MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Ivory Coast
Index
Most Ivoirians practice local religions, which are
sometimes
infused with elements of Christianity or Islam, or both.
Government
estimates in the 1980s suggested that about one-fourth of
the
population was Muslim, and one-eighth, Christian--mostly
Roman
Catholic.
Islam and Christianity are practiced in a variety of
forms
throughout the country, as different social and spiritual
problems
bring forth a variety of responses. Islam has been
practiced in the
far north for roughly seven centuries, shifting its appeal
over
this time from its strength as a world religion and its
basis in
written testaments to its symbolic importance as an
alternative to
European religions. Christian missionaries arrived at the
coast in
the seventeenth century but did not win converts in large
numbers
until the nineteenth century. Christianity's appeal was
strongest
among educated Africans and those who sought advancement
through
European contact. Christian holidays are officially
recognized, but
Muslim celebrations are also held, and, as in many areas
of
national life, tolerance is the general attitude toward
the
practice of religion.
Religious communities generally coexist peacefully, in
part
because no world religion has been enthusiastically
embraced by a
majority of people. Conversions have been an individual
matter in
most cases, and many families include Muslims and
Christians living
together. Religious tolerance is also part of government
policy.
The president personally contributes to the cost of
building
mosques and churches, and he encourages both Muslims and
Christians
to assist in projects undertaken by other religious
communities.
Religious practitioners have also earned substantial
goodwill
through the services they offer their communities,
especially in
health and education, and by their overall contribution to
social
harmony.
The Constitution calls for a secular state, although
this is
not interpreted as strict separation of church and state.
Officials
often attend religious ceremonies as representatives of
the state,
and some mission schools receive government aid.
Missionaries are
generally welcomed throughout the nation, although their
teachings
seldom replace centuries-old systems of spiritual belief
and
practice that form the basis of cultural unity.
African religions have maintained their credibility
because
they provide effective explanations for many of life's
dilemmas in
ways that can only be understood in their cultural
context. Local
religions reassure people that they are living in harmony
with the
universe and that this harmony can be preserved by
maintaining
proper relationships with all beings. For this reason,
separating
religion from other aspects of life serves to distort,
rather than
clarify, its meaning.
According to most local belief systems, spiritual
beings--a
creator, ancestral spirits, and spirits associated with
places and
objects--can influence a person's life and luck. This is
the major
premise on which belief and practice are based. The
distinction
between the spiritual and physical "worlds," in Western
secular
terms, is unimportant in the face of what is interpreted
as
overwhelming evidence that physical events may have
spiritual
causes.
Lineages are also important in understanding the
organization
of many Ivoirian religions. The spiritual unity of the
descent
group transcends distinctions among the unborn, the
living, and the
deceased. In this context, religious differences are not
based on
disagreements over dogma or doctrine. Rather, groups
living in
different social and physical environments encounter
different
spiritual and physical dangers, and their religious needs
differ
accordingly. This diversity accounts, in part, for early
missionaries in West Africa who often described the
spiritual
"chaos" they encountered, when they were actually
observing
different social groupings, each with different spiritual
obligations to ancestral and other spirits, acting in
accordance
with common beliefs about the nature of the universe.
Data as of November 1988
|
|