I remember being in grade school and learning about “primitive” cultures and their belief that there were spirits everywhere—in trees, animals, rocks, whatever. And I remember thinking how silly and quaint that was. (Bear in mind, I’m getting rather old, especially after my birthday this week, so school wasn’t all that politically correct when I was a kid. Nobody saw anything wrong with calling African or Native American traditions “primitive” back then.)
We learned in school that this belief was called “animism”—the idea that God actually lives in objects in the natural world and the notion that people should worship those “God-infested” objects. What I’ve learned this month is that my teachers were not only politically incorrect but also wrong, at least when it comes to most African religions.
African traditions are not truly animistic. Most Africans don’t actually worship the trees and the rocks and the sky, even if it may appear that way to outside observers. They worship God and the spirits that control natural forces and that may inhabit certain objects in nature.
Maybe that doesn’t seem all that different from what my teachers told me in school, but it is, especially if you’re looking at African religions from a Judeo-Christian perspective, where worshipping objects or idols is a big no-no. From that perspective, the distinction is huge: Africans are not worshipping trees; they’re worshipping the God who made the trees and the spirits that God has sent to inhabit them.
So I was wrong, as a kid, to think it was “cute” and “funny” that people would believe the kinds of things most African traditions believe. Sure, it may seem strange to many of us, but it also seems (at least to me) kind of magical and kind of nice, don’t you think? I mean, maybe I’d be a bigger fan of nature if I could really make myself believe there are spirits all around me. It would make the world a better place.
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