Traditional African religions are still alive and well in Africa, says a survey done by the American research organisation, Pew Research Center.

They say that although most Africans identify themselves as either Christian or Muslim, they continue to practice elements of traditional African religions in their daily lives.

Do African traditional religions still have a place today? Do you believe in traditional faiths? Should we do more to teach and preserve them along side Christianity and Islam or simply abandon them?

Yes, definitely, Africa should retain these traditional religions.

It's a shame what is happening to western culture, as we begin to loose our religions to a 'secular materialism'. More than ever we are trying to satisfy ourselves through consumption and greed, which will always fails to provide us with real happiness. It bothers me that we live in such a superficial world now. We have lost our sense of self-reflection, spirituality, and meaning; the philosopher in us has died.

i think some nice things should be preserved. i love some things about the Afican religion/culture & dont wnt them lost for the world.

Always preserve what is originally yours. ALWAYS.

Yes

.As long as we still have our so called pastors and imams visiting the babalawos,I dont see any reason why we should not be proud of what is ours.We just have to put a little modernisation into it.

the answer is no! the bible says 'old things are passed away. All things have become new" 2 Corinthians 5:17

the answer is no! the bible says 'old things are passed away. All things have become new" 2 Corinthians 5:17

What an irrational way to answer an intelligent question!

I cry for humanity if people like this abound on this planet   

shadrach77:

the answer is no! the bible says 'old things are passed away. All things have become new" 2 Corinthians 5:17

There are some things that would never go away. some are african religion, idol worshipping , homosexual and pedoph!les.

shadrach77:

the answer is no! the bible says 'old things are passed away. All things have become new" 2 Corinthians 5:17

seconded.african religions did us no good.most of the problems we are in today,both as a nation and individually were as a result of the evil african religions.all i am saying,no more african religions.JESUS SHALL REIGN FOREVER!

Yes,
We should be proud of and respect our heritage. In living in the UK, it is expected to respect and to be tolerant of all religions.

But we in Nigeria are very keen to ostracise or shun any body that follows our traditional religions and are more tolerant of other religions that are not even home-grown.

Before Christianity and Islam came to our shores, our ancestors must have have all worshipped traditional religions for hundreds of years, so who are we to say it is not a valid way to worship God?

It is a sort of indicative of our collective self esteem, that we are even questioning whether our home grown religion should be ditched completely in favour of "adopted" religions such as Islam and Christianity.

I was brought up a christian, so I do not know anything about traditional faiths, except that they tend to portray it negatively in movies, but I do not see why we cannot embrace it and be proud of our heritage.

No matter what we do, African religions will always be part of us and will remain till the end of time, We have to be proud of what is ours

Of course african spirituality should be preserved. If anything I think more people should ditch islam and christ.


I would take a babalawo or any african spirtualist over any imam of preist.

the nice ones should be preserved

Yes it should be preserved. I am proud to be an African! A man of history,culture and tradition! Join this group on facebook if you are proud of what you have. "African Culture and Tradition World Travelers".

Peace

The answer is capital YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But the issue is complex, because let me take Hausa and Ibo for example. They have foreign religions and Yoruba is the only tribe in the whole Africa with its religion widely accepted by world at large. Then, in a country like Nigeria where there is competition for everything, other tribes will feel jealous about Yoruba religion. But guess what? The obvious truth is this tradition is what makes us Yoruba tribe today. If we let our culture and tradition die we are doomed!!!

This is a very interesting topic and i think we should be carefull. We have been made to believe the African tradition is diabolic. In a way, the sacrifices that the African tradition entails does not help matters. Our tradition makes us Africans. In as much as we should do away with with most of the diabolical part of it, i don't think we should do away with all our tradition.The question is which part of our tradition is not diabolical as we have been made to believe our tradition as a whole is diabolical?

Yes, preserve it, not only that, refine it too.

@bgees

Yes preserve it and I like that word 'refine it'

It is our identity

Well ur religion shld be a religion of hope in a life hereafter; i knw of one'
JESUS IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, NO ONE COMES OR GOES TO THE FATHER GOD IN HEAVEN EXCEPT THROUGH JESUS. John 14;6

jagunlabi:

Always preserve what is originally yours. ALWAYS.

including circumcision and the killing of twins?

African religions should be preserved but that doesn't mean we should be immune to change

I never intended to comment here untill i saw this

donkarly:

seconded.african religions did us no good.most of the problems we are in today,both as a nation and individually were as a result of the evil african religions.all i am saying,no more african religions.JESUS SHALL REIGN FOREVER!

what good did the imported religion do for us. The ans is none. They came with their bibles and bags gave us bibles and looted our land. Then gave us the idea that everytin we do is inferior. Before the religion came our fore fathers lived in harmony with each other fornication, adultery, abortion, malice, selfishness, were almost none existant. Everyone was their neibours keeper but now with both christianity and islam imported things are not better instead they are worse personaly i have not seen any good that both islam and christianity have done for nigeria.
I think we as africans we should preserve our own religion. Cos no matter what we try to do it will always be a part of us

@poster
some aspects of the religion, yes.
Though preserving human sacrifices for good harvests,killing of twins, the deformed,albinos
and assigning god status to things we didnt understand like rainbows and spring water
should be done away with.

