Yorùbá language and its literature in identity reconstruction among Yorùbá youth: Implications for interfaith relations

Yorùbá society has long been a privileged site for examining the entanglement of religion, language and modernity in Africa. Christianity, Islam, and indigenous religious practices have coexisted within shared social spaces for more than a century; yet, this apparent continuity of pluralism obscures profound transformations in how contemporary Yorùbá youth rework what it means to be simultaneously “Yorùbá,” “modern”, and religious under conditions of globalisation, digital media and intensified Christian–Muslim competition. In this context, the Yorùbá language and literature operate not simply as neutral heritage markers but as symbolic resources and arenas of struggle through which identity is reconstructed, and interfaith relations are negotiated. Drawing on theories of identity as articulation and language as symbolic capital, this article argues that specific uses of Yorùbá oral, written, performative and digital texts either sustain a historically inclusive Yorùbá civic–religious imagination or contribute to new forms of confessional exclusivism. The discussion analyses three dominant youth strategies: rejection, selective appropriation and reclamation of indigenous repertoires, and shows how they reshape Christian-Muslim-Òrìṣà relations. It concludes by suggesting ways in which Yorùbá expressive culture can be intentionally mobilised in education, religious practice and popular media to deepen peaceful interfaith coexistence.