African Traditional Religion and Christianity’s Approach to issues of Marriage and Childbirth

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At times, communication between the living, the living-dead and God is done through the ritual slaughtering of an animal Gumede, The practice of ritual slaughtering in traditional African religion is akin to the animal offerings carried out by people in the Old Testament of the Bible. It can be argued that the main difference is that people in the Old Testament were making animal sacrifices directly to God whilst traditional African religious believers make animal sacrifices to God through their departed relatives who have attained the status of being ancestors and therefore mediators between their living relatives and God.

Different types of animals can be slaughtered for the purposes of communication between the living, the ancestors and God. These include chickens, goats and cattle, depending on the instructions or preferences of the ancestors. The slaughtering of an animal has to be done properly and at an appropriate place. For example, such sacrifices could not be made at the modern abattoirs. Blood is an extremely important aspect in the traditional African religion and customs.

It serves as a bond between the ancestors and their descendants. This is one of the reasons why an animal has to be slaughtered when two people get married, for example. The blood of the slaughtered animal is believed to be the eternal bond between the families and the ancestors of the two families that are coming together through the bride and bridegroom.

Gumede explains that there are three basic tenets of a properly made sacrifice. These are that there must be an appropriate animal, such as a cow or bull of a particular colour depending on the occasion, there must be home-brewed beer and frankincense. Sacrifices and ancestor reverence are not confined to the ancestors at the personal and family levels only.

In the Bapedi tribe, found in the Limpopo province north of South Africa, this is achieved by gathering all of the village girls who are still virgins and have not, as yet, gone through the rights of passage into womanhood or adulthood. This water is carefully mixed with rain-medicine to sprinkle the earth with Hammond-Tooke, It is believed that the rain will come down as soon as the girls arrive back from the river having performed the necessary rituals both at the river and at the place where the departed chiefs are buried.

If it happens that these rain rituals do not yield satisfactory results, another ritual is performed. The definition of traditional healing varies. It is holistic in its approach and embodies the collective wisdom of indigenous knowledge handed down over many generations Ashforth, Traditional healing is not a homogenous healing system, but varies from culture to culture and from region to region. It seems to be more established in some countries and regions when compared to others Sofowora, In this regard, it is apparent that traditional healing is well organised and established in countries such as China compared to countries such as South Africa.

Craffert argued that illness and health care systems in any society, whether traditional or Western, are in one way or another determined by or closely connected to the culture or world-views of those societies. Every society develops its own cultural way of dealing with illnesses.

For example, the Chinese, native Americans, native Hawaiians, Australian Aborigines, Indians, Maori in New Zealand, indigenous Africans and many other indigenous peoples have their own special methods and remedies for dealing with physiological, psychiatric and spiritual conditions. Aspects of this collective unconscious tend to resurface in some few select individuals in the form of traditional healers. Although reality exists, it can be constructed, interpreted and understood in different ways.

For example, the traditional African healer has a different construction and etiology about schizophrenia to that of a Western healer. The Western healer may primarily look at the biological chemical basis of schizophrenia, while the traditional African healer might look at witchcraft and ancestors as possible causes. The question arises as to when one construction is perceived as superior than another, especially if the two constructions of reality seem to be very different, as is the case with schizophrenia. Effectively, the differences in the interpretation of illnesses and misfortunes are qualitative in nature.

The term traditional healer is an umbrella concept that encompasses different types of healers with different types of training and expertise. The diviner uses bones and the spirits of the ancestors to diagnose and prescribe medication for different physiological, psychiatric and spiritual conditions. This is someone who is possessed by the Holy Spirit and is able to foretell the future and advice on how to avert an undesirable event.

For healing purposes, some of the prophets, as is the case with the prophets in the Aladura church in Nigeria, use water in addition to prayers Rinne, They often combine the Christian Holy Spirit with the ancestral spirit which falls within the realm of traditional healing Truter, The basic difference between faith healers and traditional healers is that the former receive guidance from God and the Angels while the latter are guided by the ancestral spirits. Traditional surgeons include those who are qualified, accredited, trusted and recognised by village chiefs to perform circumcision on boys Government Gazette, Traditional birth attendants are usually older women who have perfected the skill of midwifery over the years through experiencing, witnessing and assisting in many births throughout their adult lives.

