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Okafor                                                                                                                   75 

 

REGAINING THE RELIGIOUS SENSE OF MEMORY: A RELIGIO-

PHILOSOPHICAL PROPOSAL 

 

Gabriel Tochukwu Okafor 

Faculty of Philosophy 

Pontificia Università Antonianum, Rome. 

uniant5780@antonianum.eu, okaforgabriel@gmail.com 

 

Abstract  

Memory keeps people abreast of the events around them. Such happenings 

could be in the past or present. These events somewhat influence their daily 

choices in the hope of a better future. Generally speaking, this is what memory 

entails. In the specific sense employed in this work, memory covers a body of 

the beliefs of adherents (of different religions) sustained through the years by 

their forebears. Religious experiences form the building blocks of memory. 

Here the experiences of their ancestors so recalled serve as the basis for present 

and future practices of the same religion(s). It is what collective memory 

guarantees. As such, the traditions they left are available in either written or oral 

forms. Their interpretations and contextualization are evident in the onward 

religious experiences of their adherents. With hermeneutical method, this paper 

explores the religious sense of memory. It proposes a faithful retrace to the 

foundations of different religions to better equip those who live them in keeping 

the faith alive. On common grounds other works, it affirms the three things 

familiar within this area of study: memory has a personal dimension, a 

collective dimension and is relevant for present-day events which pave the way 

for the future. Having clarified what memory could mean, it views religion as 

some form of memory. The loss of this could result in the loss of the authenticity 

of religion itself. For without recourse to memory, a great deal of what religion 

proffers would be lost and questions on religious authority would rise.      

Keywords: Ancestors, Experience, History, Memory, Religion  

 

Introduction 

Experience is the best teacher, we always say. History is a recount of its lessons. 

Memory is the record of this same history. By it, we recall past events and their 

corresponding effects on the present; which in itself is memory-making. A 

disjoint in any of these easily alters our mode of comportment in ways deep for 

words. What was in the past, replays in some form in the present. The ability to 

recall is a human faculty. At this individual level, it is an essential part of our 

being that we share with minded creatures. It also has a social dimension that 

serves the common good of a people. This aspect is reserved for humans. 

Recognition of a person affirms their place of origin. Everyone is described by 

this affiliation: where one is from. Collective memory is the heritage of a 

people. Its social dimension is versed and touches on diverse aspects of our 

mailto:uniant5780@antonianum.eu


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Okafor                                                                                                                   76 

 

social life. Religion is an aspect of this social dimension that defines people’s 

uniqueness. However, Urbaniak rightly notes this in his Memories as Religion: 

What can the broken continuity of tradition bring about?: “Postmodern 

societies are less and less capable of maintaining the continuity of memory 

which used to lie at the very core of their religious identity; that is why they 

have become less and less religious” (1). 

 

This means that there is a religious dimension of memory. Individual and 

collective phenomena have a tie in memory: recalling or reliving the past in the 

present with a specific future-directed goal. Memory and religion are on this 

precise plane, synonymous. To lose touch with memory is to lose touch with 

reality. This we can also say of religious beliefs. They bring us to the same fore: 

reality. What we have now comes as a building block of the experiences of past 

generations. All forms of detachments of the past are deliberate destructions of 

memory and the richness within it that has contributed to our immediate 

situation. In his Religion and the study of social memory, Sakaranaho argues 

that memory “is intersubjectively constituted, and it is, therefore, important to 

take into account the social dimension of human memory” (139): be they 

religious or not. Should they be religious, their strength of orthodoxy lies in the 

proper use of memory. 

 

Therefore, the immediate concern of the first part of this work shall be to 

understand what memory entails. It will show that there is a link between 

memory and specific locations. Every place has a history behind it. Place and 

history give a spatio-temporal review of memory. Given that this spatio-

temporal review is not possible without a people, the second part of the work 

admits of memory as lived experiences of people whose life reads back to the 

eternal law of God. This bridges the gap between the past and present, plunging 

the people into the future. In this symphony of relations capturing the different 

epochs of life consist the religious sense memory holds for a people.   

 

What memory means  

The term memory has multiple meanings and applications based on contextual 

comparative usage. When considered as our abilities as humans, Aquinas sees 

it as one of the five internal senses: of common sense, phantasy, imagination, 

estimative sense and memory (1a.78.4). Explaining this, Davies holds that by 

them, we are able “to coordinate, evaluate, and remember” the impacts the 

external senses have on us (135). In this same light, Kant sees it as a faculty 

belonging to sensibility “of deliberately visualizing the past...” such that to 

“grasp something quickly in memory, to recall it to mind easily, and to retain 

it for a long time are the formal perfections of memory” (1.182). These seem to 

look at memory as part of the components of human nature. Probably because 

Kant was on a move from reason to the practical sphere, Foucault notes this of 

him: “the study of memory as a simple fact of nature is not only futile, it is 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   77 

 

impossible: ‘All theoretical speculation about this is a pure waste of time’” (64). 

