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What Goes Around Comes Around
and Everything Happens for a Reason:
The Theocentric Fatalism of Africana People

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Donald H. Matthews, Ph.D.
University of Missouri, Kansas City

Main Thesis

"What goes around comes around", “Everything Happens for a Reason,” "It was meant to be". When your time is up, it’s up"," "It wasn’t my time", You can change your destiny but not your fate", "God has a plan for your life". These are just some of the many aphorisms that I have heard growing up in the African American community. They all revolve around the idea that God has control over one’s life. Even the most ardent Baptists with their supposed Arminian viewpoints of free will are thoroughly convinced that one’s fate is ultimately in the hands of God. Their language is just as full of these and other fatalistic aphorism as are their Christian Protestant and Catholic brothers and sisters. They are also heard from their Muslim brethren and even the most hedonistic sinner is convinced that God is in control of one’s life.

This is the foundational theological and ethical perspective of Africana people. This religious philosophy is not only rooted in fatalism it is also best understood as a theocentric religious orientation. This claim runs counter to the decades long belief by scholars of Africana religion who have described African based religions as being thoroughly grounded in an anthrocentric perspective.

The idea that African people are theocentric runs counter to years of scholarship which has stated that blacks are anthrocentric in their religious philosophy. The previous work of anthropologists and theologians of African religions have emphasized the African’s sense of God as one n which the African him/herself is active in the determination of how God operates in the world. In this anthrocentric perspective it is the divine world that is summoned manipulated and called upon by religious practitioners.

The old adage that "If an African doesn’t get what he wants from one spirit he will simply find another," is an example of this kind of thinking that it is the human who controls the divine and God is a willing but rather passive partner with the human community. God is pictured as being far and distant. The High God, historians of religion have told us (Eliade among them) is ; "The Hidden God" who has removed himself from human life for a variety of reasons ranging from the nuisance of noisy women to a general indifference toward humankind.

However, I will argue that this is a perspective that examines African based religion from without and not from within the hearts and minds of black spiritual persons. In fact, I believe that the evidence reveals that the African consciousness is in continual search for divine solace because it is so heavily dependent on seeking God’s approval. The search for the "right" divinity is the result of a fatalistic faith that is preoccupied if not consumed with establishing a correct relationship with God.

I will argue that this fatalistic foundation is built on a deep faith and belief in a God who predetermines, plans and guides our worldly circumstances and reality. This God is therefore a God who is intimately involved in the creative activities of the world, both personally and socially. I believe that this idea is the driving force behind black belief and is why black spirituality has been so powerful in the lives of Africana people.

From Africa to America

I will argue that this fatalistic perspective was present in pre-colonial Africa and continued on in the adoption of evangelical Christianity by African Americans. In fact, I am arguing that it was this faithful fatalism that provided the religious philosophical bridge between African Traditional Religion and Evangelical Protestant Christianity that made it possible for blacks to readily accept Christianity and provide the basis for a faith in God that can sand the terror of the Middle Passage, chattel slavery and centuries of racial discrimination. In this perspective fatalism is seen as the connective philosophical tissue that bound together Traditional African and American Evangelical perspectives. It also places African Traditional Thought on equal footing with Evangelical Christianity. It is no longer seen as a step sister or point of negation but a full partner in the religious continuum of black religious life in the New World.

Previous historians of religion have emphasized black acceptance of Christianity as due to a continuation of religious practices (water baptism, oracular preaching, spiritual possession, etc),(Herskovits, Raboteau, Stuckey, Levine, Du Bois) or a belief by early Baptists and Methodists in black freedom (Sernett, Stuckey) In these perspectives American religion’s outward practices and rituals are similar enough to African religion to warrant the faith of black people in America. Or, as in the freedom perspective blacks accepted Christianity as a move toward social freedom and equality.

These perspectives leave unchallenged the notion that Traditional African religion is "Other" in its very being and is theological of a different texture than Christianity. (Raboteau) My perspective is that blacks were already in possession of a religious philosophy which was similar if not identical to the core of the Christian evangelical position. Once it was explained to blacks, Africans in American found it easy to accept this foreign religion that was in fact their own in their own African context.

Significance of This Work

This is an important perspective for several reasons. One, it enlarges and deepens the literature that traces the transmission of African survivals in African American religion. This early literature by early and late twentieth century scholars such as Du Bois, Herskovits, Sober, Stuckey and Matthews, to name a few, have already established various pints of consistency between African religion and African American religion.

