Unfortunately, when two religions start competing for members, both are likely to emphasise the worst aspects of their religion to show how much they differ from each other. Of course, few people would follow any particular religion unless they believed it was more true than others, but mainstream Christians (on this I can only speak for Christians) have learned in the past century the truth they find in other religions. Today most fundamentalist Christians are found among the new evangelical movements, “XY Miracle Ministries” or the followers of the Prophet Z.
So let me outline the truth we all share. Christians and Shona traditionalists, along with Muslims, Jews and others, believe in one God. If there is just one God, we must be all talking about the same God, even if we are not saying exactly the same. God is greater than we can express in words.
Mainstream Christians, including now churches that emerged at the Reformation, do not condemn us if we remember our links with our ancestors and others who have gone before us. We believe we and they can help each other. The differences we should respect are:
Christians do not believe that our ancestors can harm us or demand reverence by threats. Where the traditional Shona says this is happening, Christians have a different explanation. For example, the clearest example of ngozi I have seen affected two children of a man who had been responsible for a neighbour’s murder during the war; I believe that their father’s secret guilt weighed so heavily on the family that it became a spiritual influence that disturbed them in adolescence – and we witnessed that.
While Christians may seek the mediation of saints to approach God, this is not necessary because we believe that, in Jesus, God has reached out to us. If God is great, then s/he must be great enough to attend to all of us individually, not so big that we little people need help to get God’s attention. We don’t need saints or priests to pray for us, but some feel more need of their help than others.
I liked the efforts some Catholics made to put a Christian meaning to kurova guva; I think we all agree that this is an occasion for reconciliation within the family. If there are unfinished issues involving the deceased, we cannot let them rest, so we must settle them. I am not convinced that the unveiling and blessing of a tombstone can do this as well as the long-tried and proved ritual of kurova guva, but let’s wait and see what Christian consensus, if any, develops on that.
Christian reservations about consulting masvikiro focus on the likelihood that the person will be told to do something to appease an ancestor who threatens to harm their family. Here I believe Christians have often been too eager to show they were different from their “pagan” neighbours or ancestors and neglected what the Shona traditionalist knows; that our bad behaviour and failure to do our duty can have material, physical effects.
They throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose the resources to deal with this kind of spiritual problem. On the other hand, extreme Shona fundamentalists can act as if they believe every little illness or accident we suffer is a result of witchcraft. There you have two fundamentalisms bringing out the worst in each other.
What do you think?
Can our ancestors harm or help us?
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Post published in: Analysis