Religion and the Making of Nigeria

Religion and the Making of Nigeria PDF

Author: Olufemi Vaughan

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2016-11-18

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0822373874

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In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.

Religion and the Making of Nigeria

Religion and the Making of Nigeria PDF

Author: Olufemi Vaughan

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

Published: 2016-12-09

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780822362067

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In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.

Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria

Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria PDF

Author: Chima Jacob Korieh

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780761831402

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Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria is concerned with the problematic nature of religion and politics in Nigerian history. The book provides a lively and straightforward treatment of the relationship among religion, politics, and history in Nigeria, and how it affects public life today. By adopting various cultural, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the text's contributors provide an excellent introduction to the volatile mix of religion and politics in Nigerian history, as well as a range of strategic choices open to religious adherents. The complexity of the relationship among religion, history, and politics is organized around four themes: indigenous values and the influence of Islam and Christianity, colonialism and religious transformation, the religious landscape of the post-colonial period, and the rise of evangelism and fundamentalism. The volume provides an insightful guide to contemporary history, contemporary religion, and contemporary politics, enabling the reader to reach informed and balanced judgments about the role in religion in Nigerian history and politics. This opens the door for serious examination and debate, and will be excellent for use by the general reader and in political science, history, and religion courses.

Political Spiritualities

Political Spiritualities PDF

Author: Ruth Marshall

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0226507149

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After an explosion of conversions to Pentecostalism over the past three decades, tens of millions of Nigerians now claim that “Jesus is the answer.” But if Jesus is the answer, what is the question? What led to the movement’s dramatic rise and how can we make sense of its social and political significance? In this ambitiously interdisciplinary study, Ruth Marshall draws on years of fieldwork and grapples with a host of important thinkers—including Foucault, Agamben, Arendt, and Benjamin—to answer these questions. To account for the movement’s success, Marshall explores how Pentecostalism presents the experience of being born again as a chance for Nigerians to realize the promises of political and religious salvation made during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Her astute analysis of this religious trend sheds light on Nigeria’s contemporary politics, postcolonial statecraft, and the everyday struggles of ordinary citizens coping with poverty, corruption, and inequality. Pentecostalism’s rise is truly global, and Political Spiritualities persuasively argues that Nigeria is a key case in this phenomenon while calling for new ways of thinking about the place of religion in contemporary politics.

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba PDF

Author: John David Yeadon Peel

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2003-02-21

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9780253215888

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"Peel is by training an anthropologist, but one possessed of an acute historical sensibility. Indeed, this magnificent book achieves a degree of analytical verve rare in either discipline." —History Today "[T]his is scholarship of the highest quality. . . . Peel lifts the Yoruba past to a dimension of comparative seriousness that no one else has managed. . . . The book teems with ideas . . . about big and compelling matters of very wide interest." —T. C. McCaskie In this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peel contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century that the Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. Peel's detailed study of the encounter is based on the rich archives of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which contain the journals written by the African agents of mission, who, as the first generation of literate Yoruba, played a key role in shaping modern Yoruba consciousness. This distinguished book pays special attention to the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christian conversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.

Singing Yoruba Christianity

Singing Yoruba Christianity PDF

Author: Vicki L. Brennan

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0253032083

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Singing the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L. Brennan reveals that by singing together, church members create one spiritual mind and become unified around a shared set of values. She follows parishioners as they attend choir rehearsals, use musical media—hymn books and cassette tapes—and perform the music and rituals that connect them through religious experience. Brennan asserts that church members believe that singing together makes them part of a larger imagined social collective, one that allows them to achieve health, joy, happiness, wealth, and success in an ethical way. Brennan discovers how this particular Yoruba church articulates and embodies the moral attitudes necessary to be a good Christian in Nigeria today.

Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion

Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion PDF

Author: J.D.Y. Peel

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0520285859

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are exceptional for the copresence among them of three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and the indigenous orisa religion. In this comparative study, at once historical and anthropological, Peel explores the intertwined character of the three religions and the dense imbrication of religion in all aspects of Yoruba history up to the present. For over 400 years, the Yoruba have straddled two geocultural spheres: one reaching north over the Sahara to the world of Islam, the other linking them to the Euro-American world via the Atlantic. These two external spheres were the source of contrasting cultural influences, notably those emanating from the world religions. However, the Yoruba not only imported Islam and Christianity but also exported their own orisa religion to the New World. Before the voluntary modern diaspora that has brought many Yoruba to Europe and the Americas, tens of thousands were sold as slaves in the New World, bringing with them the worship of the orisa. Peel offers deep insight into important contemporary themes such as religious conversion, new religious movements, relations between world religions, the conditions of religious violence, the transnational flows of contemporary religion, and the interplay between tradition and the demands of an ever-changing present. In the process, he makes a major theoretical contribution to the anthropology of world religions.

Nigeria and the Nation-State

Nigeria and the Nation-State PDF

Author: John Campbell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-12-02

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1538113767

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Nigeria matters. It is Africa’s largest economy, and it is projected to become the third most populous country in the world by 2050, but its democratic aspirations are challenged by rising insecurity. John Campbell traces the fractured colonial history and contemporary ethnic conflicts and political corruption that define Nigeria today. It was not—and never had been—a nation-state like those of Europe. It is still not quite a nation because Nigerians are not yet united by language, religion, culture, or a common national story. It is not quite a state because the government is weak and getting weaker, beset by Islamist terrorism, insurrection, intercommunal violence, and a countrywide crime wave. This deeply knowledgeable book is an antidote to those who would make the mistakes of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—mistakes based on misunderstanding—in Nigeria. Up to now, such mistakes have largely been avoided, but Nigeria will soon—and Campbell argues already does—require much greater attention by the West.