African
religions were conceived by early European observers in terms of *magic, and as
such they were generally condemned by *mission-aries as pagan superstition.
This attitude changed with time but it was only through professional
anthropological research that enquiry on traditional religions became free of
conversion bias. John Middleton’s monograph on the religion of the Lugbara
(1960) may now be reckoned as a classic of the East African literature on
religion. A turning point in understanding African religions came when the
subject was approached in terms of *cosmological ideas and philosophy. In 1969
a chair of African Religions and Philosophy was instituted at the University of
Makerere, Uganda, its first tenant being John S.Mbiti. His work, African
Religions and Philosophy (1969), provides a general synthesis of African
cosmological views. Though not without debatable interpretations, as when he
describes the African concept of *time as involving the idea of past and
present but no future,” Mbiti’s book has met with highly popular favour and has
been translated into various languages: Japanese, French, Korean and Italian.
The
most recent trends in the study of East African religion have focused on cosmological
views and their symbolic values, and have especially stressed the ethics of *rituals
leading to reinforced communal relations and traditions (Harris 1978; Parkin 1991).
A new interest in traditional medicine and the professionalization of African practitioners,
encouraged by the ambitious programmes of the World Health Organization, may
also be mentioned as one of the newest fields of anthropological research in
Africa as well as in East Africa (Semali and Msonthi, in Last and Chavunduka 1986).