However, these scholars have been more attentive to obvious religious and behavioral manifestations of African religion. The ring shout, water baptism, the continuation of a specific West African sacred cosmos, dance, etc. have all been cited as proof of this African continuity and presence in the Americas. However, this domain has been dominated by historical or social scientific perspectives. Seldom has the inner philosophical world been examined in the same depth and manner. There have been a laundry list of these features (my work included) but the inner philosophical world has been slighted and there remains a gap to show how an African world view permeates the theological and ethical perspective.

I believe that this has led to a failure to understand the depths of the African religious world view in both its African and African American manifestations and thus has led to a limited understanding of the ethical choices made by African people.

"What goes around, comes around", belongs to the folk wisdom of African people in America. Like many African American aphorisms it contains in a tight sentence a depth and breadth of theological ethical wisdom. It points to the nature of God and the fitting response to life’s challenges. I intend to demonstrate the nature of this theological ethical posture through the examination of African and African American narration.

     The trajectory of this idea can be traced in the writings of West African writers such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Their major works which seek to describe the African world view from the view of an indigenous perspective both stress the idea of fate. Soyinka (in Death and the King’s Horseman) emphasizes the similarity of the African’s divine kings ideas to Greek tragedy (We are sport for the gods). Achebe, in the most celebrated West African novel (Things Fall Apart) identifies the role of “chi”; translated as spiritual energy and fate in the life of the pre-colonial West African community.

This fatalistic trajectory is seen starkly in the writings of early African American slave and free writers such as Phyllis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. These and other writers articulate their understanding of evangelical Christianity as their situation as slaves as dependent on an inscrutable divine Being who has set their fate. This perspective is most fully articulated in the work of the early slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Equaino painstakingly describes an evangelical Protestant Christianity and his own African Traditional Religion as both being dependent on the will of the powerful Creator.

Other slave narratives like that of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman emphasize their reliance on a God who has already determined the course of their life. This perspective is questioned but never abandoned by the Post emancipation Black religious community. Du Bois in his monumental work, Black Reconstruction, questions this position as he describes the harsh consciousness of blacks who are slow to realize and accept that that their intended fatalistic journey towards freedom was now devastated by the rise of Jim Crow and white retrenchment. Yet, blacks continue this belief in the presence of a divine, though now interrupted fate.

When William Jones challenged the black liberation theology  of James Cone he is unknowingly critical not just of Cone but of a historic black belief in divine foreknowledge and predestination. His critique of the lack of he empirical proof of black liberation leaves untouched the central thesis of a belief in the divine will despite the presence of the material “goods” that he supposes constitute the basis for a theology of black liberation. In fact the recent emphasize on prosperity gospel is a heretical departure of the ancient belief that God is God whether one experiences material prosperity. The colloquial idea that the Christians gave the Africans the Bible and took their land is more a judgment against the actions of European oppressors than a statement about the nature of black belief which is not grounded in ideas of material prosperity. It is good to experience material blessings and they indeed are to be sought after but material blessings are not the basis for faith

Contemporary God Language

Contemporary African American religious language is replete with this root fatalistic metaphor. There is an acknowledged ritual after the bestowal of the media based award that the black individual first thanks God for winning the award. When Denzel Washington won his acting award from the black media he first criticized his white colleagues who did not routinely thank the Almighty for their awards. The predominantly black crowd roared with acknowledgement and approval. This perspective is also shared by non- traditional post-Christians like Oprah Winfrey who continually speaks about her dependence on the divine presence in her life.

Implications for a Black Psychology/Philosophy of Religion: Afro-Asiatic Theology

Black theology must have a non-Western religious hermeneutic instead of the traditional reliance on paradigms that are drawn from Eurocentric sources. The above described theological perspective is best understood when seen in the light of non-Western religious sources. The religious philosophy of Traditional African Religion and Chinese Taoism are fruitful intrinsic/internal and extrinsic/external dialogue partners for the interpretation and understanding of this fatalistic perspective. Its roots are found in ancient non-Western spiritual traditions that emphasize and recognize the presence of divine spiritual presence. Black theology which draws its referents from Western systematic (neo-Orthodoxy) and/or political (liberation) theology will never capture the richness or nuances of Africana religious consciousness.