Paper short abstract:

This work sets out to apply the contradictions and dilemmas implied by what it means to be modern to interrogate modern religious experiences in Africa. It will interrogate the fundamental assumptions underlying beliefs, ideas or values that define modern religions in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

This work sets out to articulate the different challenges, contradictions and dilemmas implied by what it means to be modern in the African instance and to apply this to interrogate modern religious experiences in Africa. The Africa implied is black Africa or what is also known as sub-Saharan Africa and by modernity I mean the worldview that has come about through forms of knowledge that arise from and are agreeable to human nature and has harboured a universal potential for freedom, for humanism, and ultimately, for progress. The paper will defend the claim that modernity in Africa is in a dilemma and will attempt to resolve this dilemma through apposition that will amount to an African theory of modernity. It will apply the position so advanced to interrogate the fundamental assumptions underlying beliefs, ideas or values that define modern religions in Africa. How should the African be modern and religious and what role should be assigned to religion in contemporary Africa, assuming that it is the case that religion is a basic demand of contemporary African life and why? How can this be done without the reversal of the African mind to the overbearing influence of dogmatism and anachronistic thinking that discourages the critical turn which leads to new forms of life that can properly reconfigure the African world? These are the questions that the paper will attempt to answer.