The skill is transferred from one generation to the other. As a result, any older woman can become a birth attendant. It remains to be seen if the traditional birth attendant category will survive for long, as more Africans people prefer to give birth in hospitals and not at home as was previously the case. For certain categories of traditional African healers such as diviners, training is a formal and meticulous process that can take between months and years depending on how fast the trainee learns the trade Peek, To become a traditional healer a special calling from the ancestors is required.

The authenticity of such callings is verified by a diviner who advises on who should undergo training at an appropriate trainer. Moreover, not every qualified traditional healer is qualified to train prospective traditional healers. Training of traditional healers is a specialty and yet another calling, in addition to simply being a healer. A traditional healer has to be called to become a trainer of other future healers. There are traditional healers who combine both the normal traditional healing and who specialise in training of prospective traditional healers. During the training process, trainees receive instructions on a variety of aspects such as different medicinal plants and animal extracts to use, interpreting bones, dream analysis, communicating with the ancestors and different illnesses and how to treat them.

There are certain practices that are proscribed during the training process as per the instructions from the ancestors. For instance, in a growing number of cases it is becoming more and more frequent for modern African families to have homes that, if not broken, are certainly split. When the father moves to the town and takes up work there, while the mother continues to live in the country, the family is already split. Even if both parents with their children come to live in the town, the home they set up there is often less liveable in than the home they had in the country, and it has a tendency towards frequent changes of location.

Urban life is new for the vast majority of African parents, and they have yet to find the way of passing on values to their children within the peculiar difficulties of an urban environment. Within this situation special mention must be made of the working mother. In a traditional situation the mother and the small children are seldom separated.

The mother works on the land with her youngest child strapped to her back, and is helped in her work by those who are slightly older. In urban situations, the mother now goes out to work. Her place at home is taken by a houseboy or housegirl who often proves to be a negative influence on family life and moral upbringing. Urban living hits particularly hard at the extended family, even with regard to its most immediate connections.

There is a growing tendency to leave grandparents in the rural home when their married children move to the town.

Understanding traditional African healing

African grandparents in the rural home, it should be noted, are not comparable to western grandparents in an old age home. The rural home is still the African home. The grandparents are in charge of it, cultivate it, and are often visited by their children and grandchildren. But their traditional role in the education of the children is almost gone; just as the traditional prestige of the aged is going in the process. The broader connections of the traditional family suffer even more. The custom of receiving relatives into one's home is still strong, but it is placed under great strain in urban conditions.

Houses are too small; visiting relatives cost much more to feed, and can seldom be involved in any productive work; tensions are greater and tempers are more frayed. The demise of the extended family could have begun in the bigger cities. For Africans, the extended family system - with its guarantee that people will always find support because their relations are always prepared to accept burdens - is a precious inheritance. Those who see the First signs of a threatened breakdown of this form of family and human solidarity - which no western social security can match - realize that this would be an immense loss of civilized values.

For the African, it is basically uncivilized to neglect older people or to fail to help relatives who are in difficulties or not to welcome them into one's home. In such matters it is a good thing that Africans be critical of western trends and realize that they truly have had, and still have, a more human and civilized approach. It will be a better thing still if western societies come to appreciate and admire these expressions of African civilization and begin, in imitation, the difficult process of reworking the same values back into their own way of life.

The second set of anti-families factors at work in contemporary Africa do not derive from any internal dynamics of the processes of independence or development. They would not have made their appearance "in any case" in post-colonial Africa. They have had to be imposed from outside by means of a sustained campaign that, to many African eyes, threatens to do more harm to family values on the continent than was ever done throughout the colonial period.

This is the contraceptive campaign with all of its anti-sex, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-life implications which radically violate the natural sense-so deeply shared by Africans-of the sacredness of these realities. Most African governments have adopted some form of population-control policy. Western population agencies however are not too satisfied with the way these policies have been implemented and tend to accuse African governments of half-heartedness in the matter.

