Paper short abstract:

By means of a case study of Chrislam, a series of religious movements that originated in south-western Nigeria in the 1970s and that combine Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices, this paper opens up a new avenue to study religious plurality.

Paper long abstract:

Christian-Muslim relations in Africa are largely approached in terms of either religious conflict or interfaith dialogue. These two approaches suffer from the same limitation: they take religious boundaries for granted. In an effort to open up the binary logic of an exclusive 'either/or' that permeates the study of religion and replace it by an inclusive 'both/and' paradigm (Lambek 2008), this paper presents a case study of Chrislam: a series of religious movements that originated in south-western Nigeria in the 1970s, which combine Christian and Muslim beliefs and practices. I begin with the history of two of the most popular Chrislam movements in Lagos. The underlying idea is that to be a Christian or Muslim alone is not enough to guarantee success in this world and the hereafter; therefore, Chrislamists participate in Christian as well as Muslim rituals, appropriating the perceived powers of both. Appropriation involves a process of translation, whereby elements from one religious context are interpreted into another. This raises the question: what is acceptable religious plurality? To illustrate the limits of religious plurality, I conclude with the case of a banned Chrislam movement. What we see here is that the secular Nigerian state decides on what is legitimate religious fusion and what is prohibited. In this spirit, the Chrislam movements demonstrate not only that the common bifurcation between Christianity and Islam that still largely dominates scholarship on religion in Africa is highly problematic, but also challenge the conventional religious-secular divide.