THE BAPTISM OF THE ÒRÌṢÀ

“How Indigenous Yorùbá Religion Found a New Home in the Nigerian Church”

By Akin Ojumu

Professor George Olusola Ajibade is a Nigerian scholar of Yorùbá language, folklore, literature, religion, and culture. He is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., completing his doctorate at OAU in 2003.

In this video, which is an excerpt of an interview, Professor Ajibade explains why he believes traditional Yorùbá religion will continue to survive, even though open identification with it may no longer be fashionable in many circles.

The basis for his confidence is simple: traditional Yorùbá religion has not disappeared. It has migrated.

According to Ajibade, it has found new homes within both Christianity and Islam. Churches and mosques have absorbed, adapted, and repackaged elements of indigenous Yorùbá religious culture—its music, rhythms, chants, praise poetry, ritual language, cosmology, and even some of its underlying religious concepts.

What follows is my rough interpretation of the interview.

__________________________

Professor Ajibade begins:

If you examine the matter carefully, you will discover that elements of traditional Yorùbá religion have continued to survive and develop even among Muslims and followers of Jesus Christ.

People may say that they have abandoned the old religion, but a religious tradition that has existed among the Yorùbá for generations cannot simply disappear overnight. It does not simply vanish because people begin calling themselves Christians or Muslims.

You can observe this even among Catholics and within other Christian traditions. Certain indigenous practices have been incorporated, adapted, and given Christian expression.

Consider the dancing, praise, and worship.

The rhythms, drums, movements, and musical patterns often bear striking similarities to forms that already existed within traditional Yorùbá culture.

Take the Western drum set, for example. When it comes to communicating precise tonal patterns, it is far inferior to the Yorùbá dùndún or gángan—the talking drum.

The talking drum can reproduce distinct tonal patterns and recognizable words because the Yorùbá language itself is tonal. A skilled drummer can effectively make the drum “speak.”

And today you find the talking drum inside the Church.

Listen carefully to the way it is played. Certain rhythms and patterns are recognizably rooted in indigenous Yorùbá religious and ceremonial traditions. Musical forms that once functioned within traditional religious settings have simply been carried into Christian worship and given a different theological label.

Now consider the songs Christians sing in churches today.

If you understand their language, history, and structure carefully, you will recognize what I am talking about. Many songs heard in churches contain expressions, praise forms, images, and concepts that originated in the worship and celebration of Yorùbá Òrìṣà.

I have done scholarly work on this phenomenon. I have argued that Yorùbá Christians are, in a sense, rewriting the Bible through their songs. The evidence is there in the lyrics.

Listen not merely to the name being invoked but to the ideas embedded in the song. The name of Jesus may be inserted, yet beneath the Christian vocabulary one can sometimes recognize older Yorùbá religious concepts, praise formulas, cosmological assumptions, and patterns of devotion.

The same phenomenon exists among Yorùbá Muslims, but it is particularly noticeable among some followers of Jesus Christ.

That is why I say traditional Yorùbá religion cannot simply disappear. It cannot disappear. It is part of us.

There is even someone in our own family who became a Muslim, whom I have spoken about previously. In the same way, there are people who have embraced Christianity, yet the older cultural and religious patterns have not simply vanished. They have merely taken on new forms.

Consider, for example, the incorporation of Ìjálá—the traditional genre of Yorùbá hunters’ oral poetry and chanting. There are Christians today who perform Ìjálá while insisting that they are using it to worship Jesus and God.

Another example comes from a crusade I attended. At this crusade, the General Overseer instructed members of the congregation to place their hands on their heads and chant:

“Wẹrí-wẹrí, wẹrí mi o; kórí mi má gbàbòdè; wẹrí mi o.”

Roughly translated:

“Washer of the head, wash my head, so that my head—my destiny—will not turn against me; wash my head.”

The idea that one’s “head,” or destiny, can turn against the individual belongs to an indigenous Yorùbá religious and mythological framework.

Ajibade further associates the expression “Wẹrí-wẹrí” with Ọ̀ṣun, the Yorùbá river deity.

The older chant, he explains, runs along lines such as: 

“Wẹrí-wẹrí ti wẹrí ọmọ tuntun. Ò-wó-rùrù-fara-lùko…”

Yet here was a Christian General Overseer instructing a congregation to chant:

“Wẹrí-wẹrí, wẹrí mi o; kórí mi má gbàbòdè; wẹrí mi o.”

The pastor may have believed that he was conducting a Christian prayer exercise. But according to Ajibade’s analysis, he was employing religious language rooted in an older Yorùbá cosmological and devotional system.

The same pattern appears among some so-called Lady Evangelists and gospel singers—people such as Bosede Beulah, Taye Omo Jesu, and others who strongly identify themselves with Jesus Christ. Yet elements of older Yorùbá religious traditions continue to surface in their music.

Professor Ajibade’s argument is that many of these songs are structurally indebted to traditional Yorùbá religion praise forms. Without necessarily realizing it, some Christian singers preserve and advertise elements of Yorùbá mythology through songs presented as Christian worship.

Take, for example, Evangelist Taye Omo Jesu. Ajibade argues that some of his songs reproduce praise forms and imagery historically associated with Yorùbá deities.

Another example he cites is Evangelist Bola Are.

