Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Silver's Commentary on the Pew Report on Religion and Public Life in Sub-Sahara Africa

The most surprising thing I found in the Pew report is the lack of context and deeper understanding about African beliefs, traditions, norms and practices exhibited by the researchers/authors. One would be forgiven for thinking that the Pew report is just like any of those decontextualized and cultural-insensitive reports and documentary accounts from agencies like Human Rights Watch, Invisible Children and a host of other western agencies and “missionaries” who are here to “liberate” Africa from war, ignorance, poverty, diseases, hunger, and barbaric beliefs! For instance, on page 23 of the Report, on Chapter 3, under the sub-title “Traditional African Religious Beliefs and Practices”, the “experts” on African religion wrongly (or perhaps ignorantly) assert that; “The continued influence of traditional African religion is also evident in some aspects of daily life. For example, in 14 of the 19 countries surveyed, more than three-in-ten people say they sometimes consult traditional healers when someone in their household is sick.” (Paragraph 4) This shows a very narrow and simplistic, if not ignorance about African religion, traditions, norms and traditional beliefs. Traditional healers are not agents of traditional African religion! These are men or women skilled in harnessing local medicines (herbs, roots, soil, etc) to cure some tropical diseases! They spend most of their time in the bushes looking for traditional native medicine for diseases and ailments, and use some of those conctions and mixtures (some of which are even used in pharmaceutical industrial processes) to cure diseases like boils, wounds, pregnancy complications, and so many other ailments. This is hard to grasp for a western observer, who is unfamiliar with how Africans treated their diseases before the interaction with the white man, and his medicine (pills, injections, ointments, gels, etc), but these are medicines that preserved the lives of our grandfathers-who enjoyed longer lifespans compared to us (the modern generation)! The Pew report suffers from what most reports about Africa suffer from: lack of context, and deeper understanding of the non-obvious about Africa's lives, rich culture and customs. In preparing this survey, the Pew Forum sought the counsel of scholars with “expertise” in sub-Saharan Africa. Peter Lewis, associate professor and director of African Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, served as a special adviser to the project. They also received invaluable assistance from Amaney Jamal, assistant professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a Pew Forum consultant on global Islam, and Timothy Samuel Shah, senior research fellow at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University and a Pew Forum consultant on global Christianity. Many others advised in the conceptualization and development of the survey, and Teresa Cruz e Silva, Center for African Studies, University of Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique; Stephen Ellis, African Studies Centre, The Netherlands; Tibebe Eshete, Michigan State University; Christopher Fomunyoh, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; Rosalind Hackett, Department of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Ogbu Kalu (deceased), McCormick Theological Seminary; Gina Lambright, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University; Peter Mandaville, Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University; David Maxwell, School of History, Keele University; Ali Mazrui, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York, the list goes on and on! The “experts” are those enlisted from Michigan, New York, Tennessee, etc and not the Old African who knows more about our beliefs-largely because they are “illiterate”, uncertificated and cannot articulate these issues or rise defence for their beliefs in English! The “knowledgeable” are those who co-ordinate programs in “African Studies” from designated African Study Centres, and not those who practice African traditional beliefs, norms and cultures, nay those who have attained traditional or informal training from the encyclopedia of traditional Afrikology! The report also fails to distinguish between which Traditional African Religion Practices are “evil” and which ones are not. Admittedly, practices like child sacrifice, twin murders, etc are evil in the Christendom sense, but some rituals like seeking curative herbs and traditional medicines from traditional healers (as distinguished from the juju man, or witch doctor) are not evil or unchristian! Practices like communal bonding beer parties and participation in rituals like naming new-borns according to ancestors (for preservation of family ties, and lineage) are not evil, or pagan! Unfortunately, such misconceptions and prejudices about African culture, coupled with lack of understanding, and a deeper ignorance about norms, traditions and beliefs are in most cases the basis for analysis of Africa and her people, and the biased judgments like; “Christianity in Africa is millions of miles wide, but inches deeper!” from petty Christianity portrayed by so many “deep expert theologians” of the West with a lot of emphasis on dogma (form as opposed to substance).

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