Hi, I’m John Green, welcome to Crash Course Religions. So, in 1791, the enslaved people of Haiti started a revolution and when it culminated in 1804, Haiti became an independent state — the first and only Black republic born from a successful revolt of enslaved people. One of the events cited as sparking this revolution was a religious ceremony in the woods.
Two hundred Haitans gathered and called upon Iwa, which are like spirits or deities in the Vodou tradition, to guard over them as they armed themselves against the French. So, just as much as this gathering was religious, it was also political, as the group organized and prepared to fight for their freedom. And this is just one snapshot of a particular religious ceremony in a particular country of the African Diaspora.
So, what are African religions? Well, there’s way, way, way more than one answer to that question… [THEME MUSIC] So now might be a good time for a couple reflections. Uh, first off, religion and politics have always been intersecting.
Secondly, let’s take a moment and reflect on just how big Africa is. I mean, look at this. Or this.
Or this. Just kidding, that last one was a meme. Seriously, though, when we talk about Africa’s size — which is 20% of Earth’s landmass and 18% of its population — it really sets the stage for the diversity and complexity of its religions.
This is a continent that contains over two thousand living languages and a hugely diverse set of religious beliefs and practices and political and economic systems. And today we’re also talking about religions of the African Diaspora. See, during the time of the transatlantic slave trade that began in the 1500s, largely European colonizers removed millions of African people from their homelands.
This type of global scattering of populations is known as a diaspora. And many of these people took their religions with them, which spread a variety of indigenous African traditions to North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean, where they evolved and blended with other cultural traditions. Many of these are still practiced, such as Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil, Vodou in Haiti, and Orisa-Vodun in… South Carolina?
Let’s go to the Thought Bubble… As a 15-year-old growing up in Detroit during the 1930s, Walter King asked his mom, “Who is the African God? ” and she wasn’t sure how to answer. So, King set out on what would become a life-long mission to bring African religion to African Americans.
He read everything he could about African traditions and eventually changed his name to Ofuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi the First. And it was actually from a National Geographic magazine that he finally learned about the religion of one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, the Yoruba people. Because of the diaspora, this religion now goes by a variety of different names, including Orisa-Vodun, the branch Adefunmi created that’s unique to a small, traditional African community in South Carolina.
At its peak in the 1980s, a few hundred people lived and practiced Yoruba traditions in Oyotunji African Village. Today, the site continues to produce educational programs, host festivals, and offer spiritual services. Practitioners worship the orisa—spiritual entities that can be thought of as deities, energy fields, or features of the natural world, like rivers and thunder.
They also honor their ancestors through Egungun festivals, where people don vibrant masks and clothing, drum, dance, and sing to welcome them as they visit the human world. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So scholars estimate that thousands of people around the world have become Yoruba leaders through their connections to Oyotunji, which literally means Oyo — a Yoruba empire — rises again.
And this is just one example of how seemingly disparate parts of the world come together through the religions of the African diaspora. Now, in Africa today, it’s true that most people practice either Islam or Christianity, but many also practice an indigenous religion. And, while Islam and Christianity aren’t, like, "indigenous" in the sense that they didn't originate on the African continent, their history in Africa is a little more complicated than just "because colonialism.
" Like, plenty of Islam and Christianity’s influence in Africa does come down to that. But not all of it. For example, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was founded as early as the 300s, after an Ethiopian bishop was baptized by the biblical apostle Philip.
And some West African communities converted to Islam as early as the 700s when they encountered Arab-speaking Muslims through trade. So, Islam and Christianity have been around for a long time in parts of the continent, even longer than some indigenous religions. So, back in episode 7, we explored a bunch of indigenous religions, and we learned that it’s really tricky to generalize about them because, they’re from all over the world and made up of all different types of people.
It’d be like saying pizza made in Italy is the same as pizza made in New York or Chicago or Turkey or Japan. Similar elements, different dishes. Personally, I’m a Pizza John’s kinda guy.
It’s more of a metaphysical pizza place. You can’t actually eat at Pizza John’s, but there is still some kind of sustenance on offer. Wait a second… is Pizza John a religion?
No, it’s not a religion. You can sell T-shirts with your mustachioed face on them and that’s not… that’s not a religion. Okay, back to African indigenous religions.
There’s just so much variety. But across a number of them, you’ll find overlap in their cosmology, or beliefs about the creation and structure of the universe. Many African indigenous religions see creation as existing in three tiers, or levels.
