ABSTRACT
In earlier centuries first Christianity and later Islam came as new religions in Africa, took root and expanded until today they are the dominant faiths of the continent. Their predominance was long confined to Africa north of the Sahara and east of the Nile but in recent centuries their expansion into sub-Saharan or ‘black’ Africa has led to a fresh and increasing interaction with the indigenous African religions. One massive result, more extensive in the Christian context than in the Islamic, has been the emergence of a wide range of new religious movements which draw on the local traditions and one or other of the introduced faiths to produce new syntheses. These are usually referred to as new religious movements and they should be distinguished from the missions, churches or communities associated with these two faiths, from other religious bodies that have more recently taken root in parts of Africa, such as Baha’i, the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as from the original primal religions of the African peoples. They represent a creative attempt to meet African needs in African ways by a reworking of all available religious and cultural resources.
