The Positions of Islam and Christianity

While new Islamic-related movements still appear, as in the heretical move­ment of the prophet Maitatsine that has clashed violently with the govern­ment of Nigeria since the late 1970s, their paucity as compared with those related to Christianity requires some explanation.

On the other hand, independent forms of African Christianity have been encouraged by the extensive translation of the Chris­tian Scriptures into hundreds of vernaculars and by the deliberate mission policy of developing non-Western indigenous forms. There has been no equivalent in Islam, with scriptures untranslatable in principle and a certain in-built disdain for ‘primitive’ African tribal cultures.

Nevertheless, there are many similarities between the movements these two faiths have engendered. Both have notable ex­amples of new holy cities, often with the tomb of the founder, and serving as places of major festivals and of pilgrimage. Both have contributed to tribal revival and renewal: the Mourides for the Wolof, Limamu for the Lebu and Shembe’s Nazarite Church among the Zulu. There is a tendency in both towards regarding the founder as a Messiah or Mahdi, but this usually fades with time, as it did with Limamu and with Shembe and Kimbangu. The passing of leadership by lineage descent is common in both, likewise disputes over the leadership and over property and money. In ritual and ethical matters there is much in common: the removal of footwear for worship, the emphasis upon prayer, the use of water for purification, the importance of dreams and visions, discipline through fasting and food and other taboos and the acceptance of polygamy. The presence of most of these features in classic Islam also helps to explain why there has been less need of independent developments in that milieu.

Characteristic differences can also be identified. Movements in a Christian context have been more fissiparous, more hostile to Western forms and concerned to develop a religion adapted to Africa. They have also produced a number of young women founders, as seen in Alice Lenshina in Zambia, Victoria Akinsowon of the Cherubim and Seraphim in Nigeria, Gaudencia Aoko of the Maria Legio in Kenya and Marie Lalou of the Deima religion in the Ivory Coast. Equally remarkable is the centrality of healing in the Christian context and the lack of a similar emphasis in the other group. In the latter the Qur’an tends to be a mystic sacred object, recited but not avidly studied; the Bible serves as a creative stimulus, within which African peoples find their own story and a normative reference point. It also serves as a means of contact for the increasing relation­ships between the church sector of the movements and Western mission agencies which offer help in Bible study and leadership training, and also with Christian councils, both national and international, which have admitted some bodies from this sector into their membership.

These new religious movements are still increasing and have come to represent a distinctive part of the religious scene in Black Africa, a major new phenomenon that neither African nor other nations can readily ignore.

Further Reading

Baeta, C.G. Prophetism in Ghana: A Study of Some ‘Spiritual’ Churches (SCM, London, 1962)

Barrett, D.B. Schism and Renewal: An Analysis of Six Thousand Contemporary Religious Movements (Oxford University Press, London, 1968)

Peel.J.D.Y. Aladura: a Religious Movement among the Yoruba (Oxford University Press for The International African Institute, London, 1968)

Sundkler, B.G.M. Bantu Prophets in South Africa, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, London, 1961)

Turner, H.W. African Independent Church: Church of the Lord (Aladura), 2 vols. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967)