BHU 2202

RELIGION AND POLITICAL

MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

Dr. Wamalwa Martin Erixon (Ph.D)

0721 558 694
 Introduction
 Religious movements are the one type of social
visible expressions in the process of the formation
of modern societies in sub-Saharan Africa.
Religious beliefs, rituals, and institutions provide
rich sources of inspiration for the advancement of
social and political movements.
 In this course, we attempt to answer the following
questions;
 What makes religion different from other sources
of motivation for social movements?
 How do religious phenomena affect resource
mobilization, framing, and political processes and
opportunities of social movements and their
participants
• How do religious traditions and institutions
provide structural and ideological supports for
both the status quo and for resistance or
insurgency movements in various societies
• How do religious values and beliefs shape
social movements or not
 Course outline
• Introduction
• Definition of religion
– Dimensions of religion
– Theories of religion
– Functions of religion in society
• Organization of Religious behavior
• Social movements
• Religion and social change
– Theories of Religion and social change
• Religion and politics in Africa
 Course outline
• Colonialism and emergence of religio-political
movements in Africa
– Maji Maji movement
– Second Matabele War (The Chimurenga war 1896-1897
– Mau Mau Movement
– Kibanguism
 Concept of religion
• The definition of religion is not easy to find. There
are many interpretations of what defines a religion
but not one that can be said to be the most
accurate.
• Some of them are:
– A strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control
human destiny.
– An institution to express belief in a divine power.
– A belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the
practices and institutions associated with such belief.
– The sum total of answers given to explain humankind’s
relationship with the universe.
 Concept of religion
• In many texts, religion is defined as “any specific system of
belief, worship, or conduct that prescribes certain responses
to the existence (or non-existence) and character of God.”
Also, “a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to
supernatural power.”
• Religion, sometimes used interchangeably with faith, is
commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural,
sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions
associated with such belief. In its broadest sense some have
defined it as the sum total of answers given to explain
humankind's relationship with the universe. Religion takes an
almost infinite number of forms in various cultures and
individuals, but is dominated by a number of Major world
religions.
 Concept of religion
• Religion can also be defined as a system of beliefs based on
humanity's attempt to explain the universe and natural
phenomena, often involving one or more deities or other
supernatural forces and also requiring or binding adherents to
follow prescribed religious obligations. Two identifying features
of religions are they to some extent (a) require faith and (b)
seek to organize and influence the thoughts and actions of their
adherents. Because of this, some contend that all religions are
to some degree both unempirical and dogmatic and are
therefore to be distrusted.
• Religion is a fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally
agreed upon by a group of people. These set of beliefs concern
the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, and involve
devotional and ritual observances. They also often contain a
moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
 THE SIX DIMENSIONS OF RELIGION
• Ninian Smart suggests that for any institution to qualify as
religion, it must have these dimensions in relation to the
definitions of religion.
1. Ritual dimension
• Religion expresses itself in beliefs and practices. These may
include prayer, worship, and sacrifices purification
communication (getting together binding) baptism, rites of
passage (what happens at birth, initiation, marriage and death).
These activities are performed by persons who hold special
positions and ceremoniously ordained in specific places and
set times and special use of language.
2. Mythical or Narrative dimension
• This is the story side of religion. Experiences here are
expressed through sacred narratives or myths. In English myth
means fiction/not true but in religion we simply talk of a story
and we are not concerned whether they are true of false.
 THE SIX DIMENSIONS OF RELIGION
3. Doctrinal dimension
• Doctrines are teachings which are commonly held by each
faith. Doctrines play a significant part in all major religions.
Doctrines tend to give religion an intellectual reason for the
basis of faith.
• Note that doctrines are the basis of conflicts and emergence
of new movements.
4. Ethical dimension
• Each religion has its rules of conduct.
• The laws which a religious tradition incorporates into its
fabric are known as the ethical dimension. E.g. Ten
Commandments-Christianity, Sharia-Islam
• Laws help to shape the moral life of individuals. In Africa we
have taboos (rules).
 THE SIX DIMENSIONS OF RELIGION
5. Social dimension
• This deals with the social or institutional aspect of religion i.e.
every religious movement is composed of a group of people
(church) or Islam -Umma or fellowship of Christians.
