Spirit and Spirits in African Religious Traditions

African religious traditions share a belief in a real spirit world and an active evil that must be restrained for human survival, health, and prosperity. While each tradition has distinct features, common patterns include engaging with spirits and countering supernatural evil. These beliefs in mystical causality align with pneumatic forms of Christian piety, unlike Western mission Christianity which dismissed witchcraft beliefs. African-initiated Christianity instead affirmed such beliefs and offered Christian rituals to address them.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter discusses the spirit world in African thought systems and practices. The religious traditions and beliefs of the African peoples have enough differences to merit a study of each in its own right. Nevertheless, they also display enough family resemblances for us to be able to delineate their main features and to a very reasonable extent fall on them to represent the whole. The religious traditions and practices discussed below are informed by African beliefs in the reality of the spirit world and the ardent desire to engage with it for the purposes of human survival, health, fruitfulness, and longevity. Not only are spirits real but also evil is hyperactive and much religious activity and energy goes into restraining sources of supernatural evil and their influence on human life. The continuities between African beliefs in mystical causality and the attractions to pneumatic forms of Christian piety are therefore not too difficult to find. If Western mission Christianity dismissed African beliefs in the evils of witchcraft as nonsensical, African-initiated Christianity of the pneumatic type affirmed such beliefs and provided alternative rituals for dealing with them within a Christian context.