Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

The phenomenal increase in religious change found in Africa in the last seventy to eighty years reached an alarming stage that even the gods are ready to make a welcome back. The religious change which may be inform of adhesion or conversion that swept through Africa accompanied with it, many things which influenced the practice of African traditional religion and its world views. Many theories or explanations on religious change have been given by many scholars from different point of view. But the researcher choosed Trimingham’s shattered microcosm and Horton’s intellectualist explanation on religious change to show how it came about, through migration process especially to Africa. The researcher wants to expose also how migration process which involves relocation or movement of human person and ideas from one place to another helped in religious change in Africa through explanatory views of the above two scholars. Through the course of the write up, the two views of the above scholars will be explained and how the two explanations resemble each other. The meaning of migration will be explained as to how it helped in religious change found in Africa today. With this write-up, one finds out that the religious change that took place in Africa as explained by Trimingham and Horton took place through the process of migration of ideas and human person. And how it re-shaped African society in general.

Open Full Text (PDF)