Date:
Location:
"The State of Faith and Politics in Nigeria"
Speaker:
Jacob K. Olupona, Faculty Associate. Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School; Professor of African and African American Studies, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University.
Contact:
Darren Kew
Darren.kew@umb.edu
Co-sponsored by the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CPDD), UMass Boston.
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
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Abstract:
Nigeria is famous for being one of the most religious nations on the planet, and its politicians have long recognized the vast political capital available if they can tap into religious sentiments. Prof. Olupona, who has written arguably the most widely read book on Nigerian Pentecostalism, will discuss the current state of Christianity, Islam, and traditional African religions in Nigeria, based in particular upon several recent visits to the southwest of the country. What is the relationship between the current popular trends in the conduct of these religions with the current security, economic, and governance crisis in Nigeria, and how are politicians both adapting to and shaping these trends? How will the 2023 election season influence these trends?
Speaker Bio:
Jacob K. Olupona is Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School, and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Boston University where he received his PhD in Comparative Religion. He is currently working on a new ground-breaking study of the explosive growth of evangelicalism across all branches of Christianity, expanding the current discourse that is largely focused on Pentecostalism by identifying its effect on, and place in the larger context of Nigerian Christianity and society.
Olupona received a honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife and the University of Abuja, Nigeria. In 2008 he was awarded the highest distinction the Nigerian government bestows on civilians, the Nigerian National Order of Merit, and he was inducted into the Nigerian Academy of Letters in 2015. In October 2015, he was honored with the Reimar Lust Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
He has authored and edited several books, including Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, which has been used for ethnographic research among Yoruba-speaking communities.
