Origin of Religion

Religion does not appear as a separate word in Africa. In fact, there are no words in African languages that refer to religion as a specific activity. To a large extent, this is a borrowed concept in African culture coming from the influences of Europeans and Arabs with the religions of Christianity and Islam. In Africa, what one calls religion is simply the way that a particular people live their lives. For example, the origin of what one calls Yoruba religion is the people themselves. The religion and the people are coexistent. One cannot be Yoruba without also practicing the naming patterns and certain rituals of identity, music, dance, and festivals of the Yoruba people. Thus, there are no separate identities of the Yoruba people.

The question of polytheism or monotheism is not an African question and has limited value in trying to understand how Africans came to view their lives and those of their neighbors. One does not have to draw sharp distinctions between those who believe in many deities and those who purport to believe in one deity to gain an appreciation of the complexity of the African way of life. In fact, most Africans accept a belief in one creator deity, although there may be many spirits. Thus, in reality, this is similar to the later forms of “religion,” which followed the African pattern in many respects. Africans were the first humans to conceive of a concept of monotheism, and Akhenaten has been considered the first person to have commented on the idea of one God. Of course, there is ample evidence to note that many African traditions accepted that the Supreme Deity was too distant to deal with daily issues; these were left for the interventions of ancestors and other spirits. It appears that the idea of responding to the environment, relationships, and mysteries might have occurred so far in antiquity that we will never know the precise origin of human response to the universe. Nevertheless, these early attempts to explain the environment may be called the origins of religion when defined as a way of life.