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.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. From Myth to Modernity: A Religious History of Ẹdẹ  17
2. Forms of Worship, Not Religion  47
3. How Worship Became Religion: Diaspora, Homeland, and the Lagosian Renaissance  81
4. How Religion Becomes International 121
5. Masking Tradition(s): Indigenous Perspectives on Syncretism  137
6. How Religion Is Changing the Religious  169
7. The Timi: Sacred Kinship, Managing Modernity, and New Religious Pluralism  215
Conclusion  259
Notes  283
Bibliography  325
Index