J.D.Y. Peel: Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba

Also, J.D.Y. Peel publishes a book entitled Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba in 2000, in which he discusses Yoruba religious history in the nineteenth century and revises his intellectualist theory. Focusing on Yoruba religion’s encounter with missionaries during the 60-70 years long mutual engagement of the two religious cultures, Peel argues that Christian conversion began to transform Christianity partially into a Yoruba experience. According to him, Yoruba endogenous cultures develops as a complex sequence of world events occurred — the rise of capitalism, missions, European colonialism, modern nation-states, and globalization. Moreover, as Peel notices, the process of transforming Christian conversion into a Yoruba experience came full circle in twentieth-century Aladura Christianity, when a fully formed Yoruba Christianity emerged, with few trappings of the European Christian mission. Indeed, mission Christianity made a unifying Yoruba identity possible at a later date, transforming new Yoruba converts into Western European Christianity with its own values, ideology, and worldview. By so doing, Christianity also created new Christian elite, discontented with their Yorubaness.  Rather than merely discuss the exchange of ideas, he also discusses the social structural factors and their influences in shaping African’s religious views, especially on their conversion to Christianity. To some degree, he revises Horton’s intellectualist theory and tries to consider religious proselytization in a comprehensive way.