• It entails the organization of adherents in such a way that
they identify themselves as members of a social movement.

6. Material dimension
• Social dimension ends up/culminates in a material form.
Each religion has a material e.g. structure for melting works
of art statue
• They include sacred mountains e.g. kit mikayi, Mt.elgon,
kayas/mijikenda Mt olive Mt Sinai etc
 Concept of Religion
The Functions of Religion
1. Answers to human questions
• Religion provides an explanation for events that are difficult to understand
1. the purpose of life,
2. why people suffer, and
3. the existence of an afterlife
• Those answers give people a sense of purpose
• Strengthened by such beliefs, people are less likely to collapse in
despair when confronted by life’s calamities
2. Social Control
• According to Parsons, religion is one of the most important agents of socialization
and social control
• Religion usually acts as a powerful aid in social control by enforcing what men
should or should not do. Religion organizes and directs social life. It helps in
preserving social norms and strengthening social control. It socializes and
exercises control over both individual and group in various ways.
• Every society uses religious imagery and rhetoric to promote conformity. Societies
give many cultural norms - especially those that deal with marriage and
reproduction are given religions justification and control. Religion even legitimizes
 Concept of Religion
The Functions of Religion
3. Social Cohesion
• Durkheim believed that the primary function of
religion was to preserve and solidify society. It
functions to reinforce the collective unity or social
solidarity of a group. Sharing the same religion or
religious interpretation of the meaning of life unites
people in a cohesive and building moral order.
• The social cohesion is developed through rituals
such as reciting prayer in the honour of God,
institutions of worship (church, temple, mosque,
etc.), and multitudes of observances and
ceremonies practiced by different groups.
 Concept of Religion
4. Religion provides meaning and purpose
• Human life is uncertain. people struggle to survive amidst
the uncertainties, insecurities and dangers. This creates a
feeling of helplessness. Religion consoles and encourages
them in such times. Religion provides right shelter where
they get mental peace and emotional support. It encourages
them to face with its problems.
5. Religion Promotes welfare
• Religion teaches people to serve the masses and promote their
welfare. It gives message that "the service to humanity is
service to God". For this reason, people spend money to feed
poor and needy. Great religions like Hinduism, Islam, and
Christianity etc. put emphasis on aim-giving to the poor and
beggars. It developers the philanthropic attitude of the people
and thereby injects the idea of mutual help and co-operation.
 Concept of Religion
6. Religion as Emotional Support
• Religion is a sense of comfort and solace to the individuals during times
of personal and social crises such as death of loved ones, serious
injury, etc. This is especially true when something ‘senseless’ happens.
It gives them emotional support and provides consolation,
reconciliation and moral strength during trials and defeats, personal
losses and unjust treatments.
• It provides a means whereby man can face the crises and vicissitudes of
life with strength and fortitude. The concepts of karma and
transmigration among Hindus and Jesus Christ as son of God and
prayer among Christians seek to provide such fortitude and strength.
7. Religion has a Legitimating role
• Marx was an atheist who believed that the existence of God was an
impossibility
• Marx recognized that religion promoted stability within society, but it
also perpetuated patterns of social inequality
• According to Marx, religion serves elites, by legitimizing the status quo
and diverting people’s attention from social inequities
 Concept of Religion
8. Agent of Social Change
• While religion supports the status quo in its priestly
function, it inspires great change in its prophetic function.
It can enable individuals to transcend social forces; to act
in ways other than those prescribed by the social order.
• Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, Thomas More all died
upholding spiritual beliefs that were not those of the
social order in which they lived.
• Religion, in its prophetic function, provides individuals
with an unshakable foundation of social criticism which
later on becomes the basis for social change. Many
religious groups of the world protested against Vietnam
and Iraq wars and an age-old Buddha statue in
 Organization of Religious behaviour
• Many types of religious organizations exist in modern
societies. Sociologists usually group them according to their
size and influence.
• Categorized this way, three types of religious organizations
exist:
1. Church
2. Sect
3. Cult
• A church is a large, bureaucratically organized religious
organization that is closely integrated into the larger society.
Two types of church organizations exist.
• A church further has two subtypes:
– Ecclesia and
– Denomination.
1. Ecclesia
• Ecclesia is a large, bureaucratic religious organization that is a
formal part of the state and has most or all of a state’s citizens as
its members. As such, the ecclesia is the national or state religion.