Should it be so, then much is demanded to understand it as something non-

negligible if this passage to the practical sphere must come to fruition. 

However, one cannot but affirm with Sutton: “Memory is both a natural and a 

humankind” (3). 

 

Based on this, Cassirer argues, “If we understand memory as a general function 

of all organic matter we mean merely that the organism preserves some traces 

of its former experience and that these traces have a definite influence upon its 

later reactions” (50). At this natural state, it could be seen as one of the many 

things we have in common with minded animals. Moreover, its ability to affect 

later reactions noted above gives a marked significance of memory. It readily 

avers us the common Dictionary understanding of it “as the power or process 

of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained particularly 

through associative mechanism” (Merriam Webster). Concerning this, 

Nkemnkia avers:  

Memory is a faculty of all living beings possessing a mind. That is why 

it is more precise to define memory as, that faculty of the mind which 

remembers things known in the past; thus, in a way, it is also a re-

cognisance of that which is known, a reiterated knowledge. Memory 

becomes in this way the centre of sensation, stimulus of the mind and as 

such it is indispensable for the formation of concepts (179).  

 

This immediately plunges us into other aspects of memory that are not strictly 

reductive in the senses early considered. The immediate definition opens other 

possibilities to the understanding of memory. In these, we go beyond the mere 

perception of memory as something we share with other beings to its active 

influences in all aspects of our experiences as humans. For Nkemnkia, it “is a 

faculty without which there is no experience” (178). The experience here is 

used in the most common usage as a collection of all that has happened, all that 

happens now and all that will happen. All these are memory. According to 

Cassirer, 

The mere presence, the sum total of these remnants, cannot account for 

the phenomenon of memory. Memory implies a process of recognition 

and identification, an ideational process of a very complex sort. The 

former impressions must not only be repeated; they must also be ordered 

and located, and referred to different points in time. Such a location is 

not possible without conceiving time as a general scheme—as a serial 

order which comprises all the individual events. The awareness of this 

time necessarily implies the concept of such a serial order corresponding 

to that other schema which we call space (50-51).  

 

By etymology, the word “memory” is rooted in the Latin memor, memoria and 

the French memorie: all meaning ‘mindful’, ‘remembering’, ‘recall’. From this, 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   78 

 

memory would mean ‘to bear someone or something in mind’, ‘to remember 

someone or something’ or ‘to recall someone or something’. It is obvious why 

words like commemoration, recollection, reliving, reminiscence, flash from the 

past, anamnesis, recognition, store, etc. are common synonyms of memory at 

different degrees. All of them are of or about someone or something. This 

suggests that it is a state of the mind that is content full. It is always on or about 

something. There is nothing like empty memory. It has content: it is necessarily 

about someone or something in all cases. This is possibly why it is easily linked 

to consciousness; which is always about someone or something. (Strawson 185-

6).  

 

It serves different uses in the sciences, philosophy and religion. What matters 

the most is the foundation of all it holds with regards to the past, present and 

the open unending future before. Its religious relevance suffices for our needs 

here. The Confessions of St Augustine is one of the most evident understanding 

of memory in the religious sense, a sort of a narrative of the past in the present 

as though the past is being relived with the hope of a lighted future 

intermittently committed to God in prayers for understanding. Having described 

memory as “the present of past things” (XI.20), he gives a summary of his usage 

of psalm recitation to explain the link between the past, present and future in 

these words: 

What is true of the whole psalm is also true of all its parts and of each 

syllable. It is true of any longer action in which I may be engaged and 

of which the recitation of the psalm may only be a small part. It is true 

of a man’s whole life, of which all his actions are parts. It is true of the 

whole history of mankind, of which each man’s life is a part (XI.28).  

 

This is the treasured sense in which memory is to be understood in this work. 

In his Religion as memory: How has the continuity of tradition produced 

collective meanings?, Urbaniak traces this sort of understanding to Ricouer 

saying: “memory is to be understood in the broad and dynamic Augustinian 

sense in which it appears in Ricoeur’s reflection when he speaks of ‘the tie [or 

process] by virtue of which the past persists in the present’” (2). This 

persistence of the past in the present is the building block of memory-making. 

