Gishu Indigenous Religion and Spirituality: Reviewing Imbalu ritual from a descriptive perspective

Abstract

The research article sets out to map out and surveyGishu indigenous religion and spirituality from extant scholarly literature. It argues that the spiritual aspects of Gishu people (also known as the Bamasaba), as epitomized and conveyed through Imbalu cultural practice (that has endured in the contemporary social space), has not received its due scholarly expressions by various scholars who have written about the Imbalu. This article is anchored on the African cosmological worldview framework, as a theoretical paradigm, which emphasis on a holistic view of reality. The data is gleaned from the extant literature on the imbalu, and examined theoretically in mapping and redefining the phenomenon of the African indigenous religion of the Bamasaba people. In its findings, the article posits that the Gishu indigenous religion and spirituality is saliently conveyed through imbalu, in all dimensions: as doctrinal, organizational, ritual, mythical, ethical and experiential, despite remaining unnoticed or acknowledged. To an extent, this leads to a loss of the core religio-cultural heritage. The study takes a gleaning approach, which is a method of collecting and utilizing information that other scholars have often overlooked.