Christian and Indigenous practices and beliefs in Africa

Public engagement on the African continent frequently takes place in religious and cultural register. Religious practices and beliefs often play a role in politics, land rights, environmental concerns, as well as the day-to-day socio-spiritual life of people seeking to live well in their context. It is important that vibrancy and influences of religious and cultural practices and beliefs are understood, even as the distinction between what is religious and what is cultural remains contested. This article limits itself to two of the most wide-spread religious traditions, Christianity and indigenous or traditional religions. It examines Christianity and indigenous practices and beliefs as separate traditions and also shows how they have intersected in many different ways. It explains some of the rituals, persons and claims of the traditions. It also considers how beliefs and practices are lived in their immediate and global contexts. The article starts by examining the history of the study of these traditions. Both practice and scholarship have been impacted by pejorative readings and colonial asymmetries of power, and also by efforts to overturn negative assumptions about Africans and religion. An awareness of the political roles and readings of beliefs and practices – however oblique in some literature – is an important element in understanding their significance and context. The article shows the ways in which the apparent boundaries of distinct traditions are regularly blurred and crossed in lived religious practice and discusses how this phenomenon might be articulated. It concludes by introducing two ways of appreciating and analysing the diversity of religious and cultural practice on the continent that are prominent in the early 21st century.