It is always geared towards an immediate future that soon becomes a memory 

and on it goes. 

 

Place and memory  

There is a link between place and memory. Every memory begins at some 

specific place. Every place is named by people, whether they still live there or 

not. A place with a name without an imprint of people is unimaginable. If there 

were no people at some point, it would not be spoken of at any point in time. 

To think of a place, even by imagination, comes with corresponding thoughts 

of the characters that make it. Just like one would not think of a play without its 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   79 

 

characters, so it is unimaginable to think of a place without people. Memory 

serves to give an account of something: in more specific terms, place and 

people. “This work of remembering”, Ricouer suggests, “makes memory a 

creative activity in a way akin to narrative” (262). It is a retelling of the 

relationship of people in a specific place and time.  

 

There is no empty memory. To be void is to be without content. It is about 

people, places and things at a particular time. There are individual and 

collective memories. They all have the same contents. Individual memory 

constitutes the tales of individual persons based on their personal experiences 

of life. Personal narratives are individual stories; such, “narratives do not 

constitute a religion, but narratives told and enacted by a group” as noted by 

Sakaranaho (144). In the same light, he observes: “religious communities are 

examples of what they call ‘genuine communities of memory’” (144). In this, 

what the group keeps as its treasure lives on. It is communal even when the 

narrative is about individuals. As such, he asserts:  

Genuine or not, communities of memory are constituted by their past 

and are involved in retelling their story, which is their constitutive 

narrative (...). Stories of a collective history and of exemplary 

individuals are an important part of the tradition that is central to a 

community of memory. From the community’s point of view, the stories 

of exemplary individuals – whether of the founders or others – 

encapsulate conceptions of character: of what a good person is like, and 

of virtues that define such character (heroes and heroines) [144]. 

 

Memory is always in the making. It is not a closed out phenomenon. “It is our 

nature to strive to explore everything, alive and dead, present and future” as 

Dyson observes (290). As people and places evolve so does memory since they 

are its very subject. It is not of nothing; it has to be of something: whether we 

have them in mind at that particular time or not. While we might not have it as 

a whole, its partial imprints are all we need. Those are not void; they are 

something. In the words of Jonas in his The phenomenon of life: “the content is 

never simultaneously present as a whole, but always in the making, always 

partial and complete” (136). This is all that serves for every moment.  

 

Memory is history 

History is the narration of the past events of a person or people. It is the story 

of a man to man. By it, a connection is sustained in human relationships. It is 

the prerogative of a people. According to Coreth, it “exclusively belongs to 

man: we are not blindly subject to the need for a succession of natural facts” 

(164). This makes it an essential aspect of human life; permeating all 

dimensions of social relation. Like history, religion also is exclusive to man. 

Being so, history can be said to extend to man’s religious experiences: the nexus 

being their exclusivity to man. By this, one can view religion as a recount of 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   80 

 

the history of man’s relationship with a Supreme Being. Such recount is passed 

on from generation to generation. This is the aspect that oral tradition perfectly 

captures: a relay of the religious experiences of a people to their prodigies 

through successive generations. The continuous flow of such a relation keeps it 

alive. This ‘keeping it alive’ is a memory. Drawing particular attention to the 

necessity of this continuity within the Christian context, Urbaniak posits:  

What deserves particular attention is a necessary continuity between the 

past and the present which results in the dynamic and trans-historical 

understanding of both memory and tradition within Christian context. 

This fundamental continuity of memory transcends history and 

manifests itself in the essentially religious act of recalling a past which 

gives meaning to the present and contains the future (2). 

 

Without this continuity, there will be a hiatus. Should there be a break; a 

generation without this treasure would ensue. There would be a gulf between 

man and God; man and his peers. Memory bridges this gap and sets standards 

for future projections. This is because every history springs from the past; 

looked at from a certain position, the present. Memory is also seen in that light 

as Nkemnkia tries to show: “We can also say that memory, as such, is the 

recognition of the past and the foundation of the present” (180). It does not stop 

there: the present is future-directed. This is the hope that religion plunges 

humanity into, the transcendence beyond the present and the past. Its prowess 

is without limits; even the natural happiness man seeks is found within this 

(Aristotle X.VII.1, Spinoza 4.36). To attain it, however, one has to comport 

himself in some acceptable ways. This sets the moral dimension of religion. 

Man, in his relationship with God, has the onus on him to live in a morally 

acceptable way to attain his goals in God. 

