Book Review: Nuer Religion by E. E. Evans-Pritchard
The first, and most important, term discussed in this monograph is kwoth, the Nuer word for “spirit”. This word is understood by the Nuer to refer both to a single, creator Spirit, or God, and to two lesser classes of more specific spirits (Evans-Pritchard 1). This may cause confusion to non-Nuer observers, but there is no confusion among the Nuer as to which sense of the word is meant in any given context- it means one thing or the other, or both, as the situation demands.
The authority of Spirit over man is based on vastly superior wisdom and knowledge, and it is on this premise that Spirit is understood to have cuong, or, literally, “uprightness”, in any situation (Evans-Pritchard 16).
If an interdiction is broken, either positive or negative – the breaking of an incest taboo, for example, or a failure to offer sacrifice at an appropriate time – it is understood that illness and misfortune will follow the offender (and potentially his family and entire community) unless the wrong is righted. No distinction is made between offenses against Spirit and offenses against other members of the community – both upset the social order and bring bad luck (Evans-Pritchard 16).
A distinction which is central both to Nuer religion and society, that is, to justice administered by Spirit and by man, is that between an intentional or malicious fault (duer), and an unintentional or unwitting fault (gwac). Intention is understood to be of foremost importance when considering any incorrect action, and adequate contrition and reparation or sacrifice can mediate any offense. In other words, the reasonable-person principle applies in human justice, and is extended to divine justice (Evans-Pritchard 18).
Evans-Pritchard wrote and published two earlier ethnographies on the Nuer, the first focused on work and politics, the second on kinship and marriage. Perhaps because of this, little is given in this volume of the relationship between the Nuer and other peoples, both neighboring and foreign. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about the correlation between Nuer religion and the larger, regional social context. Throughout this book, however, Evans-Pritchard highlights the role that religion plays in enforcing the order within Nuer society.
The one exception to this comes in the discussion of the lesser spirits. According to the Nuer, the only religious entities believed to be of ancient and identifiably Nuer origin are Spirit in the general, singular sense, and spirits of the dead, usually of those struck by lightning, known as colwic. The other spirits, of the above (kuth nhial) and of the below (kuth piny) are considered to have “fallen” into foreign lands and only in the past century been adopted by the Nuer, often through contact and intermarriage with the neighboring Dinka people (Evans-Pritchard 29).
Religious interdictions among the Nuer serve to enforce the social order. Being in the right with people (having cuong) and being in the right with Spirit are considered to be one and the same (Evans-Pritchard 18). Therefore, much emphasis is placed in Nuer culture on keeping the peace, taking responsibility and offering restitution when one has wronged another. It is for a related reason that, during certain sacrifices and ceremonies, it is customary for those involved to air “grievances, both real and imagined” (Evans-Pritchard 109), in order to purge resentment, lest it fester and become a curse. The concept of yop, which is the idea that good fortune should be downplayed rather than celebrated, lest it be taken away, and that ill fortune should be accepted rather than bemoaned, serves to protect the Nuer from a Spirit who punishes undue arrogance. It also serves to keep in check the more human forces of envy and covetousness which are believed to give rise to the evil eye (peth) (Evans-Pritchard 15).
Many other aspects of Nuer religious thought and practice are discussed throughout the monograph, including the idea of sin as contagion, totemic spirits and propitiatory sacrifice, but it is the concept of kwoth that is central to Nuer society, and to which all of these concepts are linked.
This book was written during a transitional period in anthropological theory, and in the concluding chapter, Evans-Pritchard rejects as prejudiced and insufficiently informed the Social Evolutionist theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while noting that “little has been put in their place” (Evans-Pritchard 314).
Evans-Pritchard also mentions Durkheim and his fellow proponents of sociological interpretations of religious behavior, finding such interpretations useful, but only to a point. “I do not think, for example”, he writes, “that the configuration of Spirit, the faults which are regarded as sins, and the roles of master of ceremonies, priest, and prophet in sacrifice can be fully understood without a knowledge of the social order” (313). However, the author goes on to state his belief that Durkheim and his colleagues took such theories too far in stating that “the religious conceptions of primitive peoples are nothing more than a symbolic representation of the social order” (313), a claim for which Evans-Pritchard sees no credible evidence.
While a Functionalist view of Nuer religious behavior is not explicitly stated in the monograph, the structure of the monograph with regard to presentation of religious behaviors and their social repercussions fully invites such an interpretation.
Finally, Evans-Pritchard anticipates more confusion on the part of the reader than is actually engendered when confronted by the several interpretations of the concept of “Spirit”. Throughout the monograph, he repeatedly refers to it as “problematic” that something can be one thing and also many; that divinity can exist in both a unified and a multiply refracted form. It is perhaps a function of the era in which he writes that this puzzlement is expected. In reality, for a modern student of diverse religious beliefs, the idea does not seem so strange at all.
Works Cited:
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Nuer Religion.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.