People ordinarily do not join an ecclesia; instead they
automatically become members when they are born. A few
ecclesiae exist in the world today, including Islam in Saudi Arabia
and some other Middle Eastern nations, the Catholic Church in
Spain, the Lutheran Church in Sweden, and the Anglican Church in
England.
• As should be clear, in an ecclesiastic society there may be little
separation of church and state, because the ecclesia and the state
are so intertwined. In some ecclesiastic societies, such as those in
the Middle East, religious leaders rule the state or have much
influence over it, while in others, such as Sweden and England,
they have little or no influence. In general the close ties that
ecclesiae have to the state help ensure they will support state
policies and practices. For this reason, ecclesiae often help the
state solidify its control over the populace.
2. Denomination
• A denomination is a large, bureaucratic religious
organization that is closely integrated into the larger society
but is not a formal part of the state.
• In modern pluralistic nations, several denominations coexist.
Most people are members of a specific denomination
because their parents were members. They are born into a
denomination and generally consider themselves members
of it the rest of their lives, whether or not they actively
practice their faith, unless they convert to another
denomination or abandon religion altogether.
• A denomination tends to have an explicit set of beliefs, a
defined system of authority, and a generally respected
position in society
3. Sects
• A sect is a relatively small religious organization that is not closely
integrated into the larger society and that often conflicts with at least
some of its norms and values.
• Typically a sect has broken away from a larger denomination in an effort
to restore what members of the sect regard as the original views of the
denomination.
• Because sects are relatively small, they usually lack the bureaucracy of
denominations and ecclesiae and often also lack clergy who have
received official training.
• Their worship services can be intensely emotional experiences, often
more so than those typical of many denominations, where worship tends
to be more formal and restrained.
• Members of many sects typically proselytize and try to recruit new
members into the sect. If a sect succeeds in attracting many new
members, it gradually grows, becomes more bureaucratic, and, ironically,
eventually evolves into a denomination. Many of today’s Protestant
denominations began as sects, as did the Mennonites, Quakers, and
other groups.
4. Cults (New Religious Movements)
• A cult is a small religious organization that is at great odds
with the norms and values of the larger society. Cults are
similar to sects but differ in at least three respects.
• First, they generally have not broken away from a larger
denomination and instead originate outside the mainstream
religious tradition.
• Second, they are often secretive and do not proselytize as
much.
• Third, they are at least somewhat more likely than sects to
rely on charismatic leadership based on the extraordinary
personal qualities of the cult’s leader.
• Although the term cult today raises negative images of crazy,
violent, small groups of people, it is important to keep in
mind that major world religions, including Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism, and denominations such as the Mormons all
began as cults.
• Research challenges several popular beliefs about cults,
including the ideas that they brainwash people into
joining them and that their members are mentally ill.
• In a study of the Unification Church (Moonies), Eileen
Barker (1984) found no more signs of mental illness
among people who joined the Moonies than in those
who did not. She also found no evidence that people
who joined the Moonies had been brainwashed into
doing so.
• Another image of cults is that they are violent. In fact,
most are not violent. However, some cults have
committed violence in the recent past.
 Concept Of Politics
• Politics is the most important activity of organized life in
society. It cuts across all aspects of life. In everything we say
or do, we take a position that is actually a political position.
Politics concerns everything in life. Whatever we do or or don’t
do is political in one way or the other whether we like it or not.
• Generally politics has always been about state and government
at it' s most basic and has involved the study of formal political
institutions such as parliament, executive, judiciary and the
bureaucracy etc. Politics is thus a science and art of
government and the basic political relationships: between
state and individual and between states.
• Politics has its origin in the Greek word polis, which
means the community or populace or society. Greek thinkers
like Plato and Aristotle saw politics as everything that is
concerned with 'the general issues affecting the whole
• According to the Greek view, the participation of each and every
citizen in the life of the community is necessary for the self-
realization of each human being. In fact Aristotle argued he
who did not live in a polis is to consider 'either a God or a beast'.
He also commented that basically man is a political animal.
