Mariam Goshadze I.7 African Traditional Religion (ATR): A Model in the Study of African Religions 1 Introduction Students of African religions are familiar with the conundrum of finding the right words to refer to the object of their study. If they have been educated at more than one institution, they will have developed the ability to identify the topic of their interest in the course catalog, even though it rarely comes under a stan- dard title. Courses they take will be listed as ‘African Traditional Religion,’‘Afri- can Religions,’‘African Indigenous Religions,’ or ‘Traditional African Religions,’ to name just a few. These titles may sound different, but they will cover similar themes. Scholars in the field face comparable challenges because there is no standard term to outline their area of study. A crucial task is to make sense of the existing labels, to understand the information they convey about their object of study, and to capture the differences between them. This exercise, which in- volves accounting for the historical developments that give rise to the terms in question, is also relevant to the history of our discipline, especially on a global scale (Hermann in this volume). One way to bring more clarity to the discussion is to differentiate the existing terms and the discourses associated with them. In what follows, I will focus on one of the most established terms in the study of African religions – African Tra- ditional Religion (hereafter ATR) – by introducing its history and content. ATR is often used in both academic and non-academic circles to describe the unity of over two thousand ‘traditional religions’ found on the African continent and to represent them as one overarching religion for all Africans, united by the idea of one common God and basic moral principles, and comparable to other ‘world re- ligions.’ 1 The ATR model is known for minimizing the ritual, performance, and social elements of African religions and overemphasizing beliefs (Olupona 1996, 198). It originated in the literature produced by African scholars in Anglophone Africa in the 1960s, but has since become widespread in the English-language  The term refers to the established, if outdated, paradigm in the study of religion of grouping religions that are said to be of global significance into a single category of ‘world religions.’ See Alberts and Laack, both in this volume. Open Access. © 2025 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111458892-009