At the top, there’s the spirit realm, where the gods and goddesses are. Those often include a supreme deity or creator God — in addition to minor gods, goddesses, and powerful ancestors. All of this makes up a pantheon of deities with complicated connections and family ties.
In the middle, there’s our human world, which also has lots of complicated connections and family ties. You and I live here, also puppies. And then there’s the underworld, which is where the ancestors are.
Now, it might be easy to imagine these tiers as three separate islands: hard to traverse unless you have some sort of rainbow bridge. But it’d be more accurate to picture them as one town with three groups of people in it: a busy town, where gods and goddesses, humans, and ancestors are constantly bumping into each other and getting into each other's' business. The lines are blurry between the worlds, and there’s a lot of influence going up, down, and all around.
Like, one might participate in specific rituals or offerings to interact with these gods, goddesses, and ancestors. And if they’re pleased, they might help you with anything from tough life decisions to making the rain fall. It’s considered a reciprocal relationship: offer good things, get good things in return.
For the Ga people of Ghana, for instance, pleasing the ancestors sometimes includes designing incredibly elaborate coffins for the recently deceased. These can be extremely specific; they’re customized to honor the deceased’s career and interests. Think, coffins in the shape of sneakers, or animals, or cell phones.
. . It’s one way the living can ensure their relationship with the new ancestor is off to a good start.
I would make a joke about what kind of coffin I’d want to be buried in, but then I worry that it would contradict my will and make for a bunch of problems, so back to camera one we go. There are also a number of different coming-of-age ceremonies across African indigenous traditions, which mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. These often have religious significance, but they also teach young people about what it means to be an adult in the community.
For example, the boys of the Nandi people in Kenya go through a grueling coming-of-age ceremony: at one stage, they have to stare, without flinching, at a masked figure shaking a spear at them while the other initiates try to distract them. By overcoming this challenge, the boys can prove their bravery and concentration, earning their place in the community. The performance of sacrifices is also a common element in many African indigenous rituals.
Take the Oromo people of Ethiopia, who use a ritual called buna qalaa—literally, “coffee slaughtering”—to honor the supreme god, Waaqa, from whose tears they believe the coffee tree first sprung. Coffee is a sacred substance to the Oromo, used as medicine, as well as consumed as a food or drink, and it’s carefully prepared by women in the community. Not only does the sacrifice bring blessings and prosperity from Waaqa, but during the ceremony, elders pass on stories and instructions to younger people to instill their beliefs and cultural heritage.
Oromo people as far as the U. S. and Norway partake in this practice to maintain their connections to their god and their community.
Now, if you want to know how the three-tiered universe got to be… well, it depends on who you ask. Like, ask the Bambara people in Mali and they’ll tell you that in the beginning, there was just one sound: yo. And from that sound, all living things and forms of matter emerged.
Other creation stories explain something important about the way the human world works. Like, to the Basari people in Togo and Ghana, the creator first made a human, a snake, and an antelope. When the snake convinced the human and antelope to eat some off-limits fruit, the creator simply made new food for them: antelopes got grass, and humans got yams, sorghum, and millet.
Meanwhile, the snake got venom, which they applied to further terrorize humans and animals. God, cross-culturally, we really blame a lot on snakes, don’t we? Why not spiders?
I dislike spiders so much more than snakes, but spiders, they get a pass. I mean, you read Charlotte's Web, you’d think that spiders are downright lovely, but you… you hang out with a brown recluse! Anyway, the story explains that humans started eating their new food in small groups around separate bowls.
And that separation was the start of different languages. And similar to these new languages that formed through both connection and difference, African diasporic religions continue to diversify and find new communities. In this way, the deep roots of African indigenous traditions spread around the world, overlapping and blending with other traditions and cultures.
Which is kind of an epic origin story on its own. Africa is made up of over fifty countries, hundreds of ethnic groups, and more than a thousand languages. And when we talk about African religions, we mean the beliefs that are central to all of that, plus their influence on the rest of the world.
And I’d argue that we need to consider the beliefs and practices of Islam, Christianity, and African indigenous traditions as not mutually exclusive, but often overlapping, only then can we begin to glimpse the unique flexibility and dazzling intricacy of African religions. In our next episode, we’re jumping over to another famously huge and complicated area: China! I’ll see you then.
Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Religions, which was filmed here in our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
