Dagara Cultural History: Cardinal Peter Poreku Dery

  In 1929, Peter Poreku Dery was about twelve years old when the Catholic Missionary Fathers of Africa first arrived in Jirapa, some twenty-two miles distant from Dery’s village (Zemopare), and began their work of Christian conversion. He was first introduced to the missionaries by his father who had come into contact with them through his work as an itinerant trader. His father was so enthusiastic about the missionary religion to the extent that he was prepared to annul the traditional marriage between him and four of his wives in order to become a Christian. This act provoked a serious religious and cultural conflict between Poreku Dery’s father and his uncle. Ritual sacrifices at the ancestral shrine as well as various acts of divination failed to reconcile the two brothers but led to a scission within the family and the emigration of Dery’s father. Poreku Dery assisted in all these rituals and felt the pain of the conflict and the separation; a feeling that helped to make him a...

Dear Ted, I cannot write a better tribute on this occasion beyond what you have been sharing with me about yourself, your work, and the vision you have about life and your place in the cosmos. Thus, when I asked you to send me a short bio note about yourself in the 2017 volume which I edited, you wrote the following: Edward B. Tengan is a catholic priest of the Catholic diocese of Wa which is coterminous with the upper west region of Ghana. After his priestly formation in St. Victor’s Major Seminary in Tamale he worked for a few years in the diocese. He was then sent to the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven where he obtained a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1983. From 1983 to 1986, he taught philosophy in his alma mater. In 1986 he gained admission into the University of Birmingham (Centre of West African Studies) to pursue a doctoral program in anthropology. In 1989, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled The Land...

  Dealing with Expectations From a cultural perspective, there are no public funeral or mourning rites when there is a stillbirth ( dɔg-saŋ ) following twenty-one weeks or more of pregnancy or when a child experiencing stunted growth (bi-gbããn ) dies before the mother could have another child. In other words, one cannot grieve publicly and call on the ancestors by wailing ‘Oh My Father!’ ( Sãã Woh-i! ) or ‘Oh My Mother!’ ( Ma Woh-i! ) and we do not gather to sing dirges and praise songs accompanied by the xylophone and the calabash drums. We take it that the expectations of the parents to have a child who will grow to realise their dreams, take fully his or her position as an adult member of the society and achieve the great things that life destiny has assigned for him or her cannot be ritualised in funeral celebration. These must be internalised as a process to understand the situations leading to the stillbirth or the stunted growth in order to keep the fire of expectations an...

New Publication    About Sacred and Religious Art in Africa An Ethnographic Study on a Private Collection Alexis Bekyane Tengan Size: 6.89"x 8.39” (17.5 x 21.3 cm), 206 pages (including 35 colour pages), 151 Illus., Biblio. ISBN: 978-9988-9202-1-0, Hb (Case Bound), Woeli Publishing Service, Accra, September 2022  REVIEWS "Tengan provides an unassuming but bitter reminder that traditional African culture will continue dying slowly and could vanish altogether if not conscientiously and properly preserved. (…). This intensive investigation into the meaning and use of sacred objects and religious art urges the proper collection, preservation, curation, and promotion of these artefacts within the present African cultural system." ( Utafiti: Journal of African Perspectives) DESCRIPTION Of what significance are sacred art objects in Africa? In this book, About Sacred and Religious Art in Africa, the author launches an investigation into the grammar of sacred and r...

Out from Euphoria and Charisma to the reality of Catholicism The “mass conversion” and religious movement of the Dagaaba people into Catholicism in 1929 was euphoric in action and expectation. The tempo of the movement could only be sustained for a period of time by the over enthusiasm of the first missionaries to realise an eschatological hope in an African society combined with an unusual charisma of the first prelate who, also being a Dagao, was able to lead the people along this path of euphoria. The enthusiasm of the missionaries enabled them to find the appropriate material and human resources, mostly from outside the region and within the shortest possible time, to build a model church on earth that will take care of the material and spiritual needs of the people. The charisma of the local prelate, who was also extraordinarily gifted in ritual performance and church liturgy, perpetuated this euphoria as divine reality that could not be sustained.    I pay tribute t...

  Colloquium Abstract : Pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial events in Africa have all combined to give a certain image and role religion and culture play and should play in social and human development and progress. In the first place the narrow western definition of religion as an abstract phenomena focusing on believe in a subjective and empirically unverifiable notions of the spiritual world and the constant recourse to a dualistic thinking that pitches nature against culture have heavily poisoned the thinking frames via which scholars tend to understand and deal with religion and culture as integral part of human development and progress. This is particularly the case when it comes to indigenous African religion and culture. The situation is made worse with the persistent grounding of the philosophical notion that only one truth relating to religion and science exists and that this truth can only be found in the supposedly “more advanced and developed” systems. Though ma...