AFRICAN COMMUNAL LIVING AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
This work entitled: “African communal-living and religious experience” is an effort by the researchers to examine the relationship between communalism in Africa and religious experience. The idea of communalism is not alien to the traditional Africans as they continue to explore ways to live in harmony with one another. For several centuries, Africans have lived together as one entity under the traditional institutions and leadership taking their destinies into their own hands. That it has not been too well in all spheres of the lives of Africans in our contemporary time is not to assert that the continent is not familiar with how well to live as a people. The interaction with cultures of other continents especially Europe has somehow constituted a hindrance to their understanding of themselves as a race and a people as there seems to be a clash of cultures and values. No culture is better than the other, as there is no evidence that a superior culture exists anywhere in the world. This work aims to assess African communalism and religious experience, an experience that digs deep into religious expressions and beliefs. The research methodology employed is socio-historic approaches. The findings of this research indicate the need for collaboration among various diverse cultural traditions and peoples. There is no need to throw one tradition and culture into the dustbin of irrelevance as that would amount to suffocating the cultural and traditional relevance of such people, and this, the Church in Africa is beginning to be conscious of with her stand on inculturation/acculturation.
