Rhetoric Race and Religion
Religion, according to Emile Durkheim (1988) is “a united system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things that set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church; all those who adhere to them”. He adds that culture is the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
A close analysis of the phenomena reveals the complimentary role they play, as one cannot talk of one in the absence of the other. Suffice to say, religion seeks to mould the individual to fit into what is considered the norm, based on adherence to the supernatural as culturally agreed.
Religion — like culture — has an oppressive inclination. The individual is expected to behave or not to behave in a certain way, failure of which culminates in being labelled a blasphemer. Culture may be classified as community, national, regional, gender, social and corporate.
Although culture — like religion — moulds the individual, it is its relativism and ethnocentrism that is the bane of humanity.Cultural dynamism and acculturation cause societies to function, in some cases, at a tangent to generational norms. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that some erroneously believe that their culture is intrinsically superior to others and should therefore, be forced on others. Culture is a people’s pride; hence, it should be guarded jealously.
Chinua Achebe, commenting on the role of the writer as a teacher in “African Writers Talking” (1972), notes: “What I think a novelist should teach is something very fundamental, namely to indicate to his readers, to put it crudely that we in Africa did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans.”
Thus “a writer has a responsibility to try and stop this, because unless our culture begins to take itself seriously, it will never take off the ground”. “This” is in reference to the misleading notion that Africa, as a “dark continent”, needs to be illuminated by Westernisation.
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