African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings and Expressions.
City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination (University of California Press 2011)
Olupona is a scholar of indigenous African religions who came to Harvard after serving as a professor at the
University of California, Davis.[4]
He is working on a study of the religious practices of the estimated one million
Africans who have emigrated to the
United States over the last 40 years, examining in particular several populations that remain relatively invisible in the American religious landscape: "reverse missionaries" who have come to the U.S. to establish churches, African
Pentecostals in American congregations, American branches of independent
African churches, and indigenous African religious communities in the U.S. His earlier research includes African
spirituality and ritual practices,
spirit possession,
Pentecostalism,
Yoruba festivals, animal symbolism, icons,
phenomenology, and
religious pluralism in
Africa and the
Americas.[1]
In his forthcoming book Ile-Ife: The City of 201 Gods, he examines the modern urban mixing of ritual,
royalty,
gender, class, and power, and how the structure, content, and meaning of religious beliefs and practices permeate daily life.[5]
He has authored or edited seven other books, including Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, which has been used for ethnographic research among Yoruba-speaking communities.[6]
Jacob K. Olupona was born into a family where the lineages of both parents were well known Anglican and non-Anglican priests.[10] The many religious activities and denominations he experienced in the villages, towns and cities he grew up in interested him, greatly. He watched as people mix traditions. As he grew older, the perception of multi-religious traditions of Islam, Christianity and indigenous religion opened spaces for the drive for his early scholarship on the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship.[11]
He graduated from the university in 1975 and did his
National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in
Ilorin.[12] During his service year in Ilorin, the host Governor of Kwara state, Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo was killed in a military coup as well as General
Murtala Muhammed which filled the nation with unease in 1976. The memorial church service held for the general and the preaching of an Anglican Priest in the event heightened his scholarly imagination. Jacob K. Olupona began to think deeply of the connection of religious pluralism and civil religion in Nigeria. These events made him appreciate his own religious background and the freedom of worship in southwestern Nigeria.[13]
^Bongmba, Elias K. (2009). "Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture - Edited by Jacob Olupona and Terry Rey". Religious Studies Review. 35 (2): 135.
doi:
10.1111/j.1748-0922.2009.01347_2.x.
ISSN0319-485X.
^MacDonald, Mary N., 1946- (2003). Experiences of place. Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School.
ISBN0-945454-37-6.
OCLC51482420.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
^Falola, Toyin (1992). "OLUPONA, J. K., Kingship, Religion, and Rituals in a Nigerian Community: A Phenomenological Study of Ondo Yoruba Festivals, Stockholm, Almqvist and Wiksell International (Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion, No. 28), 1991, 195 pp., 91 22 01382 2". Journal of Religion in Africa. 22 (3): 279–280.
doi:
10.1163/157006692x00266.
ISSN0022-4200.
^Olupona, Jacob K. (2005-07-01). "Osun across the Waters: A Yoruba goddess in Africa and the Americas, edited by Joseph M. Murphy and Mei-Mei Sanford. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press, 2001. x + 273 pp. US$29.95 paperback. ISBN 0-253-21459-9 (paperback)". African Affairs. 104 (416): 548–550.
doi:
10.1093/afraf/adi059.
ISSN1468-2621.
^Peel, J. D. Y. (2005). "OYERONKE OLAJUBU: Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere. (Foreword by Jacob. K. Olupona.) (McGill Studies in the History of Religions.) xii, 172 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. $16.95". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 68 (1): 182–183.
doi:
10.1017/s0041977x05640050.
ISSN0041-977X.
S2CID162966496.
^Olupona, Jacob Obafemi Kehinde (2003). "Odun Ifa: Ifa Festival, and: Insight and Artistry in African Divination (review)". Research in African Literatures. 34 (2): 225–229.
doi:
10.1353/ral.2003.0044.
ISSN1527-2044.
S2CID161408494.
^Olupona, Jacob K.; Peel, J. D. Y. (2003). "Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 36 (1): 182.
doi:
10.2307/3559350.
ISSN0361-7882.
JSTOR3559350.
^Olupona, Jacob (1997). "Report of the Conference, Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous Religious Traditions and Modernity, March 28-31, 1996, University of California, Davis". Numen. 44 (3): 323–345.
doi:
10.1163/1568527971655896.
ISSN0029-5973.
^Olupona, Jacob K. (1993). "The Study of Yoruba Religious Tradition in Historical Perspective". Numen. 40 (3): 240–273.
doi:
10.1163/156852793x00176.
ISSN0029-5973.