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Olupona Jacob K., ed. African Spirituality: Forms,

Meanings and Expressions. Volume 3 of World
Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the
Religious Quest. New York: Crossroads, 2000.
xxxvi + 476 pp. Index. \$35.00. Paper.

Robert M. Baum

African Studies Review / Volume 45 / Issue 03 / December 2002, pp 148 - 151

DOI: 10.2307/1515143, Published online: 23 May 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0002020600028924

How to cite this article:

Robert M. Baum (2002). African Studies Review, 45, pp 148-151
doi:10.2307/1515143

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148 African Studies Review

destruction as opposed to construction. The conclusion, "Decepcao na

esperanca da paz" [Deception in the hope for peace] reflects disillusion-
ment more than hope, or, rather, a hope coupled with the burden of
responsibility to avert such senseless wars in the future.
A well-researched and well-documented book, A Guerra e as Igrejas pro-
vides a synthesis of the drama played out between the politics of Por-
tuguese colonialism, the politics of resistance on the part of Angolans, and
the politics of survival of the Christian mission in the face of ambivalence.
The theology of liberation challenges the theology of the state as well as
that of the church in order to force both to participate in the decoloniza-
tion process or get out of Angola. The marginality of the church, once an
agent of colonial oppression and brutality, is a curious reversal that will
interest historians and scholars of Lusophone Africa in general. While
Benedict Schubert has carried out an incredible study, it would be inter-
esting to see a similar comparison between the role of the church and the
role of traditional Angolan religions. Both the liberation and civil wars
were fought with the help of the curandeiros, the traditional healers. The
MPLA-UNITA conflict and affiliations are marked along ethnic lines and
provide ample evidence of resorting to traditional medicine and protec-
tion, if only to neutralize the power of one in order to overcome the other.
This vital omission makes Schubert's invaluable study incomplete.
Niyi Afolabi
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana

Jacob K. Olupona, ed. African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings and Expressions.

Volume 3 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest. New
York: Crossroads, 2000. xxxvi + 476 pp. Index. $35.00. Paper.

African Spirituality gathers together a series of essays focused on indigenous

African religions, Islam, Christianity, and African-derived religions in the
New World. Jacob Olupona has included both senior scholars and relative
newcomers to the field of African religions, scholars from Africa, Europe,
and North America. Some of the essays represent broad overviews of
African religions or certain aspects of African religions in a comparative
framework. Thus one finds essays on African shrines, the roles of ancestors,
witchcraft, healing systems, Sufism, and so on. These would be highly use-
ful in a course on African religions. Other essays are case studies of partic-
ular communities. In this category, however, there is a profound imbal-
ance. All of the Africa-specific case studies (except an essay on Roman
North African Christianity) are drawn from just three countries: Nigeria,
Ghana, and South Africa. There are no essays focused on Francophone
Africa, East or equatorial Africa, or northeast Africa. It is particularly puz-
zling that the only essay on North Africa focuses on Roman Christianity,
 Book Reviews 149

while there are no discussions of North African Islam, which is of vital

importance to understanding West African Islam, or of ancient Egyptian
religion, whose influence in both Mediterranean and African religions
remains a subject of considerable debate.
While the reader may presume that the tide, African Spirituality, was
adapted to fit into the series on World Spirituality (edited by Ewert
Cousins), there is litde attempt to distinguish African spirituality from
African religions. This anthology reflects the latter's emphasis on orga-
nized religion rather than on the personal religious experience more often
associated with spirituality. In this collection, like most anthologies con-
cerning African religions, the focus is collective and institutional rather
than private and personal. Perhaps the inclusion of some religious biogra-
phies could have shifted the focus toward what Cousins describes as spiri-
tuality and moved beyond the enduring image of a lack of individuality in
African religious practice and experience.
The anthology begins with comparative essays by Dominique Zahan
and Benjamin Ray. Zahan presents an overview of African religions, rang-
ing from concepts of the supreme being, to lesser spirits and ancestors, to
shrines and initiation rituals. His frequent interjection of comparisons with
Western religions, however, confuses the issues, and he underestimates the
role in many African religions of the Supreme Being's connections to fate,
judgment after death, and the procurement of rain. His suggestion that
"African religion is usually a male affair" (19) is belied by the prevalence of
women's fertility and rain shrines, and the importance of women healers
and spirit mediums, some of whom are described in subsequent essays in
this volume. Ray presents a descriptive essay, "African Shrines as Channels
of Communication." In his discussion of !Kung San and BaMbuti religious
sites, he stresses the importance of the consecration of sacred sites for each
ritual, reflecting the practitioners' life styles, while more permanent struc-
tures are more common among sedentary agriculturalists and city dwellers.
The next two essays focus on the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria. Sabine
Jell-Bahlsen presents an overview of Igbo cosmology with particular atten-
tion to the role of goddesses in that tradition. Ogbu Kalu describes the role
of ancestors in general, emphasizing the importance to the Igbo of leading
a proper life in order one day to become an ancestor and serve as inter-
mediary between living descendants and divinities. Kalu then describes the
importance of the Odo ancestral cult among the northern Igbo, the ten-
sions that developed over ancestor veneration among northern Igbo Chris-
tians, and a crisis that developed between the two religious communities in
1989.
The next two chapters also focus on Nigeria. Umar Habila Dadem Dan-
fulani looks at the practices of Pa divination among three different ethnic
groups inhabiting the Jos Plateau. Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan examines the
ideology of sacred kingship among the Edo, providing a rich description of
court ritual organizations. She presents a convincing argument that the oba
150 African Studies Review