The accusation is no doubt correct. No government is going to try to impose policies which their people deeply detest, still less so when most of the ministers of the government themselves share that detestation, and look on those of their colleagues who do not, as having lost their African identity.

A growing number of African thinkers have become increasingly sceptical about the validity of the arguments behind population control. For decades, third world countries have been told that control is an essential condition for growth and development. What is more important is that the simple passage of time is now permitting them to be questioned within the African context itself. Kenya is an outstanding case in point. As the country with the highest birth-rate in the world, Kenya has consistently been the object of special attention from the family planners, and is currently been pressurized to introduce abortion on demand.

A lot of publicity was given recently to the prediction of a major international agency that if the demographic growth of Kenya is not severely curbed, the present population of 20 million will have doubled to 40 million by the year , and that this will inevitably mean the economic collapse of the country.

Such predictions carry little weight with Kenyans when they reflect on something that is no hypothesis by a simple fact lying within their own experience. The exponents of family planning were already present and active in Kenya in , the year of the country's independence, and were making rather similar predictions. The population of Kenya in was 8.

It had doubled by , and is currently over 20 million. According to the family planning people the country should now be deep in irretrievable economic ruin.

GYE NYAME.

Ask any Kenyan about the situation, and he will tell you that, despite inequalities, the country and individual Kenyans are immeasurably better off, economically and materially, than 25 years ago. As Africans become aware of the limitless amounts of money spent by western agencies in propagating birth-control in the Third World, they are beginning to ask: As one African economist put it recently to a student audience: Well, he added, I think that people expect you to pay for what benefits you.

If they are prepared to make a free gift, it is because the gift benefits them! Not that family-planning aid is really free. The adoption of a family-planning policy is the premium the developing country has to pay if it wants to receive aid in essential areas of development. This is what the developing countries are being told: Some African countries like Tanzania have hitherto refused to accept aid on such blackmail conditions.

Where it is accepted, it inevitably results in a growing current of anti-western feeling.

The western agencies do not seem to realize -or just do not care- that they are violating deeply-ingrained cultural and moral values. Probably they do not care, because their campaigns are undoubtedly making sure if slow progress. The birth-control mentality is becoming generalized in the cities. Through the schools, including the rural schools, teen-agers and even children are becoming imbued with it. The result is that sexual morality is collapsing among the young. Pornography - another western export - is becoming widespread.

Teen-age pregnancies are escalating hence the insistent call for free abortion as the only "solution". The African countries too are faced with an ominous growth in social violence and general dishonesty which, as the West has already experienced, always follow sexual permissiveness. It might seem difficult to avoid concluding our study on a rather sombre note: Africa has certainly become enveloped in the cultural and moral crisis of the late 20th century world.

Its values are threatened and may succumb to modern materialism, individualism and hedonism, all the more —it would seem- because it has few sophisticated defenses to set up against these onslaughts. Nevertheless it possesses powerful natural defenses in its traditional grasp of pro-life and pro-family values. But these values are not likely to survive today, on their own. They need a new force to uphold them. The force is there; will Africans recognize it? This is the moment, then, for African Christians to alert their fellow-Africans to those influences coming from outside Africa which oppose and would destroy natural and traditional African values about life, children, and family or human solidarity.

It is also the moment for them to draw the attention of their fellow-citizens to how Christianity recognizes and applauds all the powerful good that dwells in these traditional values, and offers a new key for their protection and perfectioning. These are good reasons for hoping that African perspectives will not stop there.

The present situation in both the world and the Church offers Africans a new challenge and role: If Africa retains its human values - leavened by Christ - it can be at the forefront of the re-evangelization of the modern world. Our considerations have brought us to touch on a great theme: Of course it is clear dial no one is adequately drawn to Christianity just because lie sees in it a promise of support for his human values. And it is equally clear that the purpose of evangelization is not just to save human values.

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN AFRICA: Position Papers, April | www.farmersmarketmusic.com

Nevertheless, it is probably true that the first step in any process of evangelization is the awareness of imperiled humanity, just as the second step is the discovery in Christianity of the promise of salvation for human values. Normally it is only at a later moment and at a deeper level that one discovers how Christianity's promise of salvation for man also includes the promise of divinizing him - which finds its full realization only in the next life.

