INDIGENISATION OF CHRISTIANITY: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO THE INTEGRATION OF AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE AMONG THE YORUBA

Abstract

For a very long time, after the incursion of the third phase of Christianity into the interior Africa, Africans advocate for the indigenised Christianity that bears the imprint made in Africa, incorporates values and promotes the traditions and culture of the people in the spread of the gospel. It is historically unfolded that the cultural slavery in which the Africans were pinned and hardline position of the missionaries, in respect of the condemnation of African cultural values marked the start of ecclesiastical and missiological crises that characterized the second half of the nineteenth century missionary activities in Nigeria most exclusively in the Yorubaland. Scholarship in recent times reveals that, indigenisation or Africanisation of Christianity hugely produces a religious synthesis that is intelligible to the African philosophy. The indigenous religious experience and expression is choreographed and attuned to, through historically and cosmologically ordained knowledge and sensibilities. This paper, therefore, attempts to re-examine the distinctiveness of indigenized Christianity with the view of promoting cultural values and systematic approach to the indigenisation of Christianity. It adopts historical method and recommends the integration of Christian spirituality and culture and Christianity that reflects the socio-cultural reality of the Africans.