West Africas Women Of God

West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.

Sesi is a person who has been tutored as a child to ‘do your best for the Lord’. Each accomplishment was praised and rewarded. With each step forward came questions of “should I”? God was faithful and answered with direction. Teaching has always been her passion. “The little ones!” “Oh, look at you, all your tops are tucked in! Praise You, Jesus!” “Thank You Jesus, you all lined up so nice and I didn’t say a word!” “You finished so quickly, thank You Jesus! Good Job!” The children’s response to her praise is evidence of it. Who wouldn’t? with all that praise! Through each plateau of life: Teaching, Pastor’s wife, death of father, husband, and her mother’s stroke, she stands firm in the Lord and praises His faithfulness.

In this groundbreaking work, Robert Baum seeks to reconstruct the religious and social history of the Diola communities in southern Senegal during the precolonial era, when the Atlantic slave trade was at its height. Baum shows that Diola community leaders used a complex of religious shrines and priesthoods to regulate and contain the influence of the slave trade. He demonstrates how this close involvement with the traders significantly changed Diola religious life.

"In most West African countries, queer people live in constant fear, abused by both institutions and society at large that blatantly refuse to acknowledge their right to live and love freely. Women endure particular forms of homophobia that are damaging because of sexism. This book builds awareness about what queer women face in West Africa who are daily persecuted for their sexuality. It also bears witness to their collective pain and celebrates their defiant spirit. This collection of personal stories reveals the experiences of queer West African women from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin Republic, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Senegal. Wedged Between Man and God brings a refreshing perspective to the nuances of femininity and women's sexuality in Africa. Above all, it calls for equality, confronts the myth that queer women are unfit for economic and political opportunities and demands an egalitarian world."--From back cover.

For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade.

This first definitive work on the predomiance of this powerful African deity throughout the ancient world has quickly become a "cult" classic. The evolution of Mami Wata in establishing, shaping and expanding the spiritual and sacerdotal foundation of world religion, reveals also the lost but glorious past of African women's spirituality. Hailed as the new "bible" on the history of African women, this comprehensive well-researched body of work will benefit academics, students, and all who are seeking to fill the missing void in world religious and cultural history. Totaling over 800 pages, it is reccomended that both heavily illustrated (Volumes I & II) be purchased as a set.

The Holy Spirit provides access to relationship with and reflection on the Triune God. In West Africa, Christians approach the Triune God in a way that challenges the Jewish-Christian memory. Deeply rooted in their ancestral memory, where living is relationality, they embrace the Trinitarian faith, the economy of the relational God-Christ-Spirit, by expanding and reinventing their indigenous experience of God, deities, spirits, and ancestors. Christian faith-practice is marked by the spectacular dominance of the Holy Spirit, whose charisms reflect the operations of deities. African Initiated Churches (AICs), Protestant and Catholic charismatic movements, experience God-Spirit's liberating and healing hand for the enhancement and realization of communal and individual destiny (what one expects from a concerned providential deity). This book argues that the emergent West African Trinitarian imagination is in harmony with Hebrew insight into the One and Only Yahweh of the patriarchs that assumed the dimensions of Elohim, God--experienced as a sound of sheer silence by Elijah, and proposed in utter weakness as the Only God by Deutero-Isaiah--the God that Jesus called Abba, Father. As Spirit and Life, the Holy Spirit, which is the source of all charisms (Origen), is our link to the Trinity.

Although the arrival of the Bible in Africa has often been a tale of terror, the Bible has become an African book. This volume explores the many ways in which Africans have made the Bible their own. The essays in this book offer a glimpse of the rich resources that constitute Africa's engagement with the Bible. Among the topics are: the historical development of biblical interpretation in Africa, the relationship between African biblical scholarship and scholarship in the West, African resources for reading the Bible, the history and role of vernacular translation in particular African contexts, the ambiguity of the Bible in Africa, the power of the Bible as text and symbol, and the intersections between class, race, gender, and culture in African biblical interpretation. The book also contains an extensive bibliography of African biblical scholarship. In fact, it is one of the most comprehensive collections of African biblical scholarship available in print. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.