The West has been drifting away from Christianity for centuries. The western loss of the sense of God, and of the sense of sin, has been followed by a loss of the sense of man, a loss of human values. At this stage, western man scarcely even knows what it is he has lost. Africans are a deeply spiritual people. Their traditional religions, however, are perhaps the least understood facet of African life. Although historically non-Africans have emphasized the multiple deities and ancestral spirits in African traditional religions, there are other notable features. For example, African cosmogony posits the existence of a Supreme Being who created the universe and everything in it.

African myths frequently describe numerous lesser deities who assist the Supreme Being while performing diverse functions in the created world. Spirits may be divided into human spirits and nature spirits. Each has a life force devoid of physical form. Individuals who have died, usually ancestors in particular lineages, are the human spirits.

These spirits play a role in community affairs and ensure a link between each clan and the spirit world. Natural objects, such as rivers, mountains, trees, and the Sun as well as forces such as wind and rain , represent the nature spirits. Africans integrate this religious worldview into every aspect of life. Although a large proportion of Africans have converted to Islam and Christianity, these two world religions have been assimilated into African culture, and many African Christians and Muslims maintain traditional spiritual beliefs.

Furthermore, African cultural practices contain elements of indigenous religion. Thus, traditional African cosmologies and beliefs continue to exert significant influence on Africans today. African indigenous religions are timeless, beginning with the origin of human civilization on the continent, perhaps as early as , b. Because they date back to prehistoric times, little has been written about their history. These religions have evolved and spread slowly for millennia; stories about gods, spirits, and ancestors have passed from one generation to another in oral mythology.

Practitioners of traditional religions understand the founders of their religions to be God or the gods themselves, the same beings who created the universe and everything in it. Thus, religious founders are described in creation stories. For indigenous African peoples "history" often refers to accounts of events as narrated in stories, myths, legends, and songs.

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Myth and oral history are integral elements of their culture. Such history, however, can be difficult to cross-reference with historical world events. Nevertheless, the truths and myths conveyed through an oral culture may be as authentic as those communicated through the written word. Evidence such as archaeological finds, carbon dating, and DNA has corroborated certain elements contained in African myths, legends, and narratives. Over the years African traditional religions have increased and diminished in regional importance according to social and political changes.

One of the biggest influences on African traditional religions has been outside cultures. In particular, both Islam and Christianity have affected the practice of African traditional religions. Christianity, the first world religion to appear on the continent, was taken there in about the first century c. It was overtaken in the region by Islam in the seventh century—frequently by military incursion, commercial trading, and the nonviolent missionary efforts of merchants. Persian and Arab merchants introduced Islam in East Africa by trading in coastal towns up and down the eastern seaboard.

Islam was readily adapted in many instances because of its compatibility, or at least tolerance of, traditional African religions. By the s Islam had diversified and grown popular. In the fifteenth century Christian missionaries became the first wave of Europeans to invade and occupy African lands. They relied on the backing of European medicinal remedies and colonial military power. By using local languages and converting Africans from their ancestral religions to Christianity, missionaries paved the way for early modernization and Western colonialism.

Western colonialists negotiated and drafted treaties with African leaders, stripping Africans of their lands, depopulating the countryside, destabilizing their economies, overturning political rule, and uprooting cultural and lineage continuity. By the s Christianity was firmly entrenched in most of Africa.

Today Muslims worship throughout much of Africa. The success of Islam is partially a result of its continued toleration of traditional beliefs and practices—or at least its allowance of indigenous beliefs to adapt to a form compatible with Islam. At the end of the twentieth century, Islam spread into areas such as Rwanda, where the trauma of civil war, ethnic violence, and genocide implicated Christianity and left Islam with a reputation for being on a higher moral level. On the other hand, in predominantly Muslim states such as the Sudan, Islamic fundamentalists and pro-Arab Sudanese have been implicated in the oppression and slavery of millions of Sudanese Christians and ethnic minorities.

