Here is your essay on the Evans-Pritchard’s approach to religion.
The early works on religious and magical phenomena, especially those of Taylor and Frazer, offer explanation of religion in terms of origins. It is, of course, quite unrealistic to try to find the origin of some custom or belief in the absence of historical evidence. All the same we continue to read the books of Taylor, Frazer and Durkheim as classics.
Considerable advance is made in this field by Evans-Pritchard who explains religious facts in terms of ‘the totality of the culture and society, in which they are found’. For example, he argues that, “To try to understand magic as on idea in itself, what is the essence of it, as it were, is a hopeless task”.
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He holds that it would be more intelligible when magic is examined in relation to peoples’ activities and also in terms of their other beliefs. Evans-Pritchard already charted out his approach to religion three early essays, ‘The intellectualist (English) interpretation of magic’ (1933); ‘Levy-Bruhl theory of primitive mentality’ (1934); and ‘Science and sentiment: an exposition and criticism of the writings of Pareto’ (1936). He incorporated these articles in his Theories of Primitive Religion (1965). He held that everyday knowledge should be compared with everyday knowledge, technology with technology, and theology with theology.
In this he followed Durkheim’s methodological rule that social phenomena must be explained in terms of other social phenomena. For further details about Durkheim’s sociological rules. In his approach to religion, Evans-Pritchard adopted the task of explaining beliefs as sociologist’s facts. For this task, he determined that the proper method was comparative.
According to Evans-Pritchard, comparative religion must be comparative in a relational manner, that is, we should see whether a common element of more than one religion being compared is related to any other social fact. As an example, he cited Weber’s work in relating certain Protestant teaching to certain economic changes.
Two of Evans-Pritchard’s monographs, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937) and Nuer Religion (1956), exemplify his approach to religion, both comparative and structural. As for historical scope, both the works are based on his field work in the 1930s.
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The first book is an attempt to make understandable a number of beliefs, all of which are foreign to the mentality of a European. He shows how they form a complete system of thought and how this system of thought is related to social activities, social structure and the life of the individual
Azande and Nuer:
Evans-Pritchard studied the Azande (singular, Zande) between 1926 and 1940 and found the people generally hospitable and friendly. On the contrary to it, the Nuer, whom he studied between 1930 and 1936, were a hostile and uncommunicative people.
The Azande:
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It was the belief of Evans-Pritchard that all systems of belief could be explained rationally. Regarding the Azande, he asked how a people can live with irrational beliefs and false premises without discovering that they are false?
The Azande believe that witches are always evil and any misfortune can be attributed to witchcraft which is of a psychic activity. The witch, motivated by feelings of envy, causes damage to others. The victims place the names of possible witches before their various oracles. The oracles tell them which of the suspects are innocent and which may be guilty.
The guilty is prayed to withdraw his or her evil influence. In case, the guilty does not withdraw so and the victim dies, the kinspersons employ vengeance Magic to destroy the witch. In this way witchcraft, oracle and magic form a complex system of beliefs and rites.
Unlike Taylor, Frazer, Levy-Bruhl and even Durkheim, Evans-Pritchard did empirical research. He made efforts to show that the beliefs of the primitives peoples look absurd to outsiders. But they can be explained reasonably if we accept the point of view of the believer. His focus was on understanding Azande beliefs as a system of ideas.
Evans-Pritchard held that Levy-Bruhl presented an incorrect image of primitive beliefs. So, in his book on the Azande he attempted to correct the latter’s mistakes.
It was argued by Evans-Pritchard that primitive systems of thought are not as thoroughly controlled by mystical elements as levy-Bruhl believed. Evans- Pritchard described the dual casualty in Azande beliefs. By dual casualty he meant that Azande thought contained both mystical and natural causation. He cites the case wherein a group of people were sitting beneath a granary weakened by termites. In the meantime, the granary collapsed causing injury. For this witchcraft was blamed.
The Azande knew well that the natural cause of the granary’s collapse was the action of the termites, but to them this only explained how, and not why, the structure fell. Their question was: why was it this granary which collapsed, and why did it do so precisely when these persons were beneath it.
The Azande book uses structural analysis to build a mode of abstraction. The structural approach involves the understanding of particular social system as well as the analyzing of the principles thought which the human mind operates.
The decoding of abstractions from social life includes the principles of opposition, complementarily and analogy. Kuper holds that at the heart of the Azande book there is an opposition between mystical and empirical beliefs and activities. It was shown by Evans-Pritchard that the Azande do not make this contrast and that they believe mystical forces operate in the same way as physical forces.
The Nuer Religion:
Evans-Pritchard accepted the fact that Religions are influenced by their social environment. Evans-Pritchard has tried to convey the meaning of a few key terms of categories of thought, and particularly the concept of spirit, of kwoth. Nuer conceive Kwoth as having an intangible quality like air.
In nature and Society everything is in the way it is because kwoth made or willed it that way, kwoth gives and sustains life, it also brings death, largely by means of natural circumstances such as lightening.
The structural approach to Religion is more prominent in Nuer Relition. Evans- Pritchard uses the principle of opposition and makes a distinction between sacred and secular. The Nuer God is especially in the sky as people are on the earth. Thus the things of above are associated with spirit and those of below with people.
Evans Pritchard has treated the Nuer statement that human twins are birds is an example of analogy similarity. As they are in the same class as birds, when Nuer twins due they are not buried. Instead their corpses are laid across the forks of trees. He depicts the general structure of Nuer analogies by which God is to men as the sky above is to the earth below, as birds to land animals.
To the Nuer, twin births symbolise divine intervention. Therefore, twins are to ordinary mortals as birds are to animals.