The African Concept of Deity

In his book Africa’s Roots in God, Sednak Kojo Yankson is adamant that Africans knew the great Creator long before the arrival of any of the monotheistic faith on the continent of Africa. According to Yankson, John Mbiti, and many other writers on the subject of African spirituality, Africans across the continent understood that there was a first-cause who was the source of all that exists.

The Creator of the Africans, unlike the Creator of the Abrahamic faith traditions, was not involved in the mundane affairs of his creation. Principalities and powers were established by the African Creator to deal with the ordinary stuff of existence on the African continent. Africans therefore directed their prayers and supplications to the principalities and powers that were put in place by the Creators.

Europeans would witness Africans going to the local shrine of the principality or deity of the community where they would offer sacrifices and make their petition to the deity. Europeans therefore concluded that the principalities or deities petitioned to at the shrines represented the highest conception of deity held by the Africans.

This of course was as ridiculous as concluding that the saints who were petitioned by Catholic Europeans were the true deity or Creator God of Catholic Europeans.

Were Europeans not so locked into their embrace of Africa as the ‘dark’ continent, with a people dedicated to the worship of demons and the practice of black magic, they would have recognized that the Africans had a very sophisticated understanding of the Creator. Like their fellow religionists in two of the Abrahamic faiths, Africans were monotheists. They believed the Creator was one solitary being as opposed to the composite union of three in one as embraced by most Christian communities.

The Creator of the Africans was all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere all at once. The Creator was basically good but like the deity of the Old Testament, he could also be temperamental. Unlike the deity of the Abrahamic faiths the African Creator has a female counterpart and also had sons and daughters. Some Africans also believed that the Creator embodied both male and female characteristics simplifying the issue of the ordination of women to priestly roles.

The transcendence of the African Creator extricated him/her from the vexing problem of the origin and existence of evil in the world. The African Creator simply set up the conditions for life to proliferate and left creation to swim or sink with the able assistance of the principalities and powers established to guide the creation in its evolutionary journey.

African theologians are therefore not burdened to provide any theodicies in defense of their Creator. Any evil that exists in the African ecosphere can be traced to the choices made by men and women in the course of their lifespan. The transcendence of the African Creator elevates him/her above the Creator of the Abrahamic faiths who is constantly intervening in the affairs of men and often in a very cataclysmic fashion.

The Creator of the Abrahamic faith traditions is supposedly a big fan of free will. Humanity is created with the free will to either obey or disobey the Creator of the Abrahamic faiths. Inexplicably, when individuals exercise their free will to disobey, the Creator of the Abrahamic faiths intervenes in spectacular fashion. In one instance the intervention of the Creator in the Abrahamic faiths resulted in a global genocide by a flood. In another instance the inhabitants of two cities were burnt to a crisp for their unorthodox moral choices.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then it could be argued that the African concept of deity is superior to the concept of deity embraced by the Abrahamic faiths. The African Creator does not have a favorite nation that is tasked with the genocide and ethnic cleansing of other nations. The African Creator does not favor men over women in the priesthood. The hospitality practiced by Africans towards foreigners and strangers also suggest that xenophobia was not a trait encouraged by the Creator of the African.

Africans on the continent and in the Diaspora continue to do ourselves a dis-service when we remain blissfully ignorant about the spiritual traditions of our fore-fathers.

The God concept inherent in traditional African religion is just as worthy of study and embrace as is the God concept in the Abrahamic faiths or in any other world religion. As such therefore Africans should not feel obliged to cast aside our own religious tradition as a pre-requisite for approaching the First Cause who already exists in the DNA of traditional African spirituality.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of Oreos, Coconuts, and Negropeans.