Rev. Peter Addo's Webpage - Origins of African Spiritualism

Thus there are many common and latent traditions and cultural behaviors among contemporary African Americans that could be derived from the traditional African beliefs and religious systems. Religion today plays such an important part of the contemporary African America's life that it would be hard to ignore the vestiges of African tribal life. Indeed today, in spite of the hurt and suffering, the denial of the existence of Black Americans, the denial of equality in all aspects of American life, the Black church is still the only viable social institution which is dominated, operated, and totally controlled by African Americans. It is a tribal instinct that has survived years of change and abuse.

The Priest Leader and spokesperson is still the Black Preacher. The intense need to be free motivated African Americans to adapt their Christianity to the African way of life and the tradition continues today. The African traditional religious life has always considered all life to be the sphere of the Almighty, the powerful (the Otumfoo), the Omnipotent (Gye Nyame). He is wise, and all seeing and all knowing. He is the Great Spider (Ananse Kokroko), and the Ancient of Days (Odomankoma).

In the private and public life of the African religious rites, beliefs, and rituals are considered an integral part of life. Life then is never complete unless it is seen always in its entirety. Religious beliefs are found in everyday life and no distinction is made between the sacred and the secular. The sacred and the secular are merged in the total persona of the individual African. Life is not divided into compartments or divisions. Thus there are no special times for worship, for everyday and every hour is worship time. There are no creeds written down because through the traditions of the Elders all creeds and functions are carried in the individual's heart. Each individual by his very nature and life style is a living creed from the time one rises until one retires at night. An understanding of the basic nature of the African religious tradition surely illuminates the meaning of spirituality in the contemporary African American church.

In the Black Church to be full of the Holy Spirit is being filled with such inspiration that one can feel as it were the breath of God. It gives one power to do the impossible. In contemporary language it enables some to "do great things for God," to even love your neighbor though that neighbor may be your enemy or your oppressor. The Holy Spirity does not free one from harm. Evil may abound and burdens may be heavy, but the Holy Spirit enables the faithful to say of God: "Though He slay me; yet will I trust Him."

Like the biblical Diaspora, the people of the African Diaspora have deep wellsprings of spirituality for they too were taken by force, stripped of their dignity and had their identity blurred by centuries of abuse. But in spite of this devastation they managed to persevere and to keep in tune with God, even in a foreign land. Like their African cousins, African Americans still have extended families, and they still break out in spontaneous song and joyful music.

And they still drum, even in the church. Dancing goes with music as it always has in African culture, and colorful processionals mark the beauty of African American spiritual life. There is a pronounced and evident African residual in African American spirituality that gives it the uniqueness of "soul," and there is a deft synthesis of the sacred and the secular in much African American music just as there is in Africa. Many African American songs reveal the same improvisations found in the music of Africa and also feature the same improvisations found in the African village celebrations.

But it is at the Sunday worship service that the perfect welding of God and man takes place in a formal and ritualized setting. There in the black churches African American spirituality achieves its most complete expression in a rich variety of forms. When the Great Spirit , by whatever name, moves among the worshippers some may cry out in release from the accumulated tribulations of the week gone by. Some may testify, bearing witness to the goodness and graciousness of God. Fervent prayer, joyous singing, powerful preaching and the rekindling of the bonds of love and fellowship bring God and humankind together in a festival of spiritual celebration. This is the African American Church at its best. This is African American spirituality transcending its origins in the regeneration of the faith that had its origins at Pentecost.