A01=Ayodeji Ogunnaike
Africa's triple religious heritage
Atlantic Slave Trade
Author_Ayodeji Ogunnaike
Black Atlantic
Brazil
Candomble
Category=JBSL
Catholicism
civil religion
conversion
Egungun
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
history
Ifa
Lagosian Renaissance
missionaries
modernity
Nigeria
orixas
Pentecostalism
religious change
religious pluralism
sacred canopy
sacred kingship
sacred kinship
saints
Salafism
Salvador
Yoruba
Product details
- ISBN 9781478033448
- Weight: 572g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Sep 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The worship of Yoruba deities is commonly understood as an indigenous African religion, but Ayodeji Ogunnaike argues these traditions were fundamentally different from the modern Western concept of religion. In Forms of Worship, Ogunnaike analyzes how the configuration of oriṣa worship changed across the Yoruba diaspora and homeland. As the meaning of the Yoruba word ẹsin, usually translated as “religion,” is closer to “form of worship,” he examines how reorienting understandings of oriṣa traditions as multiple forms of worship changes how religious identity, practice, and dynamics can be understood in contemporary and historical perspectives. By developing indigenous models for religious phenomena, Ogunnaike accounts for Yoruba cultural dynamics including the high degree of religious harmony, syncretism, and interaction prevalent both in Nigeria and Brazil. Furthermore, he tracks the subtle and largely unperceived shift in oriṣa worship toward a more modern, closed, and rigid conception of a religion and its resulting complications. Forms of Worship demonstrates how the advent of Western religious rigidity regarding practice and identity has led to rising religious tensions and fragmentation.
Ayodeji Ogunnaike is Assistant Professor of African Religions and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in the Globalization of African Religion and Yoruba Mythology at McGill University.
