Sociology of Religion

FOREWORD While the typical Sierra Leonean had a unique form of religion that was deeply rooted in their existing community tradition, it is obvious that cultural religious awareness was an indispensable aspect of their social existence. Cultural religious practice during those relatively cultural days was not so much diversity (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Rastafarianism and Bahaism) and strictly resonated with their unique cultural and social manifestations. All of these experiences change through the unattended intrusion of international and local Islamic and Christian scholars and others. Imbibed with the zest to acquire humans for acceptable Islamic and Christian religious life stemming in the northern and eastern part of the new Sierra Leone, and later, with the sudden eruption of the religious revolution which rendered the spiritual guidance of Sierra Leoneans morally useful, Muslim and Christian religious scholars hold their attention to the spiritual attention of the people by encouraging them of their mind materials for the consumption of religious thoughts to sustain the upshot of the emergence of religious solidarity. This coded spiritual intrusion in Sierra Leone shook the existing cultural religious uniformity. The assumed foreign Islam and Christianity as earlier perceived by cultural traditionalist, despite its inherent tinge of diversity, was blabbered as superior to the existing traditional religious practices. However, the process of the distortion of cultural uniformity was gradualistic, and actually became extant later in the post-colonial social history of Sierra Leone.Evidently, the era of religious explosion and integration assumed an alarming proportion in Sierra Leone following the post-independence experience that shaped the foundation of peace and social serenity. During this serene moment religious ascendancy was held in suspended religiosity forging the Sierra Leonean nature of its fine and unobtrusive social beauty. The religious scholastic landscape has been doted by series of sociological dispositions since the advent of Islam and Christianity as powerful instrument to direct the spiritual lives and socio-religious pillar of people within their communities. However, the type of religiosity left behind by periods of conservative religious evangelisation of Sierra Leoneans was not as intensed as it is today. The predominant trends were islamisation and christianisation, traditionalisation, and a host of other sense of religiosity. These categories clearly laid the foundation of the sociology of religious acquisition, inquiry and diversity, influenced firmly by their internal and external support. Ibrahim B.S Sesay (Ph.D. in Sociology- Howard University USA)