• The Greek view emanated from those circumstances and
sociological realities. Thus in the Greek view all behaviour of a
citizen was his political stance and nothing was private. The
Greeks also stressed that the purpose of politics is to enable
men to live together in a community and also to lead a high
moral life. Or in other words the aim of Politics was also to foster
the adoption and following of ethical goals leading to
spiritual self-realization.
• The Greek concept of politics, therefore, included the study
of man, society, state and ethics and the subject was treated
as a combination of religious and moral philosophy,
metaphysics, a course for civic training of citizens and a guide to
power.
 Relationship between Politics and
•
Religion
According to historian George Armstrong Kelly, "politics is
the ultimate control system of the profane, and religion is the
ultimate control system of the sacred"
• In his autobiographical account, Mahatma Gandhi (1869–
1948) observed that "those who say religion has nothing to
do with politics do not know what religion is“
• The history of the modern world has confirmed this as
religion has clearly emerged as a powerful force inspiring
nationalist identity, anti-colonial movements for
independence, and revolutionary violence.
• Since the mid-twentieth century, religion has re-emerged as
a powerful, often violent and revolutionary force, with
profound implications for global politics, social structure and
transnational economics.
• The 1979 Shii revolution in Iran, the rise of liberation theology
in South America, the political success of Hindu
fundamentalism in India, the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo,
the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine, the attacks on the
World Trade Center Towers in 2001, and the rise of various
forms of religious nationalism throughout the globe all point to
the fact that religion is a force on the global political and
economic issues.
• As a matter of fact, the very idea of separating the terms
politics and religion is itself a fairly recent invention, and
largely the product of the European Enlightenment and the
rise of modern Western nations.
• As European intellectuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries began to "imagine religion" as a distinct and
bounded category of human activity, they also began to
imagine the separation between religious and political domains
as a necessary condition for a rational, secular society.
• Rejecting the religious hegemony of the medieval Catholic
Church, and recoiling from the wars of religion that tore
Europe apart after the Protestant Reformation, many
Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke insisted upon a
separation of religious belief and political power as a
necessary precondition for a rationally ordered civil society.
• This separation, however, makes little sense in non-Western
and non-industrialized cultures in which the political and
religious spheres are not only closely entwined, but typically
indistinguishable. In fact, it is perhaps more accurate to say
that the very act of defining religion, by demarcating it as a
separate category distinct from social structure, art, economics
and other aspects of human activity, is itself an inherently
political act.
• To understand the distinction between religious and political
phenomena lies in the sorts of authority to which they appeal
in order to justify their power. In broadest terms, politics could
be said to refer to the "network of power relations in society"; it
consists of the "lines of authority, instruments of control,
strategies of domination, and the enforcement of order that all
contribute to a certain distribution of power within a set of
social relations“
• And a key part of political power is the right to exercise
violence. Indeed, as Max Weber (1864–1920) observed, the
State is simply a community that "claims the monopoly on the
legitimate use of physical force" and the "'right' to use
violence" within a given territory.
• What most distinguishes specifically religious forms of
discourse from political and other sorts of discourse, however,
is their appeal to a particular kind of authority—namely, to a
transcendent, supra-human or eternal source of authority
believed to lie beyond the temporal, fallible, human realm.
• Bruce Lincoln observes "Religion is that discourse whose
defining characteristic is its desire to speak of things eternal
and transcendent with an authority equally transcendent and
eternal."
• And this discursive appeal to a supra-human authority is in
turn tied to a set of practices, to a community, and to an
institution, all of which serve to reproduce and reaffirm this
claim to transcendent authority.
• Politics, history, economics, art, and other forms of cultural
discourse, conversely, tend to speak in a fallible human voice
about this-worldly, temporal and finite affairs; to the degree
that they begin to speak with a more than human voice, we
could say, they begin to move into the realm of religion.
• The term "religio-political power " is used to refer to the
complex ways in which the worldly relations of power,
domination and social control are inevitably intertwined with
appeals to otherworldly, transcendent or
supra-human/religious sources of authority
Theoretical perception of State and Religion
]John Locke (1632–1704)
• In his "Letter Concerning Tolerance" (1667), Locke
distinguishes religion and politics as two separate and
legitimate spheres of human endeavor; the former primarily
concerns individual belief and personal conviction, and the
latter civil law and public action.
• As such, religious belief should not be restricted by political
control, and conversely, political discourse should not be
affected by religious conviction.
