Conversion and Confusion

A Rejoinder on Christianity in Eastern Nigeria

Bibliographic Data

ID2139393
AuthorsRobin Horton (0000-0003-1792-5408, Respectively Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ife, Nigeria; and Charles Booth Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool, U.K., formerly Visiting Reader, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ife.), J D Y Peel (Respectively Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ife, Nigeria; and Charles Booth Professor of Sociology, University of Liverpool, U.K., formerly Visiting Reader, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ife.)
Year1976
Volume10
Issue3
Pages481-498
Publication date1976-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-3968 • E-ISSN: 1923-3051
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00083968.1976.10803767
OpenAlexW2277665300
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited7

In a recent article in this journal,' Dr. Caroline Ifeka-Moller contrasted two approaches to the understanding of religious change in Africa. One approach, the intellectualist, sees new forms of religious behaviour as the outcome of people's attempts to make sense of changes in their situation. The other approach sees new religious forms as the outcome of social-structural changes. It is the superiority of the latter approach over the former which she undertakes to demonstrate in her paper. In the first part of her paper, Dr. Ifeka-Moller singles out Horton's paper on African Conversion as typical of the intellectualist approach; and the bulk of this part of her argument is directed to the exposure of its alleged internal inadequacies.2 In the latter part of her paper, she turns to an analysis of two aspects of religious change in the former Eastern Region of Nigeria: the process of primary Christian conversion, and the development of Aladura-type churches. She attempts to show that the intellectualist approach cannot help us understand the facts of this particular case, but that her own, the so-called social-structural, can do so. In this rejoinder we shall show: first, that Ifeka-Moller's critique of Horton's version of the intellectualist approach fails through a mixture of muddle and misunderstanding, and that the antithesis of intellectualist and socialstructuralist approaches is in any case a false one; and second, that whereas her explanation of the differential response to Christianity in Easter Nigeria fails in major respects, an intellectualist explanation accounts with a minimum of difficulty both for those features of the situation which she mentions and for some major features which she ignores. We have written this rejoinder together: on the one hand, because we are both mentioned in Ifeka-Moller's gallery of intellectualists, and on the other, because Horton's African Conversion gave a more explicit and generalized formulation to certain themes already present in Peel's monograph on the Yoruba Aladura churches.3

Antithesis · Argument (complex analysis) · Biology · Christianity · Confusion · Epistemology · Mathematical economics · Outcome (game theory) · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious studies

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub