival. They also live in one of the harshest environments in the world; this forced them to live “as one with nature”, causing semi nature based religious systems which can also been seen in Native American culture pre-colonization. Even though the groups developed unique religions they still parallel other groups that lived under the same ecological conditions in Africa and in the Americas.…
The habitants of the world have always been curious of where they came from, how did the first man and women came to exist in the world. Even further back, how did the universe began. People have come up with different ideas each having their own idea of how everything began. Such ideas created the different cultures and different faiths that are known today. The people that agree on how the world began grew together and generation through generation taught their beliefs.…
Christianity has approximately 2,286,000,000 followers worldwide. This is 33 percent of the world. Christians are concentrated in North and South America, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia.…
The introduction of Islam in around 800 C.E. changed Western Africa. Islam entered Africa through a variety of ways; traders came in Africa from the Saharan desert and sometimes through the coast, and also, the Islamic Empire was yet still expanding throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Western Europe. Earlier on, around the mid-7th century C.E., Islam arrived in northern Africa. This progressively spread into Africa, then slowly, it trickled down into the west. It was accepted in Western Africa a while later due to the late arrival. The religion also increased the bonds with the dar-al-Islam and led them to more trade.…
Recognize a supreme, remote creator god, but devote most of their attention to powerful spirits.…
In the pioneering works in African religious scholarship by indigenous and Western writers, Idowu, Mbiti, Parinder, Ray, Tempels, and others, have shown that Africans are not so intellectually impoverished as to be lacking in a sophisticated conception of the Supreme Being. Such a Being is recognized and given a premier position or status in their religions. These scholars have also identified some of the attributes of the Supreme Being within the indigenous African religions that they have studied. Some of these attributes have been very similar to those projected in the Christian religious understandings of the Supreme Being--omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, benevolence, divinity, creator, etc.…
Throughout most of Africa there is belief of a supreme being, described by one or more names, either in terms of activities or place of abode. African people relate to or worship God through praying, singing and dancing, making sacrificial offerings, dedications and invoking blessings. In many respects, the attitude given toward the supreme creator resembles the respect given to African rulers. According to African tradition certain procedures have to be observed in order to gain access to a person of authority. For an ordinary person such contact can actually only take place through approved mediators or councillors. While it may occur that there is no cult devoted specifically to the Supreme being, in the African understanding God is above all worshiped through obedience to the specific imperatives and in everyday relationships during the normal course of events.…
In the ‘Anthropological Study of Religion’, the key point is to understand the history of religion. The reading illustrates the beliefs and theories of social scientists from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, and now – the twenty-first century. It hovers around the questions of where religion came from and what is a part of religion, such as the culture, language and rituals. More importantly, it presents the question of “what religion is” and if it can be given a definite definition.…