 

Memory helps us keep this alive. It centralizes it and keeps us abreast with the 

implications of not living by it. Each time Israel kept the Laws of the Lord, they 

prospered. Such Laws were written in their hearts for their observance 

(Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:26, Hebrews 8:10). This is a common belief in 

Judaism. In successive progression, Christianity grows on this, the life and 

teachings of Jesus Christ and the teachings of his immediate followers: all about 

Christ. The Judeo-Christian God is one that goes in search of his own. In him, 

there is recourse to the past, his deeds of old, which unchangingly model the 

present for a future life in him. Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist, for instance, 

is the high point of memory as history that never dies. There was no misuse of 

words; they were unambiguous. His injunction is of memory: “Do this in 

memory of me” (Mark, 14:22-25; Luke 22:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25). It 

lays credence to the eternal relevance of the Eucharistic banquet. Each time it 

is done in memory of him, the mystery he celebrated is re-enacted and re-lived 

at that moment with a future dimension of reliving the same banquet in eternity. 

Such is the wealth of memory as history.  



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Okafor                                                                                                                   81 

 

 

This is not limited to the Judeo-Christian religious experience. In different 

ways, there are common grounds for memory as history in other religions. To 

sustain the essence of Islam, for example, every Muslim has the Quran first, 

then the Sunnah and the Hadīth (deeds and sayings attributed to Prophet 

Muhammad). They set the path for every decision in Islam (Esack 111-115). 

Religions with founding fathers toe this format: they fall back to the wealth of 

memory exemplified by the lives of their respective founders. This does not 

mean that such is not common among religions without known founders. The 

lives of their adherents are simply modelled on those of their predecessors. 

Links to the past are maintained as sources of strength for believers. They serve 

to resurrect the hopes the religion holds. Of this, Miftari and Visoka shade more 

light:  

This kind of search for the resurrection of epic ash in the letters could 

not carry the different ethnic and cultural feelings of the people, unless 

they were linked to the sign of their origin, i.e. by searching for the 

predecessors of a group who believes in some common values and 

cultivates them from generation to generation. These ancestors may be 

different: family members, a religious community, an ethnic 

community, or members of a religious community that unites the right 

and memories, or a cultural community that unite some common 

symbols (151). 

 

Generally speaking, therefore, it is obvious that tales form part of man’s nature. 

His story is his history. Taking a lift from Roquentin’s La nausée (Nausea), 

Strawson quotes in his Things that bother me: “A man is always a teller of 

stories, he lives surrounded by his own stories and those of other people, he sees 

everything that happens to him in terms of these stories and he tries to live his 

life as if he were recounting it” (54). This is at the heart of his essence. By 

memory, we pass on to others our story, our life. What we remember, we share 

with others. This shows our collective journey. Urbaniak takes this to heart 

when he writes: “one never remembers alone; to remember, we always need 

others. We are not original owners of our memories, which does not necessarily 

mean that we are not an authentic subject of the attribution of memories” (3). 

That is the nature of our memory, the nature of our history.  

 

Memory as a lived experience 

Human daily activities are documentation of memory. What we do is registered 

at something done at some point, in someplace. This certain locus shows that 

every moment is a moment lived and an experience that adds to all we had 

garnered before then. Memory as a lived experience expresses this reality. We 

make memory as we live. It is our way of life and it captures all that we do; 

should we recall them or not. In this sense, memory is both a conscious and an 

unconscious event that takes note of our very existence as a people. What we 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   82 

 

had in the past is contemplated upon and relived in the present with foreseen 

future of a repeat, modification or avoidance of the same experience. Nkemnkia 

states: experience “is nothing else except the product of memory” (180).  

 

From the foregone, memory could be seen as an event or a collection of events. 

Be it significant or not, it contributes to the entire lifestyle of a people. Events 

are recorded either as memorable or not. In the first case, they hold the worth 

of remembrance. They serve for a specific purpose: be they good or bad. In the 

latter case, though they are remembered, they do not hold specific significance 

to those who remember them. Both cases depict memory. Underscoring the 

relevance of events within the coordination of cause and effect, Coreth affirms: 

Apparently insignificant events in themselves sometimes have a 

disproportionate effect and model life’s historical environment of entire 

generations. On the contrary, events that seem important in themselves 

and are capable of giving an orientation can be deprived of their 

corresponding effects; they have been forgotten, they have gone lost. It 

follows that the historical importance of an event is not in the fact that 

it exercises a determinate universal and proportionate causality as a 

natural process: its importance is of a completely different kind (168). 

 

As events, memory is a recount of the lived experiences of the past and present. 

The effects they hold on the people depend largely on the consequence of their 

interpretations at the moment it is done. Some events spring hopeful sentiments. 

