Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has said he accepted being called an atheist and disclosed why he prefers traditional Orisa.
Making this disclosure in a recent interview today, the literary icon said that the deepness of faith in Islam and Christianity doesn’t match that of Orisa worshipping for him, adding that Orisa fascinated him a lot more.
According to him, Orisa worshipping is one of the African religions that eschews violence and is more creative.
“I was fortunate to be born in two worlds; The Christian world and traditional Orisa worshippers. My grandfather, a poor man also got converted, he was an Orisa person and a chief, and his (grandfather’s) side if orisa fascinated me a lot more,” he said.
He added, “For me, orisa worshipping was more artistic, creative, and also more mysterious. I don’t find much of the mysterious in Christianity and even less in Islam and that is for a simple reason that I didn’t grow up in a Muslim environment.
“Orisa is open, and very ecumenical and that is why these foreign religions were able to penetrate it and even distort the truth. Because of the generosity of this spirit (Orisa), it is not violent. It is one of those African religions which eschew violence”.
“I don’t believe in the Islamic or Christian God and for the adherents of these religions if that makes me an atheist, so I say, I am an atheist. I insisted that all human beings have a certain spiritual core in their being, I believe myself to be a more spirit-sensitive person.”
The literary icon also revealed that he doesn’t like to watch anything adapted from his life or works.
“Let me put it this way, turning anything in my life into what other people can watch pains me. It makes me extremely uncomfortable. It’s wrong to say it’s terrific, let me just say I’m detached from it”.
“It takes me a while to bring myself to watch me.”
This is not the first time the literary icon made public his religious preference. Fresh in memory was in 2022, during a public presentation of his two-volume collection of essays, when he said that he does not need any religion and does not worship any deity, noting he is neither a Christian, Muslim nor an Orisa worshipper.
According to him, he found nothing wrong with using mythologies as part and parcel of his creative warehouse.
He further said that he is a mythologist and believes that people have a right to create myths around themselves based on their experiences.
“Do I really need one (religion)? I have never felt I needed one. I am a mythologist.
“But religion? No, I don’t worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world,” he buttressed.
Soyinka in conclusion, added that he believes people have a right and cannot help creating mythologies around themselves.
