Often understood as a cause or catalyst for ethnopolitical tension or conflict in normative discourse on religion, “religious tolerance,” and conflict, recent scholarship from African and African-descended scholars interrogates the role of religion in conflict and challenges assumptions that argue for a causal link between religion and ethnonationalism in Africa. This session welcomes papers that critically engage the role of religion in ways that expand the current discourse. Some questions to consider include: 1) does religion transcend ethnonationalism? 2) does religion lend itself to cooptation or complicity in conflict? 3) how do systems of belonging or community on the continent resist or contribute to conflict and ethnic fragmentation? Whether theorized as catalyst or counter-measure, religion is key to understanding many ethnic, socio-political unrests and fragmentations on the African continent. We seek papers that address and theorize the role and impact of religion on these issues on the African continent.
Because the very term “religion” is not an indigenous category in African societies and the contours of many ethnonational identities were forged in the 19th century as a result of European colonialism and modernity, this paper argues that the very assertion that perceived links between ethnonationalism, conflict, and religion in Africa are simultaneously deeply misinformed but potentially illuminating. Beginning with a case study of the people now called “Yoruba” in West Africa, the paper demonstrates how indigenous conceptions of and orientations toward the religious made conflict along religious lines practically unthinkable, but the introduction of Western modernity not only created a Yoruba “nation” but a modern and highly successful “religion” along with it. Furthermore, building on the work of scholars like David Chidester, it argues that the very formation of “African religions” was a largely colonial process designed to offer further avenues of division and control for European powers.
The relationship between religion and violence is complicated especially in the African context. This is so because conflicts that have religious dimensions can also be explained in other terms including ethnicity, socio-political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. While violence in many sociohistorical instances is independent of religion, religion often becomes the conduit for expressing violence. A case in point is in Accra, the capital of Ghana, where Ga traditionalists clash with Pentecostal-Charismatic churches over their annual sacred silence, which is imposed on the city, as part of the celebration of Hɔmɔwɔ, a major festival. These clashes have often been framed as a religious conflict. However, a critical analysis of the situation reveals that whereas religion is used as a tool for mobilization, there are other equally significant dimensions such as ethnicity. This paper explores the interaction of religion and ethnicity in the conflict between traditionalists and Christians.
Africanists have often described Christianity in Africa as a path by which older communal identities moved toward state-based and ethnonational identities. This paper takes for granted that Christianity and other religious traditions have served as tools to advance ethnonationalism, yet it argues that this scholarly narration has been too unidirectional in its portrayals of Christianity leading to ethnonationalism. The paper shows how many communities have also shaped Christianities that harness indigenous politics to resist ethnonational identities. Amid fragmentations of indigenous political identities through capitalist economics as well as colonial and postcolonial state politics, AICs, councils of churches, and other Christian groups have employed Christianity to preserve older community identities and practices that predate ethnic politics and resist the violence that often accompanies them. The paper draws from two case studies to ground its claims, one from South Africa and another from South Sudan.