{"id":678,"date":"2014-05-19T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/religion-and-culture-in-african-literature.html"},"modified":"2014-05-19T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T22:26:00","slug":"religion-and-culture-in-african-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/religion-and-culture-in-african-literature.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion and Culture in African Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Religion, according to Emile Durkheim (1988) is \u201ca united system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things that set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church; all those who adhere to them\u201d. He adds that culture is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.<\/span><\/div>\n
A close analysis of the phenomena reveals the complimentary role they play, as one cannot talk of one in the absence of the other. Suffice to say, religion seeks to mould the individual to fit into what is considered the norm, based on adherence to the supernatural as culturally agreed.<\/span><\/div>\n
Religion \u2014 like culture \u2014 has an oppressive inclination. The individual is expected to behave or not to behave in a certain way, failure of which culminates in being labelled a blasphemer. Culture may be classified as community, national, regional, gender, social and corporate.<\/span><\/div>\n
Although culture \u2014 like religion \u2014 moulds the individual, it is its relativism and ethnocentrism that is the bane of humanity.Cultural dynamism and acculturation cause societies to function, in some cases, at a tangent to generational norms. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that some erroneously believe that their culture is intrinsically superior to others and should therefore, be forced on others. Culture is a people\u2019s pride; hence, it should be guarded jealously.<\/span><\/div>\n
Chinua Achebe, commenting on the role of the writer as a teacher in \u201cAfrican Writers Talking\u201d (1972), notes: \u201cWhat I think a novelist should teach is something very fundamental, namely to indicate to his readers, to put it crudely that we in Africa did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
Thus \u201ca writer has a responsibility to try and stop this, because unless our culture begins to take itself seriously, it will never take off the ground\u201d. \u201cThis\u201d is in reference to the misleading notion that Africa, as a \u201cdark continent\u201d, needs to be illuminated by Westernisation.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religion, according to Emile Durkheim (1988) is \u201ca united system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things that set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church; all those who adhere to them\u201d. He adds that culture is the cumulative deposit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion and Culture in African Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Religion, according to Emile Durkheim (1988) is "a united system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things that set apart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/05\/religion-and-culture-in-african-literature.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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