Over the years, there have been various forms of campaign and initiative drawn towards raising awareness on the need to embrace the various heritage of the African society. However, these campaigns on heritage seem to come to a halt when the issue of African traditional religion is brought up. To many, that is the aspect of our culture which we should take away completely. How did we get to this point???
This ‘cursed’ heritage of ours, the African traditional religion, played the same exact role which other neo religions play in our society today, during the pre-colonial era. Our ancestors relied on precepts set by the ‘gods’ through the Chief Priest to govern the people; pacify them in times of crises; and, regulate the events that occur through out the year. This is no difference from what we do presently in the world, as a lot of decisions are hinged on various religious practices, norms and precepts. This begs the question of what went wrong.
See –Â Cultural Assimilation & Appropriation: The Duo Pushing The Black Community To Extinction
Now, we know the role colonialism played in shaping the African society both politically, physically, mentally and above all, spiritually. How we were led to believe that the advent of the colonial masters was to free us from the shackles of false gods, and how our beliefs ad traditions were going against the ‘real’ message of the christian or Islamic ‘God’. To make this more simpler, tagging our indigenous religion a ‘curse’ was a successful means to completely take away the control we had over our lands and resources. Like Uhuru Kenyatta said, “when the white man came, he had the bible and we had the land; but when we opened our eyes, he had the land and we had the bible”.
We lost away because, for a second, we believed that our religion was evil and full of vile practices. We ignorantly forgot or refused to question the validity of the ‘pure nature’ of the christian and Islamic religion respectively. These two religions have engaged in far more vile practices of war, killing, looting and, of course, colonial manipulation which occasioned vile practices like slavery, and so on. We accepted that we were cursed by the fact that we chose to worship God in our intimate and primal ways, and we paid the ultimate price through a complete loss of identity that has continued for generations.
Our continue belief that the African traditional religion is evil just because its practices conflicts with the practice of the colonial-enthroned religions of today, makes this fact true. No religion is without a certain level or amount of evil, which is occasioned by some of its practitioners. For instance, there have been cases of catholic priests involved in sexual harassment cases; there are pastors gathering private wealth from their congregation; there are Hindu worshipers murdering or persecuting Islamic worshipers; there are Islamic worshipers engaged in global terrorism, leaving countless people dead. The bottom line is, we are all sinning differently.
So, we do not have to take it to heart when we hear stuffs like how vile the African traditional religion is in terms of its practice. It is our identity, it is our culture. The religion of a people constitutes a very integral part of that people; take that away, and you have taken an important part of their identity. It is, therefore, important that we cease to see the African traditional religion as a ‘curse’ and embrace it fully as our heritage.
