Abstract

This study examines the interactions of Christian and Yoruba cultures through the funeral of a Yoruba Christian successively held in Ibadan and Ilesa in southwestern Nigeria. Strict Africological paradigms were used in all aspects of this study, including participant observation, interviews, data collection and analysis. ;The study reveals that Christianity affects the Yoruba pervasively including the: enhancement of an individualistic ethos, withering of family and communal bonds, promotion of Yoruba cultural illiteracy, mystification of the Yoruba value judgement, metropolitization of the Yoruba in the supra-Christian culture, and shifting the Yoruba towards a development of a fringe culture subsistent on the Christian and the Yoruba value systems. ;This study also elucidates some theoretical points including: the role of electronics in funeral, gender mourning styles, the effects of syncretism on African psychosocial functioning, the impact of Christian doctrine on polygyny, the relevance of an Africological paradigm in studying African phenomena, and, finally, the validity of Eurocentrism as a universal epistemological paradigm