Encounters of Christian and Indigenous Beliefs in Recent History of the Turkana

Abstract

When missionaries introduce Christian beliefs in a diaspora, they study the local language in order to teach the Christian doctrines, symbols and treatment of the symbols. The primary purpose of this work was to document an early phase of missionary work among the Turkana in the Northwest of Kenya whom I visited in 1979 and 1983. During the current process of analysis and comparison of the symbol structures of the Turkana and the Christian religion incorporating the latest researches a second purpose arose: to motivate for further independent anthropological investigation of religious systems. My hypothesis is that the Christian religious conception is fundamentally different from the traditional ideas of the Turkana, that not only observable behaviour but the mental constitution is different. Emanating from an empirical observation of a daily habit of the Turkana, I trace back examining the conceptions of the respective spiritual being and the relation between the goddess and men in order to look beyond the habit and the attitude. I examine the symbolic acts of collection and thanksgiving in the liturgy of the Christian Mass and contrast it with the norm of social action in the traditional culture of the Turkana.