Those were just borne out of ignorance.

D blood spillin dat d traditional religion partake in would have been abolished witout external contact now dat we have islam and christianity these ritual killin still go on people get missin on d streets and dey re neva found

Yes, but it has to be in a civilized way.

1st:[/b]The Problem with African Religion is that the early missionaries succeeded in deceiving our forefathers to believe that our religion is babaric and inferior to theirs. As a result they started  doing away with our customs and traditions without thinking deep.
[b]
2nd: African religions has never been documented in form of scriptures, so the original practice is unknown to us, the one we know now has been corrupted due to western influence. The result of this is that we couldn't sell our religion to the world. Look at Budhism, it started in Asian and Tiger woods from America is one of them. The Indians are proud to be Hindus. This people enjoys better life and live longer than most Africans.Had it been we have our own Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, it would have been different. (Though we have Sango and Ogun in Yoruba land, but all their activities were orally handed down and not documented by the disciple.)

3rd: Check out the histories of most nations that accepted xtianity and islam, they did that on the condition that their own culture should be integrated with the new religion. thats why you have a celebration like Christmas which is a Roman pagan celebration of the birth of the sun "sartunalia". today they sold it to you and you ignorantly look forward to it at the end of every year knowing fully well it's not even in the xtian scripture AT ALL.

4th: and Finally, African Religion has it's own negative parts but it's not peculiar to Africa alone most religion in ancient world practiced human sacrifice and other harmful practices check some parts of old testament of the bible[b](THESE ARE THE ONES WE NEED TO FISH OUT AND DO AWAY WITH)[/b]. Apart of that, Africa religion represent equity, justice, love of neighbour, fear of supreme being, and the zeal to serve the society.

LET ME ASK ANY OF YOU, IF YOU'RE ASKED TO SWEAR TO JUJU IN THE COURT BEFORE A CASE YOU KNOW YOU'RE GUILTY WILL YOU SWEAR?
BUT IF IT'S THE BIBLE OR KORAN, YOU'LL QUICKLY SWEAR KNOWING THAT NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.














;

LET ME ASK ANY OF YOU, IF YOU'RE ASKED TO SWEAR TO JUJU IN THE COURT BEFORE A CASE YOU KNOW YOU'RE GUILTY WILL YOU SWEAR?
BUT IF IT'S THE BIBLE OR KORAN, YOU'LL QUICKLY SWEAR KNOWING THAT NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.

Definitely not! You see, these arab and european religions have helped spread corruption and evil deed like killings in the name of God, casting away socalled witchcraft in children (Child torturing, mutilation, and murdering), deliberate ostracization of people. So the adherents know that there is no consequence for laying hold of either the quran or the bible. If these religions were better than the African ones, Nigeria would have been the most honest country in the world. However, we are widely known as corrupt people all over the world. Some of the people perpetrating the evil works are actually clerics.

Nevertheless, I do admit that it has also brought some good things like the Alphabetization of the indeginous languages.

Before I continue to respond to this post. I would advice that a new SECTION should be created for intellectual discussion maybe around PHILOSOPHY. Not all thread should we find nonsense responses.

@Poster
Yes we should keep or culture, religions and values and even export them to the world just like the Westerners did. I do not believe any of our values are evil or our GODs are. To me just the way the prophets came and preached to the people and eventually got iconised , same was the way of Obatala, Sango, Oya etc , they too where messengers that where idolized. More evil have been done in the names of their God's and religions. Though I do not really belong to any region or cult but I have my own personal beliefs. If there would be any religion today thats functioning I would like to belong to 'Technology' or worship 'The god of Information which is INTERNET'. My personal faith is that there is one good and the true relgion lies between me. Which is direct worship of the supreme being without proxies or vpn

There is nothing bad or wrong with the African religions. The early white missionaries painted it black so they could win followers. The African religion is our identity and will always remain so!

Maybe if we(Africans) embraced our traditional religion, Africa would be a better place. It could be that these western and eastern religions just doesn't suit the African.

Imagine if every newly elected leader was to swear an oath in a shrine, he will have no choice but to perform.

bgees:

Maybe if we(Africans) embraced our traditional religion, Africa would be a better place. It could be that these western and eastern religions just doesn't suit the African.

Imagine if every newly elected leader was to swear an oath in a shrine, he will have no choice but to perform.

I feel u, who wouldn't perform after swearing in a shrine

bawomolo:

including circumcision and the killing of twins?

African religions should be preserved but that doesn't mean we should be immune to change

Those are just elements that can be refined as africans grow and evovle spiritually. And those refinements do take place, albeit slowly. Some of the elderly guardians of african trado- cultural heritage and religions have long realized that these refinements are necessary in order to keep them alive in the modern times. They fully understand and aware of the "evolve or die" truth.

The quetion is very good one. In an attempt take a fair decision, we must look at the concept of Religion, culture and Science.

It is difficult to seperate this three concepts.

However, one yhing I know about African Religion is that it is a mixture of so many babaric practices. If we talk about the real traditional religion, we will surely expose some occultic practices that form the basis for such a religion.

The real christinity not sure of Islam is devoid of so many barbaric ritual acts.

I will conclude by saying, moral sensitization cultures should be preserved but for the occultic practices of the Africans, it must be discarded.