JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

It is curious to observe that theories supporting the disparagement of Igbo-African religious beliefs and cultural life were products of scholars and mythmakers whose intellectual contributions to humanity are celebrated worldwide. The likes as Taylor, Muller, Darwin and Freud have immensely influenced development in the study of religion. However, some of their theories regarding the “primitive people’ have undoubtedly set the table for the misleading interpretation of religious names, objects and experiences in our traditional societies. It was almost impossible for any thinker of that era to operate outside the established and standard pattern of thinking about Africa. The ideas of both the African and foreign writers of that era, ere inevitably, crystalized into interpretative methods, perspectives and templates that were inherited by some IgboAfrican and indigenes in viewing he elements of the primal religions. The colonialist's aim of invading Africa is to educate their natives in order to civilize them. In that assumption, the very act of civilizing was an act of humanizing. For without being humanized through governance (Western Colonization), education (Western Civilization) and religion (Western Christianization), Africans may still not be capable of conceiving God, hence the misinterpretation of her religious experiences, names and objects.