They renew and reposition the life of those who bear them in mind for a future 

that is full of life and confidence. Such are the effects of their causal relations 

hold on those who bear them. They can rebuild the think tank of those involved 

to the attainment of their immediate set goals. This also implies that some 

events come with cold sentiments of depression and hopelessness. They tend to 

weaken or strengthen the will of those who bear them in mind. Should they 

simply be re-lived, they could dampen the spirit of the people. If on the other 

hand they are interpreted with some sense of optimism, they become stepping 

stones for those whose experiences they are.  

 

In the religious cycle, memory in this sense is a lived religious experience of a 

people. It is a collection of their religious phenomena in all their aspects. Every 

such encounter adds to the body of memory they have for references. These 

encounters are religious events that could hold both hopeful and depressing 

sentiments. Such is the power of memory. Of this Sakaranaho opines: “the main 

events of a religious tradition are not only told or inscribed but also enacted in 

different rites and rituals. Rites and rituals in turn involve various kinds of 

bodily practices, which by means of repetition keep up... ‘habit-memory’” 

(144). When they are recalled with high sense of hope, the expression of 

gratitude ensues as the people are moved to re-enact it. If on the contrary, they 

are repositioned to learn from it to avert its corresponding recurrence and 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   83 

 

influence. Either way, however, there are great chances of turning both into 

useful ends. They hold great lessons drawn for onward experiences. That too is 

the strength of memory as a lived experience. 

 

This evident relive of experiences marks a synchronic contextualization of both 

the past and the present with a precise future goal(s). It is what lived religion 

does. For Moon and others, “Lived religion concentrates on the lived experience 

of believers in daily interactions with others and 

critically examines the interwoven relationship among God, community, and 

self” (3). It is at the heart of religious experiences and pushes its adherents on 

with the sole aim of the realization of its projection: the future life. This in itself 

is a living experience since the immediate present runs into it. While 

commenting on the prayer of Jesus for his apostles, for instance, Mork writes: 

The apostles and on their example all Christians must be the 

continuation of the incarnation in the world: the present and active 

Christ. Their mode of life is that of the one Trinity in the Son, and in 

him with the Father, by the work of the Spirit (...). The place of 

Christians in the world is that of the continuers of Christ (175).  

 

Memory by this is the continuation of the works and life of the religious 

experiences of the founders of particular religions. They also include the 

religious experiences of their progressive successors, those of a people’s 

forebears or ancestors, in the restricted sense; or in the open sense, of the 

people’s co-shared brethren “of the faith” professed or lived. Sakaranaho 

rightly understands this as “every religion evolves out of religious traditions 

preceding them; thus there is no absolute beginning in any religious tradition” 

(140). It implies that “the absolutely new is inconceivable; all beginnings 

contain an element of recollection” (140). This makes it a real phenomenon. 

The real is true. Memory by itself is real. Jonas believes that in memory, only 

“reality counts and reality knows of no representation” (167). How this is 

interpreted and relived is what makes the difference the most. It is the evident 

factor at the base of the relationship between memory and religion. As 

Sakaranaho puts it,  at the base “of our inquiry into religion and social memory 

lie questions as to ‘how religions remember’, in other words how religious 

communities are constructed through remembrance, and how they act in the 

process of remembering” (150). 

 

The religious sense of Memory... eternal law 

Religion is a mode of life. It is not just a concept but a style of living. For 

Feuerbach, “religion rests on the essential distinction of man from beast; beasts 

have no religion” (23). This makes it an integral aspect of man. Being so 

invokes the ethical sphere which rests on man’s social nature. Every religion 

has a particular mode of comportment for its adherents. Generally speaking, the 

good is appraised and the bad denounced. The rightness or wrongness of human 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   84 

 

actions is guided by the codes of conduct of the religion they practice. These 

preserved codes, oral or written, as we had seen earlier, are fruits of memory 

shared by different generations. Without them, the ethical imports of religious 

practices, which give it a place in society in relation with others, within or 

outside of the group, fail to meet their desired goals. The very essence of 

religious practices harbours this aspect of interpersonal relationships. Little 

wonder the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, amidst many definitions, saw 

it as a “relationship of devotion or fear of God or gods.” 

