The emergence of a Diola Christianity

Opening ParagraphAfrican religious history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been dominated by the rapid growth of Islam and Christianity. This has been especially true of the Senegambia region of West Africa, which has witnessed the adoption of Islam by approximately 80 per cent of the region's populace and the development of a small, but influential Christian minority. Among the Diola of the Casamance region of Senegal, Islam and Christianity have both enjoyed rapid growth. The approximately half million Diola, however, include the largest number of adherents of their traditional religion within the Senegambian region. They are sedentary rice farmers and are usually described as acephalous peoples. While Muslims and Christians have been in contact with the Diola since the fifteenth century there were few conversions during the pre-colonial era (Baum, 1986). During the colonial era Islam became the dominant religion among the Diola on the north shore of the Casamance river, and Christianity also attracted a considerable following (Mark, 1985). Among the south shore communities neither Islam nor Christianity became important until after the Second World War. Seeing the increased momentum of recent years, many observers are confident that the south shore Diola will follow the northern example and convert to Islam or Christianity. Louis Vincent Thomas, the doyen of Diola ethnographers, described Diola traditional religion as ‘a false remedy to a very real crisis; fetishism will become a temporary response that will be quickly swept away by another attempt, even larger and undoubtedly more profound: Islam and perhaps we could add, Christianity’ (Thomas, 1967: 225; translations are my own, unless otherwise stated).