Time and the African Conception of God When speaking about Traditional African Religions, many names such as animism, magic, dynamism, and totemism have been used to describe them, with the most famous perhaps being "ancestral worship." The term was coined by British philosopher Herbert Spencer in his 1885 book Principles of Sociology, where he described Africans as "savages" and argued that these "savages" associated dead spirits with objects in order to maintain a good standing among the spirits. All of these descriptions are deeply flawed and, at times, openly racist, almost always failing to capture the essence of Traditional African Religions. This happens partly because written texts about these traditions almost do not exist, while the ones that do exist were often written by foreigners who made significant mistakes in describing them. Thanks to the late John Mbiti, however, we have two important books that give us a general idea of what African religions looked like before the influence of Islam and Christianity. African religions are not revealed religions, meaning that they generally lack a creed or any form of sacred scripture and instead survive primarily through oral tradition. As time passes, this means that they may not remain entirely consistent, but their fundamental characteristics tend to remain fairly similar. In order to understand how these religions functioned, however, it is important to first understand how Africans traditionally viewed time. In his book African Religions and Philosophy, John Mbiti argues that time exists in only two dimensions, a view that has faced significant criticism within academic circles. For many Africans, one dimension is the present, which he calls sasa, while the other is the distant past, which he calls zamani. According to Mbiti, anything in the future beyond roughly two years does not meaningfully exist within the African conception of time. Time is experienced primarily through events such as birth, marriage, harvest, and death. Therefore, time does not exist purely for mathematical or chronological purposes, which helps explain the absence of numerical calendars in many traditional African societies. Once events are experienced, they gradually flow backward into zamani, becoming part of a vast collection of memories, histories, and stories. This conception of time has important consequences for understanding Traditional African Religions. The relative absence of a meaningful future leaves little room for the expectation of a grand, distant afterlife or for concepts of future punishment, redemption, and reward in the way they appear in Abrahamic religions. This is one of the major differences between traditional African religious thought and religions such as Christianity and Islam, whose theological systems place considerable emphasis on what happens beyond the present life. It is within this conception of time that the idea of God becomes particularly important. Since Africans traditionally experienced time primarily through events, God appears as an explanation for humanity's encounters with those events. Whatever good or bad occurs within one's experience of time can ultimately be attributed to God. Unlike their Abrahamic counterparts, however, traditional African conceptions of God generally do not place Him within the same kind of ethical and spiritual relationship with humanity. There is no universal requirement for an intimate fellowship with God comparable to what is found in Christianity or Islam. This also influences the nature of religious practice. Acts of worship and appeals to God are often more pragmatic and utilitarian than spiritual or mystical in the Abrahamic sense. In other words, religious action is frequently motivated by practical concerns and desired outcomes rather than by a desire for deep, otherworldly communion with God or an encounter with spiritual mystery.
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