African Traditional Religions

Understanding World Religions

Our quote for today is from Desmond Tutu. He said, "God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion."

In this podcast, we are making our way through Garry R. Morgan's book, "Understanding World Religions in 15 Minutes a Day."

Our Understanding World Religions topic for today is, "African Traditional Religions"

In terms of adherents, the largest animistic family is the African Traditional religions. Africa contains fifty-plus countries and more than one thousand different people groups, each with its own religious variations on the animistic theme. Here, too, generalizations are possible, with exceptions.

African Traditional religions have proven exceptionally resilient in the face of modernization. As Christianity and Islam spread across Africa, it was widely predicted that traditional religions would disappear by the end of the twentieth century. On the contrary, though a majority of today's Africans claim to be either Christian or Muslim, traditional religions are widely practiced. Both monotheistic religions face the problem of nominalism (from Latin, meaning "in name only"). Syncretism and parallelism are pervasive.

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