of Benin took on more aspects of what Westerners have described as sacred

kingship once the kingdom had successfully expanded and achieved sta-
bility.
Subsequent essays treat issues related to disease and witchcraft. David
Westerlund presents a comparative study of ideas of disease and ritual treat-
ment among the !Kung, Maasai, and Sukuma. While arguing that most ill-
nesses are not seen as having spiritual causes, and most treatments draw on
home remedies or nonreligious practices, he focuses on spiritual agents of
affliction. He discusses the role of the spirits of the dead and ancestors, of
lesser deities, and of the Maasai supreme being in the various etiologies of
disease. Michael Bourdillon discusses the role of witchcraft and its impor-
tance in explaining death, evil, and suffering as well as its linkages to social
tension caused by intensive interaction among close family members.
In "Art and Spirituality," Wyatt MacGaffey questions the assumption
that art and spirituality exist with the same range of meanings in African
societies as they do in the West, given the divergent history of these terms
in the colonial and postcolonial eras. He describes the use of religious "art"
in masquerades, in adorning kings and other ritual specialists, and in the
creation of power objects like the Kongo Minkisi. Kathleen O'Brien Wick-
er examines various cultural influences embodied in the artistic and
mythological representation of the Mami Water Cult of the West African
coast. Finally, in the concluding essay on indigenous religion, John Cher-
noff examines Dagamba spirituality in northern Ghana. Of particular inter-
est is Chernoff s analysis of proverbs associated with "drum histories" and
his examination of the interaction between Islam and Dagamba religion.
The next section focuses on Christianity and Islam in African spiritual-
ity. G. C. Oosthuizen's meditation, "The Task of African Traditional Reli-
gion in the Church's Dilemma in South Africa," suffers from his tendency
to make broad generalizations about what he sees as a homogeneous
African religion and a dichotomous view of tradition and modernity. Mar-
garet Miles's discussion of Roman North African Christianity, while
extremely interesting in its analysis of distinctive forms of North African
Christianity, would have been enriched for the purpose of this volume by
extending die field of analysis to include Egypt and Monophysite forms of
Christianity, which became so important in northeast Africa. Pashington
Obeng offers an important essay on Asante Catholicism, examining the
ways in which Bishop Sarpong has enabled Asante spiritual questions to be
answered in a Catholic context, and conversely, the ways in which Asante
symbolic actions, including forms of dance, have infused Catholic rituals.
The three essays on African Islam provide a clearer picture of the
range of African Islamic practice. Patrick Ryan presents an overview of the
growth of West African Islam, relying on Humphrey Fisher's three-stage
model for the spread of Islam. While Fisher's view is overly schematic, Ryan
applies it effectively to the spread of Islam in Ghana, Mali, and the forest
regions of West Africa. Abdulkader Tayob's essay on Muslim youth in South
 Book Reviews 151

Africa is much more focused. He describes the history of Muslim youth

organizations, their role in the antiapartheid struggle, and their continu-
ing importance in identity politics in a free South Africa. Louis Brenner's
essay on African Sufism emphasizes its position in the mainstream of Islam-
ic mysticism. He pays particular attention to the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya,
the two most influential Sufi orders in West Africa.
The last section focuses on African religious influences in the Americ-
as. Rudolph Eastman and Maureen Warner-Lewis describe three distinct
forms of African influences in Trinidad and Tobago: orisha worship, vodunu
(vodun), and the Spiritual Baptist Church. Gerdes Fleurant looks at the
music of Haitian Vodun, concentrating his analysis on various types of
songs and dances, each with its own distinct origins (particularly Kongo
and Dahomey) and their relationships to the loas (gods) being invoked.
Finally, Mary Cuthrell-Curry looks at primarily Yoruba-inspired religious
movements among Cuban American and African American practitioners.
No article addresses the types of issues raised by the Herskovits-Frazier
debate on the more subtle African influences in African American Chris-
tianity.
This book combines some strong overviews of African religions and
African Islam. The specific case studies, however, are uneven in quality and
lack a proper contextualization within broader issues of African spirituali-
ty or religion. This makes it a difficult book to use in teaching, which would
ordinarily be a central function of this type of anthology.
Robert M. Baum
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa

Joseph M. Murphy and Mei-Mei Sanford, eds. dsun across the Waters: A
Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2001. xiv + 274 pp. Illustrations. Bibliographies. Index. $29.95. Paper.

As patriarchs of our global triumvirate of monotheisms continue to give

orders to reduce to rubble whatever can be reached by planes, tanks, and
explosives, how refreshing to come upon the burgeoning skirts, sweet
waters, elegant hairdos, and calm demeanor of modesdy matriarchal Osun.
Surely only the plural—and especially the feminine—gods belonging to all
the paganisms of this blue-green planet can save it for our children and
grandchildren.
Where are these tutelary spirits? If one doesn't mind going off the beat-
en track and learning other languages, it is possible, as most Africanists
know, eventually to solicit their blessings in person. In the company of their
devotees one may visit their haunts, attend their festivals, make the correct
offerings. All over the world in reticent communities, protected by bad
roads, swamps, mountains, political marginalization, and desperate pover-