African Origins of the Major "Western Religions"


Book Description

Dr. Ben critically examines the history, beliefs, and myths that are the foundation of Judaism. Christianity, and Islam.




The Myth of Genesis and Exodus and the Exclusion of Their African Origins


Book Description

The second book in a 3 volume set, this is a companion volume to African Origins of the Major Western Religions and The Need for a Black Bible. An invaluable resource for anyone seeking to gain a better understanding of belief systems in the Western world.




African Religions


Book Description

This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.




The Black Man's North and East Africa


Book Description

Few of Dr. Ben's books are written with co-authors. The Black Man's North and East Africa is an exception. Written with one of his early colleagues, George E. Simmonds, this work attacks the racist manipulation of African and Black history by 'educators' and 'authorities on Africa'. Defenders of the Africans' right to tell their own story, the authors insist that Black people must take responsibility for their own history, "Until African (Black) people are willing, and do write their own experience, past, and present, we will continue being slaves, mentally, physically, and spiritually, to Caucasian and Semitic racism and religious bigotry."




Christianity Is an African Religion


Book Description

This book affirms that Christianity was based on Black Egyptian African Spirituality. This fact has been obscured, hidden and ignored by the impact of White Christian Religious Racism. Prior to the development of modern racism, with the beginning of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Rapetalistic Ideology of Racial, Sexual and Economic Oppression, it was widely accepted that African Spirituality was the basis for the major theological and ethical perspectives found in the Western religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Due to Institutional Racism these facts have been withheld or misrepresented by our educational institutions. This miseducation serves to support racist ideas of Black Inferiority and White Supremacy that are used to oppress Americans of African descent. Black Egyptian Africans were the original recipients and developers of the revelations of theological and ethical concepts that defined the Western Religious Traditions. Concepts such as: Monotheism, Moral Codes, Eternal Life, Resurrection, A Dying and Rising Savior, Power of the Divine Feminine, and Scripture are just a few of the fundamental truths that these ancient Black African priests and scribes gave to the world which were then used to develop Western Religions. The book is based on an article written by Dr. Donald H. Matthews in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR), the official professional journal of the American Academy of Religion. This book It is written in a style that makes it accessible to the general public. The afore mentioned article is reprinted for the benefit of the scholarly community and for those who wish to delve further into the subject.




Our Black Seminarians and Black Clergy Without a Black Theology


Book Description

In Black Seminarians, Dr. Ben outlines sources of Black theology before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, showing how their ideas, practices, and concepts were already old in Africa before Europe was born.




Religion and the Making of Nigeria


Book Description

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.




We the Black Jews


Book Description

Dr. Ben destroys the myth of a "white Jewish race" and the bigotry that has denied the existence of an African Jewish culture. He establishes the legitimacy of contemporary Black Jewish culture in Africa and the diaspora and predates its origin before ancient Nile Valley civilizations.




Classical Theories in African Religion


Book Description

Currently, there is no book on the theories and methods in African religious systems. This book fills that lacuna. The development of theories is discussed extensively and it includes some biographical information about the theorists themselves, concentrating on their intellectual history and influences, their particular contribution to the development of theories, and their reactions to the theories of other scholars in the discipline.




Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion


Book Description

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are exceptional for the copresence among them of three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and the indigenous orisa religion. In this comparative study, at once historical and anthropological, Peel explores the intertwined character of the three religions and the dense imbrication of religion in all aspects of Yoruba history up to the present. For over 400 years, the Yoruba have straddled two geocultural spheres: one reaching north over the Sahara to the world of Islam, the other linking them to the Euro-American world via the Atlantic. These two external spheres were the source of contrasting cultural influences, notably those emanating from the world religions. However, the Yoruba not only imported Islam and Christianity but also exported their own orisa religion to the New World. Before the voluntary modern diaspora that has brought many Yoruba to Europe and the Americas, tens of thousands were sold as slaves in the New World, bringing with them the worship of the orisa. Peel offers deep insight into important contemporary themes such as religious conversion, new religious movements, relations between world religions, the conditions of religious violence, the transnational flows of contemporary religion, and the interplay between tradition and the demands of an ever-changing present. In the process, he makes a major theoretical contribution to the anthropology of world religions.