Religions of Africa: Traditions in Transformation

by E. Thomas Lawson

A solid basis for understanding the whole spectrum of the religions of Africa! Concise, expert, and fully accessible, this is an excellent introduction to the complex, diverse religious traditions of Africa practiced by peoples with vastly different cultures and languages. Religions of Africa outlines and clarifies the historical development of indigenous African belief systems, discusses the impact of colonization, Christianity, Islam, and liberation movements on the continent's religious evolution, and examines the interaction between time-honored customs and new worlds of thought to "illustrate the process of traditions in transformation and transformations in tradition." Lawson presents the history, myths, rituals, institutions, and sociocultural patterns of two representative groups: the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Zulu of South Africa. Through understanding the religious worlds in which these groups live, the reader gains a solid basis for understanding the whole spectrum of the religions of Africa.

Genres: Religion, History

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Ernest Thomas (Tom) Lawson is an honorary professor at the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University Belfast. He is the executive editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture (JCC) and co-founder (with Luther Martin and Donald Wiebe) of the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR). He is a founding member and has served as the first President of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR).

Lawson is widely considered to be the founder of the cognitive science of religion field. He has published the books Religions of Africa: Traditions in Transformation (1984) and, with Robert N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (1990) and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Ritual Forms (2002). He also played a leading role in the establishment of departments of religion at public universities in the United States during the 1960s. A festschrift in his honor, Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson, was published in 2004. He is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University.

Currently, Lawson is a "Senior Researcher and Distinguished Professor in Residence" at LEVYNA (Laboratory for Experimental Research of Religion) at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

In addition to his research activities Lawson is an avid painter, traveler, science fiction reader, and bird watcher.