This Ghanaian Adinkra symbol means "except for God" and symbolizes the supremacy of God. The symbol can be found throughout Ghana. It is the most popular for decoration and can often be seen printed on cloth or stamped on pottery.

The rapid spread of Pentecostal Christianity and fundamentalist Islam has greatly affected the role of indigenous religion in African society. African traditional religions have creatively responded to this religious onslaught by formulating new ways of survival, such as developing literature, institutionalizing the traditions, establishing associations of priests, and creating schools for the training of its priests.

Moreover, they have also extended outward and influenced global culture, especially in African diaspora communities. From the s to the s the transatlantic slave trade took African religions to the Americas and the Caribbean. Since the s the religions of African immigrants have influenced American culture. A new wave of conversion to indigenous African traditions has been noticeable in the United States , especially among African Americans.

New forms of Yoruba religion have been emerging that are quite different from the Yoruba orisa traditions in Nigeria. These forms have introduced African healing practices among the black population of the United States. The interaction between Western and traditional African religious traditions has influenced religious innovations in Africa, such as African Initiated Churches and Islamic mystical traditions Sufism. As a result, Islam and Christianity have become Africanized on the continent, significantly changing the practice of the two traditions and leading to a distinct African expression of them.

Unlike other world faiths, African traditional religions have no predominant doctrinal teachings. Rather, they have certain vital elements that function as core beliefs. Among these beliefs are origin myths, the presence of deities, ancestor veneration, and divination. African cosmology explanation of the nature of the universe tends to assert that there is a Supreme God who is helped by a number of lesser deities.

Spirits are the connection between the living and the invisible worlds. Anyone can communicate with the spirits, but priests, priestesses, prophets, and diviners have more direct access to invisible arenas of the world. In African traditional religions the sense of time is often described in cyclical rather than linear imagery. In the cosmology of the Dagara an ethnic group in the Niger region of West Africa , for instance, the wheel or circle represents the cyclical nature of life as well as of the Earth.

The wheel contains everything found on Earth. According to the Yoruba an ethnic group from Nigeria , the life force that pervades all phenomena exists in an eternal cycle of complex interactions between cosmic domains; these interactions should always remain in balance. In African traditional religions the cosmogony theory of the origin of the universe usually describes humans appearing near the end of creation.

In many creation stories God is likened to a potter who creates humans out of clay and then pours the breath of life into them. African religions rely on the memory of oral stories. Thus, doctrine tends to be more flexible than it is in text-based religions, and it changes according to the immediate needs of religious followers. African traditional religions are a communal endeavor, and it is not required that an individual believe in every element.

As in any democratic system, individuals may participate in ways that benefit their interests, their community roles, or their status as religious leaders. Because religion permeates all aspects of a traditional African culture, if an individual rejects the culture's religion, he or she may become isolated from family, friends, and the community. Narratives about the creation of the universe cosmogony and the nature and structure of the world cosmology form the core philosophy of African religions.

These narratives are conveyed in a linguistic form that scholars often refer to as myth. The term "myth" in African religions means sacred stories that are believed to be true by those who hold to them. To the African people who espouse them, myths reveal significant events and episodes of the most profound and transcendent meaning. They are not fixed, because accounts may vary from generation to generation or even among individuals who tell these stories.

Myths do, however, retain similar structures and purposes: They generally involve superhuman entities, gods, demigods, spirits, and ancestors. The notion that myth is nonrational and unscientific, while history is critical and rational, is not always accurate, nor does it represent the outlook of practitioners of traditional religions. Many African myths deal with events that devotees consider as authentic and "real" or as symbolic expressions of historical events. Furthermore, scholars today assert that the supposedly accurate records of missionaries, colonial administrators, and the indigenous elite were susceptible to distortion.

The fact that myths have endured for generations gives them their authority. Each generation expresses and reinterprets the myths, making the events revealed in them relevant to contemporary conditions. African cosmogonic narratives explain how the world was put into place by a divine personality, usually the Supreme God in collaboration with lesser supernatural beings who act on his behalf or aid in the creative process. In several cultures a supreme deity performs creation through mere thought processes.

