“Shadows of the Good Things to Come” CONFESSION AND REPENTANCE
THE INTERFACE BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND IGBO INDIGENOUS RELIGION
Keywords:
CONFESSION, REPENTANCE, CHRISTIANITYAbstract
There are everyday occurrences that make one to wonder if one can
truly be African and truly Christian. In the late 1990’s at Delta State
University, Abraka, I had an unforgettable experience, given my
pentecostal background, that called for a question of my “level” of
conversion. At the Abraka River Resort I heard a European saying
“Up, up, Jesus, down, down mummy water! Come in and swim.
Mummy water can do you nothing,” while swimming in the river
which is generally believed to be a mysterious one. Being conscious
of the African concept of the potency of mermaid spirits, being
terrified, I hurriedly left the resort for home. At home he wondered
the audacity by which the European could say such a thing. Was he
not actually born again in the strict sense of it? I concluded that the
European might not have had a conscious or a priori knowledge of
the existence and potency of mermaids. In 2009, during my doctorate
degree programme at the University of Port Harcourt, I had another
baffling experience that seems more puzzling than the one just
mentioned. I was stung to hear an eminent Roman Catholic priest,
scholar and professor in African Traditional Religion say, “On no
condition may I eat ewi (rabbit). It is my clan’s totem.” I quickly recalled that I too do not eat snails on the grounds that it is my clan’s
totem. However there was an incident that led me to assume that
there is an interface between Christianity and indigenous religions of
the world.
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