 

While the term is a complex one to define, one might know it in praxis. This is 

partly because it has undergone transmogrification through time. A random 

internet search traces it to the ancient French religion/relegion meaning ‘piety’, 

‘devotion’, ‘religious community’; or the Latin religionem from the nominative 

religio used regarding to what is considered sacred: hence, ‘respect or reverence 

for the gods’, ‘fear for the gods’, sense of ‘moral obligation or right’, ‘faith’, ‘a 

mode of worship or cult’, ‘sanctity’ or ‘holiness, etc. Its root is also traced to 

the Latin religare, which is a combination of two words: re (a prefix for 

something done earlier with particular attention drawn to it once more such as 

‘again’, ‘repeat’, ‘about’, ‘concerning’, ‘reference to’) and ligare (meaning to 

‘bind’, ‘tie’, ‘join’, etc together). Based on this etymological ground, Urbaniak 

makes a metaphorical connection between religion and memory. For him, “re-

ligare (‘to bind’, ‘to tie together’) and re-memorari (‘to recall to mind’) used to 

serve the common purpose of producing collective meanings” (1). They both 

have common recourse to the past as one that holds a lot for the present. This is 

close to another etymological development made famous by Cicero. The root 

for him is relegere which adds the verb legere meaning ‘to read’ to our already 

known re. Relegere by this combination would mean ‘to re-read’, ‘read again’, 

etc. Explaining further, he shows how the term came to be institutionalized as 

distinct from superstition, thought to be the opposite: 

Persons who spent whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure that their 

children should out-live them were termed ‘superstitious’ (from 

superstes, a survivor), and the word later acquired a wider application. 

Those on the other hand who carefully re-viewed and so to speak 

retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to 

retrace or re-read), like ‘elegant’ from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from 

diligere (to care for), ‘intelligent ‘from intellegere (to understand); for 

all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is 

present in ‘religious’. Hence ‘superstitious’ and ‘religious’ came to be 

terms of censure and approval respectively (193). 

 

Commenting on this, Horvilleur quickly states: “Authentic religion is contrary 

to superstition and not to rationalism; it is an ability to reread that requires us to 

revisit our texts, that is, to offer new interpretations and refuse to fix their 

meaning once and for all” (139). His intention here suggests that rationalism is 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   85 

 

not the opposite of religion but superstition in line with Cicero. However, if 

perchance rationalism, in all its aspects, puts away ideas of the sacred (that 

which religion reveres) just to show how human reason can thrive without any 

recourse whatsoever to any divine being, then it excludes that which is re-read. 

This too could make it an opposite of religion in some unambiguous sense. 

 

This idea of re-reading in this immediate discourse is what memory entails. By 

this, what is re-read is what is relived. In this, there is a nexus between the past 

and the present that continuously reads back while advancing into the future. 

This gives it an eschatological dimension. The memories we make each day 

culminates in a future guaranteed to those who are faithful to this re-living of 

the goals of their brethren in faith. It is also a re-enactment of the ideals of the 

faith. Tapping from this established relationship between memory and religion; 

one could carefully seek to understand what this recollection holds. It involves 

one’s entire being, nothing is left out. On this, Cassirer insists: 

In man we cannot describe recollection as a simple return of an event, 

as a faint image or copy of former impressions. It is not simply a 

repetition but rather a rebirth of the past; it implies a creative and 

constructive process. It is not enough to pick up isolated data of our past 

experience; we must really re-collect them, we must organize and 

synthesize them, and assemble them into a focus of thought. It is this 

kind of recollection which gives us the characteristic human shape of 

memory, and distinguishes it from all other phenomena in animal or 

organic life (51).  

 

This is not different from Sakaranaho’s insight on what this re-reading deals 

with. It is hallmark of all that tradition proposes. According to him, 

tradition is not simply a repetition of the past in the present. Rather, the 

distinctive mark of tradition is that it actualizes the past in the present, 

thereby restoring to human lives its essential core. Thus tradition cannot 

be reduced to established fundamental references, such as sacred texts 

or immovable rituals, set for all time. Tradition evolves in a hermeneutic 

process, one in which a religious community re-reads its ritual and 

statutory practices, its own historical narrative and institutions (146).  

 

In this already established connection with religion, the “rebirth of the past” of 

memory in itself is a build-up for onward passage to other generations. This 

shows an unending nature of memory as a continuous event. In the religious 

climes, a contemplation of a supernatural being is evident. This sense of the 

sacred that religion evokes is that “of the idea of the presence of God, and the 

same experience of man” as Goetz opines. He continuous: 

This God is a Presence that makes us lift our eyes and raise our minds, 

to look beyond the things, places or people who provide the occasion 

for this meeting, like a witness who judges us, like a guardian who 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   86 

 

watches over us and over things, like a friend with whom we find 

ourselves at home, but who, on occasion, knows how to call us to reason. 

He is an aspect of reality, grasped in its ordered totality, which does not 

show itself to the eyes but to the conscience. God is then the form of the 

world and at the same time the one who gives form to the world (83-4). 