In other cases the Supreme Being instructs lesser deities on how to create by providing them with materials to undertake the process. In the creation story of the Abaluhya of Kenya, the Supreme Being, called Wele Xakaba, created the universe in a manner that resembles the seven-day creation of the world by God in the Bible, with the seventh day being a time of rest.

There are myths that say the world was created out of an existing abyss or a watery universe uninhabited by animate beings. In African cosmological narratives creation is always portrayed as a complex process, whether the universe is said to have evolved from preexisting matter or from divine thought. The Fon of Benin, in western Africa, and their neighbors, the Yoruba of Nigeria, share many elements of a highly intricate cosmology.

The names given to the specific deities in Benin may vary slightly from those of the Yoruba. There are similar motifs in the cosmological narratives of both cultures, though the Fon narratives are more complex than the Yoruba's. In the Fon creation myth the Supreme Being, Mawu, is of indeterminate gender. Mawu is sometimes female and sometimes male. Mawu is often associated with a partner, Lisa. As a female, Mawu is associated with the Moon and has power over the nighttime and the western universe.

Lisa, as the male, commands the Sun and occupies the eastern universe. These twin creators give birth to another set of twin deities, who in turn beget seven pairs of twin offspring. Therefore, twins are esteemed in Fon culture. Mawu-Lisa once gathered their children together to distribute what they owned among them. To the most senior set of twins Mawu-Lisa bestowed authority to rule the Earth. Another set, "Twins of Storm," retained authority to govern thunder and lightening.

Representing iron and metal, the most powerful pair maintained jurisdiction over the manufacture of iron implements such as knives, hoes, arrows, and, beginning in the twentieth century, guns and automobiles. According the mythology, these twin gods took command of vital functions in developing the Fon economy: Mawu-Lisa positioned human beings in the region between the sky and the underworld, commanding humans to dwell there and to return to his own abode after a specified number of years.

Mawu-Lisa also created spirits and deities, bestowing upon each a special "esoteric" ritual language through which they communicate among themselves. By ministering to deities and humans in liturgical worship, the clergy learn these rituals and languages. In this narrative Legba messenger of the Supreme Being and other gods gained knowledge of all sacred languages of the divinities, enabling himself to initiate communication among other deities.

That other West African cultures have similar creation myths and ensuing social traditions is evidence of influence between cultures. The Winye of Burkina Faso center their creation myth on female and male twins, whom the Supreme God sent as primordial parents to establish human life in the created world. Their rebellious behavior, however, caused dismay; they resorted to acts of sorcery and refused to submit to the natural succession of generations.

The female twin held back her own offspring for a year; after she finally gave birth, the children—twins themselves—rebelled against their parents by establishing themselves as an autonomous pair. Recognizing the superiority of their own children, the parents pledged to obey them, and they sacrificed a goat in acknowledgment. The story conveys the division and crisis between two generations; through sacrifice, order is restored. This myth acknowledges the importance of primordial beings and their innate procreative powers, which ultimately benefit civilization.

Several other African cosmologies are also characterized by an emphasis on primordial disorder, conflict, or chaos. Though such disorder at first comprises "negative" forces, ultimately it becomes the source of a workable social universe. In some traditional African cosmologies primordial divinities have a dispute in which subordinate gods must take sides. While the Supreme God serves as the adjudicator in such conflicts, one demigod eventually takes command over the others.

Such myths of conflict often provide humanity with unwritten guidelines for establishing institutions of morality, ethics, and behavior. Some African societies have creation myths that correlate with their social and political organization. An example is the northern Yatenga society of western Africa. The Nioniosse "rose up" from the underworld, and the Foulse descended from the sky. The Nioniosse command the "cult of the earth" and other rites relating to fertility, and the Foulse command the reigning monarchy, personnel, chiefs, and kings. The two complementary realms represent the world's governance and agricultural life.

This myth gives credence to the importance of the underworld as the sphere that nourishes human life. Unlike Western myth, which seems partial to the reign of sky beings and portrays heaven as the abode of the Supreme Being, many African cosmologies consider the sky and the earth as equally significant spheres through which the divine create an enchanted universe.