• Religion is for Locke an inward and private affair—indeed, "all
the life and power of true religion consist in the inward and full
persuasion of the mind"—which means that it cannot be
governed by external political power: "the whole jurisdiction of
the magistrate reaches only to these civil concernments…. It
neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the
salvation of souls"
• Locke also effectively reduced religion to a kind of
disembodied, internal affair between the individual and
God, something fundamentally removed from the political
domain and thus of no practical importance for civil
society.

2. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

• Kant ascribed the legitimate place of religion "within the
limits of reason alone."
• For him, religion was acknowledged to have a privileged
place, engaged as it is in lofty metaphysical issues such
as the existence of God or the immortality of the soul; but
it was deemed inappropriate for all other more practical
affairs, including polity and governance
3. Karl Marx
• Whereas Locke and other Enlightenment intellectuals
critiqued the dangerous mixture of religion and politics,
many nineteenth century authors critiqued the very nature
of religion itself as a mask or mystification of underlying
economic and political interests.
• For Karl Marx, the criticism of religion is in fact the
"prerequisite of all criticism"; for religion represents the
most extreme form of ideology and "alienation.“
• It involves the human being's own self-deception and
mystification, which is the basis of all other sorts of
alienation, including the more developed forms of modern
capitalism.
• For Marx, God does not make human beings; rather,
human beings make gods and then deny that they have
done so, alienating themselves from the fruits of their own
labor
• This alienation is the spiritual analogue of the alienation
suffered by the labourer in a capitalist economy, separated
from the fruits of his own labour which becomes the profit
of the boss or factory owner.
• As such, religion is itself the by-product of the social and
political order; it is the "spiritual aroma" of the state,
masking the domination of the powerful and the wealthy
over the weak and the poor, and making oppressive social
conditions appear at once agreeable and divinely
ordained.
• Thus, "the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of
earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and
the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”
• Toward the end of his life, Marx would return to the
question of religion as not simply a source of oppression,
but also as a potential source of a kind of apocalyptic hope
for radical transformation.
• The religious cry of protest could also perhaps articulate
the voice of the oppressed seeking exodus toward a totally
new world, as a kind of early, undeveloped prefiguration of
genuine political revolution.
• This revolutionary potential of myth and religious ideology
would later be taken up and developed by various later
Marxists, from revolutionary nationalists in India to
Liberation theologians in South America.
• As more recent authors like Bruce Lincoln have shown,
religious discourse can indeed be used to buttress the
existing political order and status quo. However, it can also
be used to challenge, subvert and overthrow that same
order by appealing to a transcendent source of authority
that contests the status quo and provides the inspiration
for rebellion or revolution.
4. Émile Durkheim and Max Weber
• While Marx saw religion primarily as a negative social
force, imposing political conformity and resignation to
suffering, other modern theorists like Émile Durkheim
(1858–1917) had a more positive regard for religion's role
in society.
• Durkheim's classic Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1912) defines religion primarily as a system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things which "unite into one
single moral community … all those who adhere to them.“
• Religion is primarily a source of social cohesion, binding
individuals into a whole that seems to them larger than the
sum of its parts—indeed, sacred.
• The sacred is, in sum, society writ large.
• According to Max Weber, religion is not only and always a
source of social unity, cohesion and stability; rather, religious
ideas could act as forces of both the legitimation of
established political structures and as forces of change and
transformation.
• Religion was for Weber a separate institution inevitably
involved in an ongoing process of interaction with other social
institutions, assuming different meanings in specific social,
economic and political contexts.
• Rejecting the historical materialism of orthodox Marxism,
Weber saw religion not simply as a mask for underlying
economic and political forces; rather, religious ideas could also
transform the economic and political domains.
• In his best-known example of Protestant Christianity, the
Calvinist ethics of hard work, thrift, and inner-worldly
asceticism had a kind of elective affinity with the rise of
modern capitalism and with the politics of modern European
states.
• In contrast to Durkheim, Weber was more interested in the
role of individual agents, particularly extraordinary, charismatic
agents such as prophets, reformers and founders who provide
alternative sources of authority that shatter established
patterns of traditional and legal authority.
• Indeed, charismatic religious power can erupt into a force of
intense change, reform, even revolution against the
established political order.