Dissenting Voices on Both Social Structural and Intellectualist Approaches

Dissenting Voices on Both Social Structural and Intellectualist Approaches           

In the 1980s, scholars are dissatisfied with both social structural and intellectualist theories. Although Ifeka-Moller and Horton and Peel offer scholars two lenses to explore religious syncretism, some scholars still suspect their feasibility. Unlike Horton and other scholars who have done their researches on Christian conversion, Humphrey J. Fisher examines Muslim conversion and suggests that Muslim/Christian comparisons might considerably enlarge our understandings upon black Africa. He points out, Horton “overestimated the survival, admittedly in considerably developed forms, of original African elements of religion; and more important, has underestimated the willingness and ability of Africans to make even rigorous Islam and Christianity their own.”  Take the Knight of Eden and the Phoenix Knight in Africa as two case studies, he thinks Muslim or Christian conversion in Africa was inherent in the traditional African faiths. In discussing religious change among the Igbo during the colonial period, C. N. Ubah assumes that both the intellectualist and social structural theories had their drawbacks, because they ignored two major factors in explaining the spread of Christianity in Igboland. According to him, “the first is the tolerant nature of Igbo traditional religion,” secondly, “there were the structural and organizational weaknesses of Igbo traditional religion.”