African cosmogonic myths, which explain the origins of the universe, contain a people's conception of superhuman beings—the Supreme Being, the divinities, the demigods, and the spirits that operate in the created world. The African pantheon of gods, goddesses, spirits, and other superhuman beings is difficult for outside observers to comprehend. Deities are varied in number and complex in character. In most places in the African world it is believed that the supernatural and the natural realms interact.

The lives of gods and humans become entangled through daily experiences. The gods and goddesses often populate the expression of core community beliefs, and people make frequent and daily references to them. Deities inhabit a world primarily created for humans, and they exercise tremendous influence over day-to-day human affairs. Because the spirits inhabit the natural world, no practical distinction exists between the natural and the supernatural world.

The pantheon of deities is often given a collective name; for the Yoruba of Nigeria it is orisa, and for the Baganda of Uganda it is balubaale. The intricate myths and legends describing African deities provide ample evidence of their habits, functions, powers, activities, status, and influence. In several traditions myth portrays the divinities as anthropomorphic beings who share many characteristics with humans.

They can speak, they are visible, and they endure punishments and rewards. Yet they are unlike humans in that they are immortal, superhuman, and transcendent. The most significant superhuman being is the Supreme God, who represents universality and greatness.

The myths of many African cultures describe the Supreme God's global significance and place him or her high above the other deities in the pantheon. At times supreme gods are understood to be females and males who complement each other as husband and wife or brother and sister, similar to Mawu-Lisa in the religion of the Fon of Benin. In some cultures the pair's kinship bond may signify the unity of divine energy. Although the Supreme God is a creator god, the work of creating the universe, especially when such acts entail physical labor, is often delegated to subordinates who act according to the Supreme God's instructions.

The Supreme God may also be seen as a divine principle embodying the idea of life abundance and the blessings of human procreation and agricultural fertility. In many myths the Supreme God, after creating the universe, withdraws to a comfortable distance and delegates the affairs of the universe to lesser divinities. Some African groups have cults dedicated to the Supreme Being, but in general the creator does not have a special cult of devotees.

This is because he occupies the realm beyond the physical abode of humans and thus remains outside their immediate influence. In some southern African religious groups, however, the Supreme God is not considered to be remote. A classic example is the regional cult of Mwari a creator god in western Zimbabwe and eastern Botswana. Members of the Mwari cult engage primarily in rituals that are intended to influence the economy and maintain environmental balances. Many Africans practice ancestor veneration.

Ancestors are generally the deceased elders of either gender who have passed from the realm of the living to that of the superhuman. They retain membership in their family, community, clan, and kin groups. Beliefs and practices of ancestor worship vary according to the local culture and religious traditions. For example, for the Komo of Congo Kinshasa the ancestors play a role equally prominent to that of deities. They serve as guardians of the living, and they pass down the various Komo rituals. In some other groups notions of ancestors are more expansive and may include various categories of human spirits; in others ancestors include spirits of deceased children.

For the Ba Thonga people of southern Africa, among whom the ancestral system is well developed, ideas and ritual practices relating to the cult of the dead are central aspects of community life. Communities in the Congo, like many other African cultures, often view kinship, lineage, chieftaincy, and elderhood as factors that unite the ancestors with the living.

For example, in the Ba Kongo a group of peoples who live in the Congo and Angola and Kaguru an ethnic group of Tanzania societies, the elders are closest to the ancestors, and they wield much influence on how to consult and propitiate them. The elders determine what displeases the ancestors, whom to blame for the ancestors' displeasure with the living, and who will interpret the ancestors' will. Ancestors maintain a strong moral authority over the living; the elders speak for the ancestors when they intervene in and resolve conflicts.

Ancestral propitiation takes many forms in Kaguru society, including cleaning the graves of the deceased, pouring libations of beer, and making offerings of flour or tobacco. Crises call for more elaborate sacrifices, such as the slaughter of chickens, goats, and sheep. In many instances the Kaguru ancestors are approached communally.

