Examination and Evaluation of the Concept of Health and Wholeness in African Traditional Religion

Project Report from the year 2020 in the subject Theology - Comparative Religion Studies, grade: 4, , language: English, abstract: There have been several misconceptions and misinterpretations about African traditional medicine and African concept of health, wholeness and diseases. So many Western scholars and some ignorant Africans opined that traditional medicine is fetishism and that Africans do not have proper understanding of the concept of health and wholeness. This misconception, abuse and derogatory attitudes even from some notable Africans towards alternative medicine, as well as the all need of integrating both the alternative and orthodox medicine to bring about total wholeness, serves as the research problem. This study seeks to correct these misconceptions and also to bring to limelight Africans' proper view on health and wholeness. Its study argued that the bio-psycho-socio-ecological model of health and wholeness is fundamental to the African Traditional Religion and Medicine. This model brings together the different aspects of human life and treats the human person as an integral and harmonious whole in perpetual relationship with the sacred, the human community and the environment.