In one of her songs, she sings:

“Ọba mi o, Ọba ńlá, Elétí gbòrògòdò…”

Which may be translated:

“My King, O great King, the One with extraordinarily large ears…”

“Elétí gbòrògòdò” is a Yorùbá praise expression—literally, “the one with exceedingly large ears.” Figuratively, it conveys the idea of one whose hearing is expansive or far-reaching.

Ajibade argues that such expressions have roots in traditional Yorùbá deity praise and were subsequently transferred into Christian musical vocabulary. “Elétí gbòrògòdò” is the name Yorubas call Ọya, one of the principal female deities of the Yoruba pantheon, traditionally associated with powerful winds and storms.

In another one of her songs, Bola Are also employed the expression:

“Gbẹngbẹlẹku dá níbi tó wù ú….”

This may be rendered roughly as:

“Gbẹngbẹlẹku settles wherever it pleases,” or, “The mighty, immovable one establishes himself wherever he chooses.”

Again, Ajibade connects this language to older Yorùbá religious traditions rather than to the vocabulary of biblical Christianity. “Gbẹngbẹlẹku” is what Yoruba traditionalists call Satan.

Professor Ajibade continues:

As I have interacted with pastors and studied Yorùbá Christianity more closely, I have repeatedly encountered this phenomenon. Others have also drawn my attention to additional examples.

Whenever I raise these matters with Christian ministers or gospel singers, they respond that they are worshiping the Christian God. And undoubtedly, that is what they believe they are doing.

But what they often fail to recognize is the extent to which the language, imagery, musical structure, rhythm, praise poetry, and even underlying religious concepts have been inherited from traditional Yorùbá religion.

The same phenomenon occurs among Muslims. But the syncretic incorporation of traditional Yorùbá religion appears particularly widespread within Christianity.

Professor Olusola Ajibade concludes:

That is why I strongly believe traditional Yorùbá religion will never be completely exterminated. From now until the Second Coming of Christ, Yorùbá mythology will not simply vanish. It will continue to survive because it has found vehicles of expression within both Christianity and Islam.

___________________________

For anyone wondering why I am featuring this interview, the answer should by now be obvious.

Professor Olusola Ajibade has put scholarly language around something that has been the recurring subject of many of my commentaries. He is describing the very phenomenon I have repeatedly warned about.

The great problem confronting Nigerian Christianity is not merely false doctrine here, an eccentric preacher there, or one badly interpreted Bible verse somewhere else.

The problem runs deeper.

What passes for Christianity in large sections of Nigeria has undergone a profound syncretic transformation.

Biblical vocabulary remains. Jesus is mentioned. Bible verses are quoted. Christian titles are retained. Church buildings are erected. Pastors wear suits and clerical collars. Congregations shout “Amen!”

But underneath the Christian vocabulary frequently lies an older religious imagination.

The cosmology is African traditional religion. The obsession with enemies is traditional religion. The fixation on curses is traditional religion. The fear of ancestral forces is traditional religion. The preoccupation with destiny manipulation is traditional Yoruba religion. The spiritual warfare against invisible human enemies is traditional religion.

The constant search for prophets, seers, visions, dreams, divination, supernatural directions, ritual objects, consecrated substances, protective formulas, and spiritually powerful men is traditional religion.

Change the names. Replace the babaláwo with the “Man of God.” Replace the shrine with the auditorium. Replace the divination tray with the prophetic altar. Replace the incantation with “prophetic declarations.” Replace the charm with anointing oil. Replace the oracle with “God told me.” Replace the sacrifice at the crossroads with a “dangerous seed.”

Sprinkle enough Bible verses over the entire operation. And voilà: Christianity. At least that is what we have been taught to call it.

This is why Professor Ajibade’s interview is so important.

He is not approaching the subject as a Reformed theologian conducting doctrinal polemics. He is approaching it as a scholar of Yorùbá language, folklore, religion, literature, and culture.

Yet from an entirely different disciplinary direction, he arrives at essentially the same disturbing observation:

Traditional Yorùbá religion did not die when the Yorùbá became Christians. In many places, it simply entered the Church. It learned Christian vocabulary. It memorized a few Bible verses. It discovered praise and worship. It bought a keyboard. It acquired a microphone. It put “Apostle,” “Prophet,” “Pastor,” and “General Overseer” in front of its name. And it continued doing business.

That is the uncomfortable truth.

Much of what is practiced today in institutions such as RCCG, Deeper Life, Winners Chapel, and across significant portions of Nigerian Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity bears disturbingly little resemblance to the historic, apostolic Christianity proclaimed in the New Testament.

What has emerged instead is too often a syncretic religious mixture—African traditional cosmology, shamanistic assumptions, prosperity metaphysics, Word-of-Faith ideology, mystical practices, and fragments of Eastern-style transcendental spirituality, all wrapped in biblical vocabulary and marketed under the name of Jesus Christ.

The tragedy is not merely that traditional Yorùbá religion has survived. The greater tragedy is that millions of Christians are practicing elements of it while sincerely believing that what they are practicing came from the Bible.

Professor Ajibade believes this demonstrates the extraordinary resilience of Yorùbá traditional religion.

I believe it demonstrates something else as well: The catastrophic consequences of biblical illiteracy.

When Christians do not know Scripture, Christianity does not remain empty for long. The surrounding culture rushes in to fill the vacuum. And before long, the gods have not disappeared. They have simply been baptized.