 

Such a presence readily invokes a relationship; man’s self-realization. In the 

words of Feuerbach, “Religion, at least the Christian religion, is the ensemble 

of man's relations with himself, or rather with his own being, but regarded as 

another being” (36). The notion of one being before ‘another’ distinct from 

himself demands mode comportment that is relational. Sakaranaho identifies 

three elements constituting the definition of religion: “the expression of 

believing”, the memory of continuity” and “the legitimizing reference to an 

authorized version of such memory” (145-6). In the first, we are drawn to God; 

in the second, we stay connected to the experience therein; in the third, we hold 

to what past is our source of authority for living in the present. Kanu conveys 

these three elements in a slightly different way: belief, cult/worship and morals. 

For him, religion expresses a belief in “a being who is Supreme; in cult/worship, 

the dependence of subjects on the Supreme Being is expressed, in morals, the 

rules and regulations to guide the new relationship between the worshipper and 

the worshipped are drawn up” (3). His insight is close to Ekwunife’s who states 

that religion is “man’s awareness and recognition of his dependent relationship 

on a Transcendent Being, the Wholly Other, namable or un-namable, 

personalized or impersonalized, expressible in human society through beliefs, 

worship and ethical or moral behaviour” (1). 

 

Both descriptions affirm the relational aspect of religion sustained through 

memory. For this to last, rules of engagement are drawn: “ad intra as a source 

of identification and consensus, and ad extra as a source of dissociation” (146). 

Do good, avoid evil; is a central code in religion. It is difficult to imagine 

religion without it. While the definition of what this good or evil consists of 

might be relative, it also has an objective dimension nonetheless. This makes it 

a human thing. The natural law is an example of such behavioural laws within 

human society, be they religious or not. Understanding this within Christian 

theology, for instance, this law participates in the eternal laws of God written 

in our hearts (Davies 215-6). To live them, they must be internalized first. This 

internalization is memory with a predetermined plan of practice. 

 

Memory is a way of life. This is truer of religious memory. It is the way of life, 

the experiences lived and relived, of the generations before realized in the 

present. Being so, it makes for the nexus between the past and the present in the 

hope of a future. The collective memory of a group is an extension of its life 

through time. This seems lost the more successful generations leave out 

essential aspects of the whole. The modifications that follow due to such 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   87 

 

interpretations of the available memory would be stored for later generations. 

This would mean that virtually every generation lives its memory in context, in 

a way somewhat different from earlier ones. They only fall back to the past to 

refine their perceptions and re-confirm their authority. The closer they are to 

the precepts of the past, the more authentic they are said to be to the traditions 

they live. While relying on Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Urbaniak avers: 

religion is to be seen as a chain of memory, that is, a form of collective 

memory and imagination based on the sanctity of tradition. What is 

specific to religious activity is that it is wholly directed to the 

production, management and distribution of the particular form of 

believing which draws its legitimacy from reference to a tradition (2).  

 

For religions built around the lives of specific founders, the words and deeds of 

such figures constitute the tenets they hold dear to. This too is memory: be they 

oral or written. The Buddhists, for example, would always look at the life and 

works of Buddha before making their decisions. This could be said of any other 

religion with a known founder. For none specific founder religions, non-

proselytised religions like African religions, the lives of their ancestors play 

great roles in charting their way of life (Okafor 69-73). Such is the point of 

reference they hold dear. Without these nodes, there are no memories. As such, 

no religious experience since this is built around the memories of past 

generations graciously handed on to later ones.  

 

The loss of memory, the loss of the sense of religion 

Religious experiences capture what religion proffers. They are living 

experiences of a people at a particular place and time. This spatiotemporal 

encapsulation of such experiences validates the claims of religion as something 

real and not dead; even though it might be an event in the past. The re-living of 

these brings to life their essences. It is in these acts that memories are made and 

passed on to later generations. Though they might not be wholly captured in 

these later generations, their being read backwards brings them alive again. 

When they are spoken of, the goals for which they existed in the first place are 

relayed. Should they be written, they serve the same purposes: communication. 

This is very important though it does not neglect the fact that “Remembering 

always goes hand in hand with forgetting” (151). For Finlay,  

Communication, in the broadest sense, is what enables relationships to 

be created and to grow. When communication is lost or denied people 

become isolated, cut off from their community. God is a God who 

communicates with us and who desires his children to communicate 

with him. While the most obvious form of this communication is found 

in the Bible it is by no means the only way (284). 

