Aladura Christianity: a Yoruba Religion

BENJAMIN C. RAY

(University of Virginia, Charlottesville)

Aladura Christianity among the Yoruba of Nigeria is a distinctive form of Christianity that bears the full imprint of Yoruba traditional religion. While many churches in Nigeria exhibit certain Yoruba features, these are recognizably superficial and do not involve the deeply Yoruba religious stamp that is found among the Aladura. This, I should point out, is not merely the judgment of western observers but of Yoruba scholars as well. The nature and extent of this Yoruba 'imprint' has not, how- ever, been fully examined. Although several scholars have identified certain Yoruba elements, there. has been no systematic explanation of how they have combined with Christian elements to form a distinctly new Christian religious synthesis. Excellent studies by Harold Turner, J. Akinyele Omoyajowo, Albert A. Agbaje, and David O. Olayiwola concentrate on the history, institutional organization, and theology of several Aladura churches.' These works often dismiss the Yoruba elements as theologically unorthodox, and leave them unexamined. J.D.Y. Peel's pioneering sociological study (1968) and Diedre Crumbley's more recent anthropological work (1989) have also identified a number of Yoruba aspects of the Aladura churches but not with the intent to show how they are involved in shaping a new version of 2 Christianity.2 Since my purpose is descriptive and not theological, I want to avoid at the outset the normative implications that the term son- cretism' usually conveys and speak instead of the Aladura churches as constituting a distinctive synthesis of Yoruba and Christian beliefs and practices. In agreement with Peel,3 I am not interested simply in the question of acculturation, that is, in identifying the Yoruba origins of certain elements of Aladura Christianity. Isolating and labelling Yoruba traits is not particularly useful and, 267

in fact, makes Aladura Christianity appear to be merely a hybrid religion, either an imperfect version of western Christianity or a mere adaptation of the traditional religion. What is needed is a holistic perspective that interprets Aladura Christianity in the wider context of Yoruba culture and traditional religion. Such a vantage point can show Aladura Christianity to its fullest extent as unique synthesis of biblical belief, Christian liturgical forms, and Yoruba religious and ritual concepts. In this way we can understand not only the Yoruba roots of Aladura but also of the Yoruba We . Christianity something religious genius. can see how in adopting a foreign religion the Yoruba have creatively transformed it into a religion of their own. Having said this, it is well to emphasize with Peel and others that the Aladura Christians themselves do not understand their faith in a syncretic way. If they did they would be deeply disturbed. They firmly reject any element of traditional religious belief and practice which they view as not only thoroughly pagan but also as basically evil. In a fundamental sense, they are correct, for the elements that I shall be describing are not matters of superficial content-at this level there is nothing obviously 'pagan.' I am concerned with matters of deeper conceptual and ritual form, the root concepts and ritual procedures that are intrinsic to the traditional Yoruba world- view. The anthropologist Olatunde Lawuyi points out that contem- porary Yoruba culture is a dynamic affair, such that for most modern Yoruba 'the outlook of any individual may ... be said to 4 consist of several overlapping, partly conflicting, systems of ideas ' . ' Aladura Christianity must also be seen as a dynamic phenomenon, which, to use Lawuyi's terms, consists of overlapping systems of ideas and practices, both Christian and Yoruba. What I want to show is that by identifying the main Yoruba elements, we will be able to understand Aladura Christianity better and at a deeper religious level.

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When western Christianity entered Yoruba culture, it encountered a well-structured religious environment. As Chris- tianity spread beyond European control into the hands of Yoruba Christians, the process of adapting it to the indigenous religious and cultural environment began. While rejecting most of the

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