Some of their Common Features

Despite the diversity of the different groups surveyed above there tend to be certain features characteristic of these movements, which may be summar­ised as follows:

1. They begin with a founder who has a mystical experience of a new revelation from the spirit world, often described as dying, visiting heaven, being given a new way and then being sent back to earth to start the new religion.

2. The divinity is now seen as a single personal supreme being who has ultimate power and will help people if they obey him.

3. The founder is accepted as an authentic African prophet called by God, occasionally as a new Messiah; contrary to traditional locations of authority the founder is often young and is sometimes a woman.

4. There is a selective rejection and retention of different elements of local culture. Magic, divination and dealings with the occult are usually discour­aged, but revelatory dreams and visions, polygamous marriage, drumming and dancing, food taboos and colour and other symbolisms are retained and perhaps reshaped.

5. Considerable creativity is shown in the development of new forms of worship. There are new hymns, vestments, styles of architecture, and new major festivals, often at a new holy mountain or community centre with a biblical name such as ‘New Jerusalem’.

6. The new blessings or salvation offered include healing, guidance from God, protection from evil powers and membership in a new and disciplined community as a ‘place to belong’.

7. Receipt of these blessings depends on following the new rites and the new ethic, which commonly stresses love, discipline and industry, bans luxury and alcohol and tobacco, and sometimes transcends tribe and nation.

8. Expansion by deliberate missionary activity is a major innovation as compared with primal religions.

9. The contribution to modernisation and development may be quite substantial but is seldom recognised. A change of world-view has begun when magical control of power is replaced by rational and scientific methods; when their own past story and future hopes introduce the dimension of history into an outlook dominated by myth; when the traditional closed, sacral, tightly integrated society is replaced by the new open, desacralised, pluralist forms implied by these movements; and when evil begins to be internalised so that one takes responsibility for one’s own misfortunes rather than always blaming them on external evil powers. Psychologically and culturally there is a break with the past and an openness to an innovative future. This is sometimes expressed in new low-technology economic activities and better farming, coupled with a new work ethic. The Mourides Islamic movement in Senegal, with its groundnut farming and other activities, is a notable example of new forms of organisation and discipline playing a major role in the national economy.