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Religion and Ethics in Africa

What is the relation between philosophy and religion in Africa today?

There are several responses to this question. One places emphasis on
religion as the foundation of all African worldviews, the basis of all phil-
osophical and ethical considerations in Africa. The opposing view deems
this to be not (or at least no longer) true: religion may once have been a
significant factor in African philosophy and ethics, but secularism now
permeates all aspects of life in Africa, and rightfully so. An intermediate
position acknowledges the human need for explanation and for epis-
temic and ethical security, and it therefore interprets religion in anthro-
pogenic terms, as having developed out of human necessity.
Mbiti maintains that religion permeates all aspects of African exist-
ence and, especially, that it is the foundation of all philosophical and
ethical considerations in Africa. ‘Wherever the African is, there is his
religion: he takes it to the fields where he is sowing or harvesting a new
crop. ... [I]f he is a politician he takes it to the house of parliament’ (Mbiti
1969: 1). Religion, Mbiti states,

is by far the richest part of the African heritage. Religion is found in all
areas of human life. It has dominated the thinking of African peoples
to such an extent that it has shaped their cultures, their social life,
their political organisations and economic activities. (Mbiti 1975: 9)

South African theologian Peter Kasenene (Kasenene 1998: 18) concurs

that ‘Africans are very religious people and religion constitutes their way
of life, influencing their physical, material, social or political concerns’
and maintains that all ‘individual and group activities are religiously
determined’. He considers, at the same time, religion to present a ‘corpo-
rate religiosity’ in the sense that it ‘is not clearly differentiated from

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K. Horsthemke, Animals and African Ethics
© Kai Horsthemke 2015
 Religion and Ethics in Africa 31

other modes of behaviour’. Like Mbiti, Kasenene perceives religion as

embracing ‘the total life of the people’ and as being ‘integrated in all
their institutions’:

The religious and the secular interpenetrate, to a greater or lesser

degree, at all points of existence. In whatever an African does or
experiences, there is a simultaneous working of spiritual and worldly
forces. (Kasenene 1998: 18)

Kasenene concludes that religion cannot be separated from morality.

He argues that because religion is the foundation of African worldviews,
ethics too derives from religion.
There is, however, a well-known dilemma that faces the religionist.
If the dictates of religion (i.e. the prescriptions of God, the ancestors or
other spiritual beings) necessarily mean that a person, in following them,
will be doing the right thing morally, then religion could command
virtually anything – that she should lie, cheat, steal, even kill – which
would, by definition, be morally right. But this clearly makes religious
prescriptions arbitrary. To avoid this counterintuitive implication, the
religionist may respond that religion (God, the ancestors or other spir-
itual beings) would never command or endorse what is unethical. It is
quite obviously wrong to lie, cheat, steal or kill. Yet, to embark on such
a response would be to acknowledge an ethical standard that already
exists outside and independently of religion – which would render the
dictates of religion ultimately superfluous. So, either ethics derives from
religion, which would make all religious/ethical injunctions arbitrary, or
it does not, which raises the question why religion is in any way neces-
sary for ethical and moral guidance.
African critics of the religionist position have alleged that it is exces-
sively romantic, that it fails to acknowledge not only the intellectual
prowess of Africans but also the spread of secularism on the African
continent. In fact, the argument goes, moral values do not originate
in religion but rather in Africans’ basic existential conditions and are
consequently grounded in considerations of people’s well-being (see
Sitoto & More 2002: 53). Wiredu points out, for example, that rules of
conduct are communal in origin, that they are defined by human inter-
ests and that African ethics is therefore humanistic rather than super-
naturalistic. He takes this to contradict the idea that morality derives
from religion (Wiredu 2004a: 18). In fact, he argues, ethics and religion
should be seen as what they are – separate, independent and autono-
mous spheres of concern. Gyekye offers a similar view, namely that not