 

Before the advent of writing, oral traditions played fundamental roles in the 

preservation of the life of people. Earlier generations pass on to their forebears 



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Okafor                                                                                                                   88 

 

the tales of their ancestors. These are memories. The culture of writing simply 

codified them. In the religious sense in view, written and oral codes are meant 

to be remembered with closely the same sentiments. Beyond those too, every 

injunction is meant to be remembered. This is memory synthesized.  The 

Abrahamic religions are famous for this approach. In them, we find both 

injunctions meant to guide the lives of their adherents in a particular way, time 

and place. This also goes for the codification of the ways of life of founders of 

such religions. In the broadest sense, every religion has a code of conduct and 

this is transmitted in either oral or written form. The purpose is the same: 

preservation of memory.   

 

A memory so preserved is a point of reference for the people. It is the source of 

authority for divergent interpretations of the memory lived (past) and the 

making of new ones (present and future). The older these written codes are, the 

greater their strength and orthodoxy; consequently, efficacy in times of doubts 

on the most acceptable way to act. People generally fall back to them to chart 

new courses. Those who wish to replicate earlier events find in them the 

ingredients they need. For those who desire to make modifications based on the 

changing times, these too make it possible as comparative grounds of departure. 

One clear fact is: it is impossible to have a whole memory at a glance. Partially 

available sources are all that serve for every moment. Though partial, they 

provide aspects of the whole, without which they would not be available in the 

first place. Kant’s subject-object, universal-particular, substance-accidents, etc. 

distinctions readily come to mind (A414/B441, Strawson 170). Parts are 

necessary of the whole; the converse is also true.  

 

Written codes/traditions serve as better aids against forgetfulness. This is 

feasible in every memory. To forget, in this sense, is to lose some chunk of the 

whole. Complete loss means the entire forgetfulness of the whole. Where this 

is the case, nothing is left. Religion would have nothing to ‘fall back to’; nothing 

to ‘re-read’. This ‘fall back to’, this ‘re-reading’ is the memory that serves as 

its life wire. Without it, there is a betrayal of an aspect of its meaning. The 

collective treasure it holds would no longer have present and future glimpses. 

There would be no communication, in the strictest sense. “Even the simple 

presence of another”, Finlay asserts, “has the potential to communicate i.e. you 

are not forgotten, I am here with you” (284). That in itself is memory. This 

suggests “the memory of creation is immediately a promise for the future” and 

every “new birth recapitulates the first birth; every beginning is a re-beginning” 

(Ricoeur 167).  

 

It recounts presence in all its ramifications. Invariably, to lose it is to lose the 

sense of the sacred. It is to lay off all that carries the very essence of belief. 

Without this, the secularization of all that is sacred ensues uncontrollably. On 

this, Urbaniak contends:  



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Okafor                                                                                                                   89 

 

Perhaps what constitutes the greatest threat to religion, understood as a 

chain of memory is the third of the modern agents... that is, institutional 

differentiation which in many cases is tantamount to factual de-

institutionalisation, so characteristic of secularising tendencies in 

today’s societies. Secularisation is seen by many as another name for 

the crisis of collective memory (3).  

It widens with memory loss. As such, all forms of memory losses are a loss of 

connection with the past: be they private or communal.  

 

Conclusion 

We had seen that memory forms an integral part of human existence. Though 

not only relevant within the religious ambience, its roles are essential for our 

daily life events. It is our history because it is of our concrete existence. With 

each passing day, memory is made. To speak of a place is to say something 

about its people. People make the place the place and all that they do and say 

make memory: it keeps something of them through time. This makes memory 

a lived experience, rich with the aroma of the past that serve to establish us in 

the present and build well position the now for a better future. As such, every 

day we make and re-make the memories for generations yet unborn. More true, 

we can make similar affirmations of religions.  Both as synonymous in this 

basic sense call our attention to our connection with God, the Supreme Being, 

whose eternal law guide and sustain the course of events in the universe. 

 

Care must be taken, therefore, not to throw all these treasures to the wind. A 

common adage states: “everyone who knows where the rain began could as well 

know when it stops.” Anyone who knows what makes for the foundation of his 

very existence is not oblivious of his final destination. Though this might not 

be very clear now, so was the present a bleak at some point to our forebears. 

There is every need to keep the memories that keep us in fame and view. To 

lose the sense of these events is to fall short of what religion proposes. Anyone 

who tenaciously holds this to heart has every reason to keep his hopes high. 

This, faith fully guarantees (Hebrews 11:1).1 

 

  

                                                           
1 All citations taken from non-English texts employed in this work are the author’s 
translations of the original texts.  



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Okafor                                                                                                                   90 

 

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Okafor                                                                                                                   91 

 

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