Traditional African cultures have various standards and restrictions for attaining ancestral status and spirituality, and at times even a child may become an ancestor. There is no standard or widespread characteristic of ancestorhood, but the criteria used throughout Africa share similarities. For instance, ancestors often attain their status after they have received proper burial rituals. Gender is a major factor in many traditional ancestral cultures; males rather than females have tended to benefit from ancestral ideology. The Manyika of Zimbabwe bestow ancestor status only on males, and the status is not necessarily associated with fatherhood; a childless Manyika adult male who dies may become an ancestor if a nephew includes him in his own ancestor cult.

The matrilineal agricultural people of central Zambia require that males offer sacrifices to the ancestors on the right side of a doorway, while females offer sacrifices on the left. Certain sacred children may also become ancestors. The Sukuma and Nyamwezi people of Tanzania believe that twins are ancestors because multiple births indicate an excess of fertility.

Women retain exclusive rights to direct any rituals related to twin ancestors, perhaps because they are responsible for their physical birth. In the African cosmological vision death does not cease or annihilate human life—it is merely the inevitable transition to the next stage of life. It initiates the process of attaining ancestorhood.

Proper burial rites and ceremonies ensure a peaceful passage. For the Bambara of Mali a death causes great anxiety, confusion, and unpredictability. It is thought that the fortune of the deceased and that of their descendants become equally volatile and that the community is thus temporarily endangered. The Bambara fear that the death of a lineage head may disturb the entire lineage.

The Yoruba believe that the death of an elder who has worked diligently to provide unity and strength in the lineage causes the entire household to become empty and devoid of cohesion. In most African communities a deceased person must be properly buried to become an ancestor. Proper burial entails a performance of elaborate funeral ceremonies by all members of the deceased's descendants.

In addition, the deceased must have died a good death; Africans regard premature death that results from an accident or a "shameful disease" such as smallpox, leprosy, and AIDS to be a dreadful death. Most significantly, the deceased must have lived to an old age, meaning that they will have possessed wisdom and experience. When an elderly person dies, Africans traditionally avoid using the word "death.

In avoiding the word "death," people uphold the belief that an individual is greater than death itself. The African understanding of immortality is tied to remembrance after death. Thus, to have many children who can preserve one's memory is to secure one's immortality. Among some peoples of East Africa it is thought that a person dies only if he or she has no one to remember him or her.

In African traditional religions it is believed that ancestors sometimes experience what is generally referred to as reincarnation. The ancestors are responsible for perpetuating their lineage, not only by making possible the procreation of the living members of the lineage but also through rebirth.

The Yoruba hold that children born soon after the death of grandparents or parents are reincarnated if they are of the same sex as the deceased. For instance, a girl born after the death of a grandmother or mother is called Yetunde or Iyabo "mother has returned" , and a boy born after the death of a grandfather or father is called Babatunde "father has returned".

The Yoruba purport that such children normally show the traits and characteristics of the deceased. While the Kaguru have no such generic naming system, their naming patterns are closely associated with ancestral veneration. Newborns are said to come from the place of the ancestors, not necessarily in actual physical rebirth but in terms of the particular qualities of the deceased. Through divination every Kaguru infant is given the name of the closest ancestor in time. There is an apparent contradiction in the simultaneous belief in ancestor veneration and reincarnation. How can the ancestors live in the underworld and at the same time return to their lineage to live again?

The religion of the Lupupan people of Congo Kinshasa illustrates how this belief is sustained in most African communities. The Lupupans believe that the body mbidi houses the spirit kikudi and that when death occurs, the spirit leaves for elungu, a special land that the ancestors inhabit. Wild pigs protect and guide elungu and run errands for the ancestors. If the living maintain a cordial relationship with the ancestors, one of the spirits returns to be reborn into the lineage.

In principle, an individual's spirit can reside on Earth in another body three times, after which the cycle is complete; that individual may appear a fourth time as a fierce totemic animal, perhaps a leopard. Rebirth of the deceased spirit occurs through a grandchild not a child, because the spirit must skip a generation. Thus, newborn grandsons take the name of their deceased grandfathers. Western notions of the afterlife came to the Lupupans in the nineteenth century with the arrival of Christianity.

The Lupupans incorporated Christian ideas into their systems.

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